WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- AFRL engineers successfully demonstrated several support jamming techniques at the Naval Air Weapons Center, California. The lightweight modular support jammer (LMSJ) is a scalable-architecture, digitally controlled support jammer based upon digital common modules and highly integrated transmitters and apertures. The total end-to-end system will incorporate affordable technologies for enhanced detection, location, and identification of hostile, friendly, and advanced-threat radar and communications signals for existing and future aircraft. The LMSJ electronic attack (EA) system embodies countermeasure techniques and waveforms intended to defeat or degrade modern radar and communications threats. These technologies will increase the survivability and lethality of combat aircraft against advanced, integrated radio frequency and communications air defense networks.
AFRL engineers installed a demonstration jammer system equipped with LMSJ capabilities on a Naval Air Systems Command AeroStar unmanned air vehicle. The ground test provided an opportunity both to optimize the jamming waveforms used against the test subject radar and to complete an all-systems check before flight. The two flight tests demonstrated the effectiveness of the selected jamming modulations against each of the radar's modes of operation.
The Advanced Threat Alert and Response (ATAR)/LMSJ program has designed, developed, and demonstrated a modular digital receiver electronic surveillance (ES) system that can concurrently perform all tasks for generating (the receiver portion of) warning, targeting, EA management, and countermeasures techniques. The combined ATAR/LMSJ program utilizes the ATAR software-reconfigurable digital receiver as the EA system front end, while the LMSJ uses the solid-state radio frequency power modules to drive the apertures (consisting of arrayed antenna elements) as the back end. The integration of the dual ATAR and LMSJ efforts will develop a modular, scalable, and affordable end-to-end ES/EA advanced architecture capable of countering the entire integrated air defense threat.