Sebastien Roblin
Security,
We Now understand America's plot to hit Russia or China's stand Defenses
As radars and radar-guided antiaircraft missiles outline to become at mount and sophistication, jamming and other forms of electric war will remain inherent highway because stand energy to survive above the fight spaces of the future. The Next Generation Jammer is the Pentagon’s test to counter new advances at air-defense radars—while adding to its bag of electric tricks.
U.S. warplanes flying above Syria today find themselves operating within the mount of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles. cabin the U.S. military is unlikely to intentionally attack Russian army at Syria, the status highlights the importance of suppressing enemy stand defenses—one major tactic U.S. flyers eat need relied upon is radar jamming, or saturating enemy radars with “noise” and sham signals hence that they can’t follow and liberate upon kind airplanes. The U.S. fleet has relied above the ALQ-99 jamming system because nearly half a century, even during opposing radars grew at ability. However, by the beginning of the next decade it will initiate fielding the superior Next Generation Jammer, boasting significant electronic-attack and signal-intelligence capabilities.
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The powerful ALQ-99 tactical jamming pod first entered U.S. fleet service at 1971, carried by the EA-6 Prowler, an electronic-warfare variant of the A-6 Intruder carrier-based attack plane with a four-man crew. The U.S. stand might at length supplemented the Prowler with faster and larger EF-111 Ravens, informally known during Spark Varks because of the intense static buildup their jammers generated. Both planes proved effective at suppressing stand defenses at Iraq and Libya. However, the Raven was withdrawn from service early at 1998, during the imminent retirement of the F-111 fleet made it prohibitively dear to operate. Seventeen years later, the Navy retired its aging EA-6s in favor of new EA-18G Growlers—special electronic-warfare variants of the F-18 Super Hornet. The two-seat Growlers are much faster and better armed, besides during cause to ponder above automation to invent up because the reduction at crew size.
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The Marine Corps will outline to flee its Prowlers until retirement at 2019, leaving the Growler during the only remaining tactical jammer. Overall, request because jamming aeroplane has remained high even during the amount has diminished. The jammers eat even proven useful at the fight against ISIS by scrambling ISIS communications and disabling roadside bombs.
Jamming, however, is no a panacea against enemy radars—it sharply degrades their effective mount besides during does no neutralize them entirely, and jamming aeroplane eat to be careful no to advantage also near to the defenses they are scrambling. Furthermore, cabin the analog-based ALQ-99 has abundant power, new radars boast greater energy during well, and are more able of switching frequencies and networking with kind sensors to conquer the effects of jamming.
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Enter the Next Generation Jammer program, the first documents because which were released by the Pentagon at 2004, with the differ of bringing jamming into the digital age. The NGJ had originally been envisioned during an automated pod because utilize above single-seat F-35 Lightning stealth fighters, which used to serve at entire three branches of the military. However, this view proved much more dear and time-consuming than expected—which could summarize be the F-35 program at a nutshell. Instead, the Pentagon at length decided to concentrate above re-equipping the fleet Growlers with the new jamming system, and at 2013 chose the invent proposed by Raytheon above three major competitors.
The NGJ is designed to vocation against a complete spectrum of radars, besides during various radars will ask various countermeasures, which Raytheon is developing above a staggered schedule. The upcoming Increment 1 pods are designed to press mid-band warfare radars commonly used by ground-based surface-to-air missiles, which pose the greatest danger to U.S. aeroplane today. Once available, the EA-18 will make two of the mid-band pods—one below each wing.
However, the Growler will reserve a sole fuselage-mounted ALQ-99 pod optimized because jamming low-band radars until the Increment 2 NGJ pod is ready farther into the 2020s. Low-band or surveillance radars eat a broader scanning area, and are effective at tracking enemy aircraft—even stealth fighters!—but are also imprecise because targeting weapons. Nonetheless, surveillance radars help the more narrowly focused warfare radars understand where to appear because enemies, and a forewarned warfare radar can ambush a stealth fighter at short range. Thus, during the amount of stealth aeroplane swells with the product of the F-35, jamming low-band radars will depart more and more important.
Eventually, Raytheon also plans to age an Increment 3 system because jamming high-band warfare radars, which are common above fighter planes.
The fifteen-foot NGJ pods utilize an active Electronically Scanned Array radar with gallium nitride components that enlarge radio energy. Program manager Capt. John Bailey claimed at a seminar that the NGJ can generate ten mature the radiated isotropic energy even of the preceding ALQ-99, and that the badge is “cleaner,” minimizing the collateral interference with kind signals. fair during importantly, the NGJ can press multiple frequencies—Captain Bailey claims four mature during many—and is designed to be an “agile” jammer, able of analyzing new enemy signals and adjusting its cause frequencies to counter them literally above the fly. Moreover, though the NGJ is a digital solid-state open-architecture system, it can be upgraded with new “threat libraries” of hostile hardware, allowing it to be easily—and cheaply—upgraded to contest new adversary capabilities. Finally, the NGJ pods can do entire of this without draining energy from the Growler carrying it, owing to its ram stand turbine.
The jamming pods also reportedly depart with extra bells and whistles, most notably the capacity to spy above enemy communications. This used to apparently utilize the Growler to serve during a latent Signals information (SIGINT) platform, either during enable it to double during a communication hub. The NGJ also reportedly comes with cyber-attack abilities to do a “network invasion” by inserting news packets into adversary systems, a technique that has been demonstrated by an stand might EC-130.
Since being approved to age the NGJ, the NGJ development process has proven relatively fast and efficient. However, a Department of Testing report notes that the NGJ has however to be tested at operational conditions and that the pods’ effects above the EA-18 flight operation are unclear. The explain also expresses affair that the NGH pods can humiliate the operation of the Growler’s ALQ-218 receiver, decrease mount and pose an electromagnetic dare to the fighter’s AGM-88 antiradar missiles.
The NGJ Increment 1 jammers are intended to eat initial operating genius nearly 2021. The Pentagon has already allocated $1 billion because this first batch, with few more billions responsible to track above time. Australia, meanwhile, has invested $192 million into the program, and intends to at length adjust them above its twelve new Growlers, which will deduce delivery afterward this year.
Eventually, the Pentagon intends to revisit developing a NGJ pod specially because the F-35—but that will responsible wait until the late 2020s at the earliest. at the meantime, there is dialect of proper the NGJ to the Navy UCLASS drone to expand the amount of available jamming platforms.
As radars and radar-guided antiaircraft missiles outline to become at mount and sophistication, jamming and other forms of electric war will remain inherent highway because stand energy to survive above the fight spaces of the future. The Next Generation Jammer is the Pentagon’s test to counter new advances at air-defense radars—while adding to its bag of electric tricks.
Sébastien Roblin holds a master’s classification at bump determination from Georgetown college and served during a college instructor because the Peace Corps at China. He has also worked at education, editing and refugee resettlement at France and the United States. He currently writes above security and military history for War Is Boring.
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