The Navy awarded a $279.4 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract July 8 that will transform how the service executes its Airborne Electronic Attack (AEA) mission.
Naval Air Systems Command awarded the contract to Raytheon Co. to conduct the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) Technology Development (TD) phase.
The 22-month TD phase is the next step in transitioning mature components into testable subsystems as well as developing a preliminary design for the new jamming pods for the EA-18G Growler AEA aircraft. The Navy’s EA-18G Growler is the DOD’s only tactical AEA platform and supports all services from both aircraft carriers and land bases.
NGJ will replace the ALQ-99 tactical jamming system and will bring increased jamming capability to the warfighter that is critical to sustaining the future missions of the Navy and other services in strike warfare, anti-access/area denial and irregular warfare scenarios. The goal is to deliver this capability to the fleet in fiscal 2020.
Raytheon Co. will be required to design and build critical technologies that will be the foundational blocks of NGJ. Keys to success include demonstrations of required capabilities as well as crafting a design that will be tested and flown on the Growler during the subsequent 4½ year Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase.
Raytheon Co. was one of four contractors involved in the 33-month NGJ Technology Maturation portion of the acquisition process. They identified, developed and matured several critical technologies necessary to ensure an AEA system that would meet stringent Navy fleet requirements and reduced technical and schedule risk in future development phases.