The Air Force said Aug. 22 it awarded Raytheon [RTN] a $81.8 million firm-fixed price contract for Miniature Air Launched Decoy radar jammer variant (MALD-J).
Raytheon spokesman John Patterson said the contract award is for Lot 5 production, which is scheduled to be completed by Aug. 31, 2014.
Raytheon MALD Program Manager Jeff White told Defense Daily Tuesday that the company will deliver its first MALD-Js to the Air Force Sept. 6 in a ceremony at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Ariz. White said this delivery is for Lot 4, for which the Air Force, last November, exercised an option to convert into MALD-Js.
White said Raytheon completed developmental testing and has entered operational testing on the MALD-J. White also said the Air Force declared initial operational capability for production Lots 1-3 of the regular MALD. White said that means there are enough MALDs in inventory, enough maintainers to fix them and enough pilots to shoot them for the service to declare IOC.
Patterson said MALDs are currently being launched from F-16 fighter jets and B-52 bombers. Raytheon announced in early July it was working with the Navy to integrate a Navy version of the MALD-J, called MALD-N, into the service’s fleet of F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets. Patterson said the goal is to have MALD-N on a Super Hornets by 2017 or 2018. Lockheed Martin [LMT] develops the F-16 while Boeing [BA] makes the B-52 and Super Hornet.
Raytheon is also working on enabling MALDs to be used on cargo aircraft. Called the MALD Cargo Aircraft Launch System (MCALS), it is a cage-like contraption that can be placed on a pallet in the back of a cargo aircraft and shoot MALDs out the rear, White said. He added that a C-130 could potentially carry 24 MALDs and a C-17 as many as 144 to 192 MALDs.
White said this would be advantageous to the Air Force because it will allow cargo jets to saturate air defense targets and free up fighter jets to destroy enemy surface-to-air missile sites and early warning radar sites.
“(If your fighter airplanes) are carrying MALDs, they can’t be carrying bombs,” White said. “If you need to get a lot of MALDs and MALD-Js on target to saturate an enemy air defense system, you can start ejecting them out by the 10s and 20s and have them start penetrating the enemy air defense system.”
Patterson MCALS is a new concept and has been demonstrated successfully from a C-130 ramp. Patterson said the concept was developed by Raytheon with guidance provided by the Air Force and the company is awaiting future service requirements before moving further with MCALS.
MALD is a flight vehicle that confuses enemy air defenses by duplicating friendly aircraft flight profiles and radar signatures, according to a Raytheon statement. MALD-J keeps all MALD capabilities and adds radar jamming capabilities. MALD weighs fewer than 300 pounds and has a range of approximately 500 nautical miles.
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