Northrop Grumman EW System Could Be Installed On About 450 F-16s If Successful
Jan. 12, 2021 | By John A. Tirpak
The Air Force has chosen Northrop Grumman over L3 Harris to develop a Next Generation Electronic Warfare suite for the F-16 which, if development succeeds, could equip as many as 450 Vipers under a program potentially worth $2.5 billion, Northrop and service officials said Jan. 11.
The development contract, worth about $250 million, was actually awarded in November 2020, but the announcement was held until the start of calendar 2021. Because development is not yet complete, there’s been no decision made about whether it will be fielded, and for the same reason, the NGEW has not yet been assigned a nomenclature.
The system will defend F-16s from “radio frequency-guided weaponsâ€â€”radar-guided missiles—by detecting, identifying, and defeating RF threats in an “increasingly contested environment,†the company said in a press release. It will offer advanced countermeasures and “also has proven pulse-to-pulse operability with the F-16’s newly-acquired AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar,†or SABR, also built by Northrop, the company said.
https://www.airforcemag.com/northrop-grumman-ew-system-could-be-installed-on-about-450-f-16s-if-successful/
