PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – Electronic warfare (EW) experts at L3Harris Technologies Inc. will provide the U.S. Navy with 35 sophisticated EW systems designed to protect Navy combat aircraft from incoming radar-guided missiles.
Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., on Thursday announced a $104 million order to the L3Harris Space & Airborne Systems segment in Clifton, N.J., for 35 lot 17 AN/ALQ-214A(V)4 Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM) EW jammers for Navy F/A-18C/D and F/A-18E/F Hornet and Super Hornet carrier-based fighter-bombers.
The AN/ALQ-214(V)4 is an electronic jammer component of the integrated defensive electronic counter measures system (IDECM) avionics, which comes to the Navy from a joint venture of Harris and BAE Systems. It protects Navy fighter-bombers from radar-guided surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles by jamming the enemy missile guidance systems.
The contract includes 28 weapons replaceable assemblies and repair of test assets and field support for in-service IDECM AN/ALQ-214A(V)4 airborne EW jammer systems.
The ALQ-214 component of the IDECM EW system has been delivered to the Navy as well as to the Royal Australian Air Force for contemporary versions of the Boeing F/A-18 fighter-bomber. The system blends sensitive receivers and active countermeasures to form an electronic shield around the aircraft, Harris officials say.
The RF countermeasure system aboard the Navy's F/A-18 jet fighter-bombers engages incoming missiles autonomously with a series of measures designed to protect the aircraft from detection.
The AN/ALQ-214(V)4 a smaller and lighter version of its predecessors, and has an open-architecture design that is ready for integration on several different kinds of aircraft. The system is designed to counter radar-guided anti-aircraft missiles with electronic countermeasures (ECM) techniques that deny, disrupt, delay, and degrade the enemy missile launch and engagement sequence. The system identifies, ranks, and counters incoming missiles, and displays engagements to the flight crew for situational awareness. On this contract L3Harris will do the work in Clifton, N.J.; as well as in San Jose, San Diego, Rancho Cordova, and Mountain View, Calif., and should be finished by August 2023. For more information contact L3Harris Space & Airborne Systems online at www.l3harris.com, or Naval Air Systems Command at www.navair.navy.mil.
