Jamming - Ny decoy til USN - AW&ST

Graham Warwick | Aerospace Daily & Defense Report

MALDs: Raytheon

Having conducted a demonstration of additional capabilities, Raytheon hopes to be under contract with the U.S. Navy in 2019 to develop an advanced version of its Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD).The U.S. Air Force continues to buy the ADM-160C MALD-J jammer version, and has not decided its next steps.

Raytheon Missile Systems was awarded a $46.7 million contract in September for technology maturation and risk reduction on the Navy’s advanced jammer version, called MALD-N.

“We expect to be on contract in 2019 for engineering and manufacturing development,” says Jim Long, senior manager for MALD business development.

The Navy said in April it is aiming for early operational capability of the MALD-N on the Boeing F/A-18E/F in 2021, and initial operational capability in 2022. The turbojet-powered, jammer-equipped decoy is able to fly for 90 min. or 500 mi. after launch to draw fire away from the fighter and suppress air defenses.

MALD-N is expected to have some or all of the advanced capabilities demonstrated in two flights of the MALD-X conducted in August by the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO). The flights tested an improved, modular electronic-warfare payload, data link and low-altitude flight capability.

“MALD-N will be based on MALD-X,” Long says. “The Navy has not yet determined everything they want to put into it, but everything in MALD-X could potentially be in MALD-N. We don’t know yet exactly what they are thinking, and there could be different versions of MALD-N.”

The Air Force has been procuring MALDs for 10 years, in July taking delivery of its 2,000th decoy and awarding a $96.1 million contract for 250 ADM-160C1s in the 11th production lot. The service took part in the MALD-X demo “and is looking at where to go from here,” Long says. “We hope to hear soon.”

There is “a lot of international interest” among U.S. allies in the Air Force version of MALD, and the Navy is already looking ahead to the export potential of MALD-N, he says. “It has gone beyond marketing to government-to-government discussions, as any export sales are going to be Foreign Military Sales.”

Navy procurement and export sales could help boost production of the MALD, which has been running at “barely above the minimum sustainable rate,” Long says. Cost has come down over each of the last six lots, “but we will not get significant cost reductions unless the rate goes up by 50-100%,” he says.

Raytheon, meanwhile, regards the MALD as a “truck,” now with a modular front end that can enable the 9-ft.-long, 300-lb. air vehicle to carry “any type of payload,” he says. Customers are not asking for other payloads yet, but “that modularity will be built into the MALD-N.”