Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) recently awarded Raytheon [RTN] a $47 million technical maturation and risk reduction contract for the Miniature Air Launched Decoy (MALD)-Navy variant.
MALD is an expendable vehicle meant to be launched from a fighter jet before battle, allowing the military to gather information on an adversary once they attack the disposable decoy. It has a range of about 500 nautical miles and aims to duplicate friendly aircraft flight profiles and radar signatures to confuse enemy air defenses as well as jamming technology to suppress defenses.
The work will mostly occur in Tuscon, Ariz., and is expected to be finished by November 2020.
The contract was not competitively procured and NAVAIR obligated $10.4 million in FY ’18 Navy research, development, test and evaluation funds at award time.
Last month the Defense Department conducted a set of free flight demonstrations of the MALD-X testing advanced electronic warfare techniques (Defense Daily, Aug. 23).
MALD-X is a cross-service technical collaboration variant that replaces the normal MALD payload with a Navy-developed module that has an Air Force Jammer. MALD-X also generally features modularity that lets the Navy add adaptive payloads.
Last year Raytheon and the Air Force validated the performance of a MALD-J jammer variant with an upgraded navigation system (Defense Daily, March 2, 2017).
MALD-N is scheduled for early operational capability on the F/A-18 in 2021 and has initial operational capability planned for 2022.