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In this episode of From the Crow’s Nest, host Ken Miller dives into the world of cutting-edge electronic warfare (EW) with Captain David Rueter, Program Manager for Airborne Electronic Attack Systems at the U.S. Navy’s PMA-234. From game-changing advancements to the challenges that keep him awake at night, Capt. Rueter offers an insider’s look into the Navy’s most critical EW initiatives.
Capt. Rueter walks Ken through key programs shaping the future of airborne electronic attack, including the Next Generation Jammer (NGJ) mid- and low-band systems, the ALQ-99 Tactical Jamming System, and the Intrepid Tiger ALQ-231. While the Navy has been at the forefront of countering emerging threats, Capt. Rueter reveals a lingering concern: the readiness of the legacy ALQ-99 system, which dates back to the 1970s and remains a critical yet challenging component of the Navy's EW arsenal.
Despite these hurdles, Capt. Rueter highlights significant progress, noting the rollout of the NGJ mid-band system in 2023 and L3Harris’s recent contract to advance the NGJ low-band system. As threats evolve, he emphasizes how vital these advancements are for maintaining the Navy’s edge in the electromagnetic battlespace.
Tune in for an enlightening discussion that pulls back the curtain on the Navy’s relentless push to stay ahead in the ever-shifting realm of EW.
To learn more about today’s topics or to stay updated on EMSO and EW developments, visit our homepage.
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What is From the Crows' Nest?
Featuring interviews, analysis, and discussions covering leading issues of the day related to electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO). Topics include current events and news worldwide, US Congress and the annual defense budget, and military news from the US and allied countries. We also bring you closer to Association of Old Crow events and provide a forum to dive deeper into policy issues impacting our community.
Foreign
welcome to from the Crow's Nest, a podcast on Electromagnetic Spectrum
Operations, or mso. I'm your host, Ken Miller, Director of
Advocacy and Outreach for the association of Old Crows. You can follow me
on LinkedIn or you can email me directly at hostromthecrowsdust.org
thanks for listening. Well, welcome to
2025 and thank you for tuning in to our first podcast
episode of the New Year. We really appreciate all of our listeners and
subscribers and we look forward to continuing to expand our offerings throughout the
year. For our first episode back for the year, I welcome
Captain David Reuter, call sign Roto. He is the
Program Manager, Airborne Electronic Attack Systems for the US Navy
PMA234. I have him on the show to discuss
Navy Electronic Attack priorities, especially the status
of the next generation Jammer or NGJ. Now, I sat down with
Captain Reader last month before AOC 2024.
Since that time, actually on Monday of this week, the US Navy
declared initial operational capability for the Next Generation
Jammer Mid Band system. Our conversation mentioned
NGJ approaching this milestone, but no decision had been made at the
time of the recording. According to a press release from the
Navy and a statement from Rear Admiral John Lemmon,
Program Executive Officer for Tactical Aircraft
Programs, Rear Admiral Lemon said, quote, Next Generation
Jammer Mid Band improves our fleet's war fighting advantage and the
electromagnetic spectrum. The system provides enhanced capabilities
to deny, distract and disorient adversaries radars
protecting our naval aviators and allowing them to carry out their missions and
contested airspace. These are all true and good words and speak to why
we need the NGJ in the field today, according
to Captain Reader. In the same press release he said, quote, the
achievement of the NGJ Midband IOC is a positive
reflection on the hard work and innovation and resilience
from a dedicated team of government and industry professionals who have
developed and fielded this critical capability to the warfighter. End
quote. This is a very important and quite frankly, long overdue
milestone. Not to take anything away from the achievement,
but the development of the NGJ Mid Band has been a priority topic
of discussion in our community for almost two decades. In my
opinion, it's a case study in the challenges of keeping up
with a constantly changing threat environment, but also the inadequacy
and ineffective legacy nature of our acquisition system.
Quite frankly, we've needed NGJ IOC for years.
So while the milestone should be applauded and it's now more important than
ever to push harder on this program to stay on track.
So please keep this milestone in mind as we Listen to my conversation with
Captain David Reader. There'll be a link to the press release in
the show notes. All right. I am here with Captain
David Reader, call sign Roto, once again to talk
a little bit about what's going on in his portfolio at
PMA234, Navy airborne electronic attack.
Captain Reader, always good to have you here on the show. Thanks for joining me.
Hey, thanks for having me, Ken. It's always great to be in the crow's nest.
We have you on usually about once a year to kind of give an update
on all the programs in your portfolio. Of course,
the one that probably everyone's familiar with is Next Gen Jammer,
but there's a lot of other things going on. So just to kind of get
us started, could you give us a little insight on the depth and breadth of
your portfolio there, PMA234? Yeah, absolutely.
So you mentioned it. Our two large ACAT1
programs are next gen jammer mid band, the
ALQ249 and the next Gen Jammer Low band ALQ number
to be determined. So like a lot of things, large acquisition
program going through the development process or the
production fielding process, which I'm sure we'll get into those two.
But honestly, one of the things that probably takes most of my time
is the granddaddy of them all, the ALQ 99, the
tactical jamming system that's been supporting the Joint Force going all the way back
to 1971. So as you can imagine, just the
day to day challenge of keeping those systems up and
operational and relevant in today's fight.
So I kind of talk out of both sides of my mouth because I say,
yeah, it's been around since 1971. But trust me, the ALQ 99 today
is not the same thing that fielded in 1971. We're continually
doing upgrades, whether it be for maintainability, reliability,
liability or capability. And then the
last kind of product program office we have is an OR
product. We have is Intrepid Tiger ALQ231, which
actually is a family of systems. So it supports the
Marine Corps. It is providing electronic warfare for the magtaf, the Marine
Air Ground Task Force. It is proven to be
incredibly versatile because it's a, it's a government
owned, government designed system, hardware and software.
And every time the Marine Corps wants a different platform
to have some EW capability, we just kind of repackage it and
give them the next version number. I want to talk a little bit first about.
We'll get to all those in More detail, but we'll start
with the last one with the Intrepid Tiger, because I find it very
interesting the way that the Marine Corps
is approaching ew, having this family of
systems, very adaptable, very relatively efficient
in terms of being able to upgrade it, get it out to the field.
Intrepid Tiger has been around for what, 15
years about. Yeah, so talk to a little bit
about what it brings to the fight for the Marine Corps
and how this has been envisioned to work so
effectively in terms of being able to just have this family system so that they
can adapt into various new platforms no matter what changes they're
making as a fighting force over the years. I believe it actually started
out of Juan's, out of the global war on terror. So
V1 kind of in that Iraq,
Afghanistan, protect troops on the ground, counter
IED mission. And so V1 is actually
a externally mounted pod. So we took a, a shape
that was a pod that did something else, gutted
the inside and put in components to provide the effect
the Marine Corps required. At that time. Pods carried on
harriers. That pod, V1, was cleared on Harriers and
Legacy F18s, F18A 3Ds, and I
believe also C130s. Now those platforms have
all moved on. And so we actually only have a handful of
V1 still in inventory which will support the Harrier fleet until
they, the Marine Corps chooses to stop flying Harriers. But
then where it kind of evolved, like you were saying, is as
the Marine Corps mission changed and they said, hey, we, we now are looking at
doing, going against different target sets and
one of our big areas of vulnerability is the
helicopter assault force. They said, hey, could we have a pod that
goes on a, uh, one Huey? And so the V3
is actually, again, it's a different physical shape pod, but it's a, a
pod that was already cleared on a Huey, repackaged, put
in some of the same components, running the same software, and
it's in a Huey. The Next one was V4, which
was V22. So again, the Marine Corps said, okay, now we have a
V22, not really an opportunity for pods. That was our first
internally mounted system. So V4 is in test right now.
Actually, it's been in test for a couple years. It's probably on the cusp of
fielding. And then the one that we're currently just completed the critical
design review for is a V5, which is a
KC130J instantiation. So you know,
as, as the Marine Corps mission evolved and they look at where they're flying
and what the systems they want to counter, we're able to use kind of
the same building blocks and a lot of the same software. But
a V4 system in a V22 and a V5 system in a
KC130 is very different physically than that
pod that goes in, in an H1. So I
think that's kind of the biggest benefit is, you know, we have an
incredibly talented government team out at Point Mugu that manages
it. As the Marine Corps mission has evolved and the Marine Corps has come
to us and said, now we want this platform to counter these threats,
we've been able to kind of just repurpose a lot of the parts on the
shelf to provide them what they need. I always find your
office very kind of interesting in that regard because
you're responsible for some of the most cutting edge technology that's coming out of there
for the Navy EW in the sense of what the Navy's trying to do from
the airborne electronic attack side only. I know you don't deal with all of Navy
EW, but whether you look through the intrepid
Tiger ALQ99 or next gen
Jammer, which we'll get to, you have this amazing cutting edge
technology trying to get through the process. You're equipping it on
a host of fourth generation. Some look probably
fifth generation too at some point, probably looking to move that in
there. So you're covering a lot of legacy, a lot of
new cutting edge. You're being challenged with having to get things
done quickly. But then you also have these major ACAT1 programs are taking
years to get through. And so it kind of also represents not what's wrong
with the system, but the challenges of the system to be able to get these
things through and out to the warfighter. How do you,
from just a program manager side keep. I mean, we always
talk about like spinning plates. You have to keep spinning plates. But you're. These are.
It's like one's like a spinning plate and another's some other object. You
know, like these are completely, in many ways completely different balls you're
trying to juggle in the air. Because they are. The requirements are different,
the timelines are different, the services. I mean, Marine Corps being under the
Navy, but you're equipping different fighting forces. How do you make
sense of what is in PMA234, like in terms of
what you need to prioritize? Wow, that's a really good
question. It was, it was a long question. Yeah, yeah, it's a long
question. You know what we want to prioritize.
It's not that hard to prioritize because I have different
teams working each of these efforts. But the
general view you were just painting that that's something
that I have been pushing as
PMA234s. You know, what's our vision, what's our
command intent? Like, what is PMA234 in 30 years going to look
like? Right. Because I this is a four year job. I
just passed year three, so I got about one year left and I kind of
started doing some of that soul searching of hey, what is, what is 234
going to do? And I kind of had the realization that if we just
build jamming pods that go on an E18G
growler, we're going to go away when the growler goes away.
And I think that our office offers
experts in offensive electronic attack. And so the
value proposition I'm trying to give to the Navy, Marine
Corps, you know, Air Force, whoever wants it, is we
develop offensive electronic attack skills.
And if you, you would like us to
develop the hardware and the operating system that also delivers those
capabilities, we can do that. That's a next gen jammer,
right. If you are perhaps a platform and
you've already got your own apertures and
systems and all you're looking for is the something that I used to
refer to, or probably still do as a jammer technique. But hey,
if you just want me to give you that technique that we've developed, that
counters system xyz, as long as
your hardware and software support it, I'm happy to be that app
store where I give you that. Right. So trying to get us into.
We are the airborne electronic attack
providers. I'm happy to build the hardware and software
systems, but if, you know, the Navy decides that another program
officer is going to do the hardware and software, at least let me provide you
those non kinetic bullets to use.
Yeah. So what keeps you up at night as it pertains to
your responsibility to like with Navy AEA being effective against
evolving threats, I mean you're constantly being
in briefings that show you here's what we're, here's what we're facing the next five,
10 years. How. What keeps you up at night when thinking about
that? I guess happily I don't
lose a lot of sleep worrying about that because I think
we've demonstrated that we have developed systems
that are agile enough and open enough. And not that the systems,
but we have the people, we have the enterprise of humans that knows
how to counter that threat. The first time we
see it, you know, we see it and we can, in what I would consider
a very short amount of time, develop some sort of counter and get that to
the fleet. So that actually doesn't worry me
too much because again, we've built. I didn't mention it in the opening, but you
know, I know you're familiar with our JATO organization or Jammer Technique Optimization
Organization, which, you know, just incredibly talented
people. We've continued to evolve
our lab infrastructure. And so, you know, we've got a
very robust test capability and we've proven time and time again
that we're able to develop counters when the
adversary changes fairly rapidly. I tell you
what, what does keep me up at night is readiness.
ALQ 99 readiness levels are not where they need
to be. I'm sure we'll get more into next gen Jammer mid band, but you
know, our initial reliability that we've seen in the fleet is,
is not where it needs to be. And so we're spending a lot of, a
lot of time right now working with the OEM Raytheon on how do
we, how do we make this system better? Because I'll tell you, what we've seen
in test is when it works, it is
eye watering. I mean, the capability is there, the design is
solid. It's just we need it to work. More
often before we get to next gen Jammer
though. You mentioned the ALQ99, when it
works is amazing, but you're trying to keep that readiness level up.
The ALQ99 though was never built for a 50
year lifespan. So at what point is
it just, it takes too long or at what point, I
mean, do we have to say that, okay, the ALQ 99 has literally
reached the end of its service life and we have to get
into that next generation across the fleet. I think that time
is now. The capability and the capacity that
NGJ mid band and low band are going to bring are going to
far exceed whatever ALQ99 can do. We're
literally squeezing the last little bit of
capability out of the ALQ99. And so that's
just these little, little things we can do to get another
DB of power out or one, you know, a little bit more
capability out. But then the bulk of it is just readiness.
You know, there are companies that aren't in business
anymore, and I don't know if the listeners will
find this one interesting, but there is a critical part in Al
Q99 and we're working with a company, it's
like a three person company because they happen to buy the tech data
package from the previous company when they were in bankruptcy.
Right. And so now you're, I've almost got a group of detectives
that are trying to find out, hey, where did that company's IP go? And how
can I figure out how to remake this one component? Because there just aren't people
that are making these kinds of components anymore. Well, I know that when
I, you know, 25 years ago when they were doing the analysis of
alternatives and the Growler, each of the services were
looking at their kind of replacement to the Prowler. The Navy was
pretty clear from the beginning, hey, the F18 variant would work great with our
fleet. A commonality there. But even then, I can't
remember who said it, but they're like, but the dirty little secret about the Growler
is that it's still going to have the ALQ99 on just
long enough until we can get the next gen Jammer. And that
was 25 years ago. So I want to talk a little bit about
the status of that program because it's achieved some fantastic
milestones with capability. It's also, I'm sure, as
you mentioned, you're through three out of four years. It's, it's consumed pretty
much your entire job over these three years. It can probably
be a frustrating program as well because it's something that needs our
warfighters need. So talk a little bit about where we're at. I know we have
the mid band out, but like, how, where are we at with the mid band,
low band and of course, you know, looking into the future for the high
band. Yeah. So I'll start with mid band.
AOQ249, we are
say wrapping up, we've been wrapping up the test program for a couple years
now, but we have one last weapon
separation test that's actually scheduled for this Saturday.
So thanks to VX23 for working the weekend for us. And
then we believe we've conducted our last OT event.
The operational testers are getting the data from the range this week and
they're looking at it and making sure they captured all the data they want. So
test is almost complete for mid band now. And this will be the
last test for mid band, or is this, this. Will
be the last test of IoT and E,
initial operational test and evaluation. And that's, you
know, something that I continually remind the Navy
and OSD about is like anything, just like
ALQ99, this system is going to evolve over, over
time. And I remind my team and Raytheon,
you've got to think like the NGJ mid band is going to be flying for
50 years because its predecessor did. So don't, don't
look short. It's going to have those legs. So
of course we're going to do upgrades, we're going to have
follow on test as we do each of those upgrades.
Software. So you know, we love to talk about software. One
of the challenges I put to the team about two years ago is I
want to have a new software build for the POD on a quarterly
basis. I don't see any reason why that POD
can't be just like our cell phone. I
recently became an iPhone person. And you know, the fact is I get.
Thank you, thank you. I get a new iOS every
year and then I get 1.2.3,
usually four or five times a year. Why can't our weapon systems
do that? Yes, some of those are just going to be
maintenance. You know, what we call a maintenance release. It's just going to fix things.
It's not going to provide additional capability. And that's kind of the negotiation
I'm having with test and specifically operational test right now is if
I'm just fixing a couple bugs, what level of testing do
you need to do? If I'm actually providing capability, what level of
testing do you need to do? So we're a long way off. We
actually just delivered another software build,
NGJ midband software build to the fleet this week. And
so we're challenging the system because I will
tell you in the Navy, anytime we do any changes to our
configurations, hardware, software, it still goes out via naval
message, it still goes through a very long chop chain. And when
you're trying to put out software every three months, having a
60 day chop timeline for enable message just
isn't compatible. So that's kind of where mid band is from a, from a development
standpoint. One other thing I'll mention, you might have seen that we recently
awarded a contract to Raytheon for a the first
engineering change proposal to ALQ249, which we're
calling Mid Band Extended MBX. So that is really
getting after something that the adversary has
done in the time that it's taken us to develop mid band. So you, you
know, mid band, it took a long time. It's a really
good system, but it took a long time. In that time we've watched the
adversary change. And so now we acknowledge, hey, there are some
hardware which will also drive software changes. That we need to make to
the system to keep pace with the adversary. That's what's going on with mid
band development. When is the mid band
going to be operational on the
fleet? On. On the Growler out there in the field?
When's that transition going to start? Last year. So
I mean it's been a year. So. So yeah, walk, walk me through this past
year then, specifically because it's confusing to hear like, oh, we're in test
over here, but it's in the fleet over here. These are the numbers, this is
the, the path we're going to follow in the block releases and so forth.
Yep. So the thing that resulted in it was
a very complex aeromechanical
flight test program. So you're talking about a system
two fairly large pods under each wing of a fighter
that has a full envelope, airspeed, altitude,
G, the doors open and close. So we had a
lot of aeromechanical flight testing to do. Loads, noise and
vibe flying qualities, all that. The production line
started up and the thing about production lines is once they get going, they don't
like to stop. So we're producing pods.
We're confident in the design. We just haven't done the testing yet.
So production is going. We were able to, after we
outfitted all the test squadrons, we were able to
give a ship set to havoc, which is our weapon
school at Nautic Naval Air Warfare Development center, the Growler version
of Top Gun, if you will. So we were able to give them a ship
set very early. And so they were actually able to go develop TTPS
tactics, techniques and procedures, which was a huge win. So
that's kind of a lesson learned from previous programs on naval
aviation. We tend to give it to the tacticians last.
And so when we give it to the fleet before the tacticians, the fleet doesn't
know what to do with it because the tacticians haven't figured out the tactics. So
I think we got that one right. And then we gave them to VAQ
133, which was our first squadron, and
they also supplemented VX9. So they were adjunct testers to
VX9, kind of providing additional capacity to the operational test
effort. So it was kind of a win win. You know, VX9 got a little
additional capacity. 133 got early learning and they were
actually able to take those systems all the way through their
workup cycle prior to deployment. So they got the
systems in September of 23, which was the beginning.
Through all their training events, they
utilized the system and then they left on deployment in July.
So they are deployed on Lincoln right now.
And I'll look at Lisa, we'll see if she can say I say this
not, but VAQ133 supported the B2
strikes against toothy targets in Yemen on
16 October. So we've actually had our first use of
NGJ mid ban in combat already. Does the Navy have
plans to kind of expand the use of next gen Jammer
in or its operations? Is it just going to go on the Growler?
Are you looking at other platforms that might be able to carry a variant?
And how about the other services? Because we've been in a number of
different conversations where all the services, army and Air Force
included, they are looking at how to
recapitalize some of the legacy systems that they have. Realizing
that you know what, we're not going to be able to get rid of the
4th gen and 3rd gen as quickly as we thought. We need to kind
of get those ready for today's threat. So is
there conversation about how to expand that with the other services or within the
Navy? Within the Navy. I'm not aware of any
conversations. Navy intends to fly Growlers
until at least 2045 and
it'll be carrying NGJS as it does it. As for other
services, we have gotten some inquiries
about, you know, hey, is it possible to hang it on this platform? I won't,
I won't say platforms but you know, is it possible to go on this as
a. Possible to go on that. So you know, we've provided some, you know,
initial engineering assessments back of, hey, you know, yes, it's possible. This
is what it would look like and I'll also say we have gotten some, some
similar queries from a couple foreign countries. So there,
there are other people that are starting to think about
hanging ALQ249 on other platforms, but
it's really nothing, nothing more than the exploratory stage right now.
So then moving on to the low band, you said that that was. You
had some contract with L3Harris going
on. Talk a little bit about where that stands and how that relates to the
mid band. Obviously different bands, but different also different
timelines. Yeah. What are we talking about for the
low band in terms of when that can be operationally ready? Great
question. So low band. I probably talked about it
previously and I think probably most people that follow airborne electronic
attack are familiar. We were in a protracted source
selection. There was some sustained protests which caused the
Navy to go back and kind of redo some things the good news is
we finally concluded all of that and we awarded a contract in
the end of August, I think it was August 26th to
L3Harris, L3Harris Comm Systems west out of Salt Lake
City. So we are now on contract with them for NGJ
low band. And I, I can tell you that
I've had a team of people that have been working this for the last four
years and they finally able to start running and they are just
bursting at the seams in some ways. I'm kind of pulling them back like, hey,
give, give L3 a second to catch their breath because they're not
ready to sprint like you're ready to sprint. So that's kind of the phase we're
in now. We're, we're only a couple months into it, so we're still, you know,
scoping out the program honestly doing a lot of assessments
of, hey, that RFP was written a while ago.
So is it still what we need to do? For the most part, yeah. Everything,
everything we're saying is yep, that's still the capability we need. To your
question about mid band and. Low band, will the low
band be the same hardware? It's just a software that's going to be different.
I mean you're not going to reinvent the wheel with the low band or is
it going to be a new a pod that you have to swap
out? Yeah, in terms of the, the physical pod
and the, and the software, it is going to be a whole new pod. So
none of the. Well I, I shouldn't say none. We'll
see. But as of now, there, there is no planned
reuse between mid band and low band equipment.
Now I'll caveat that and say the big change that we've taken
with mid band, we hadn't built a tactical jamming system
in decades. And so mid
band, they
PMA234, well before my time, allowed
the prime contractor Raytheon to design the
system that does what our requirements are. Once the
pod was designed, we then defined what those interfaces
were to the platform. So it was almost like the pod came first and then
we figured out what we needed to change on the platform. With low band, we
flipped that. And since mid band is already integrated into
the growler, it's allowed us to now
dictate to the pod vendor, hey, this is how you
need to interact with the platform. These are the message standards you need to support.
This is how you will receive information from
the aircraft. And our belief is that that's
going to allow us to go a lot faster. The, you know, the things that
we maybe needed to spend time defining on mid band because they weren't
defined, we're now just going to make low band talk to the platform
the same way that a mid band chipset does. Is the
urgency to get the low
band out sooner, is that
being driven much more
heavily from evolving threat? I mean, evolving
threats today? Where. Because I think the decision was
to start with the mid band because that seemed to be where the
need was. But now you hear a lot of conversation about
having to get lower into lower bands against emerging
threats. So has the threat of low
band, has that increased exponentially
driving development of low band variant?
I wouldn't say exponentially, but it has definitely.
The threats evolution has increased. The necessity for
low band, I think mid band was, was chosen first for a couple of
reasons. Another one of them was almost technology
maturation or maturity. The technology for
what we were asking the system to do was a little more mature in the
middle frequency ranges. And I think what we're seeing now is
where computing power is, where RF
technology is. We're able to do things in low band that we
probably couldn't have done in 2015 when we, when we started mid
band. So, so what is your timeline then for the low band then? Is
it? Man, that's a couple years. I mean,
it's going to be a couple years. However, I
think we all know the timelines that our senior
leaders are putting out. I mean the CNO just came out and said,
your job, Navy is to be ready by January 1st of 2027.
So where I have challenged the team, both my team
and L3Harris is, look, I, I'm not going to
say you need to take a five year development program and do it in three
years. I, I don't, I don't think that's possible.
What I have asked them to do is look at the technologies that are
mature and what can we give as an interim capability? We will
get to fully NGJ low band capability at
some point. But if we need this
system, what can it provide more than
ALQ 99 in three years? And so
that's kind of the challenge that I've thrown down. And that's honestly what the
teams are literally working on today is,
okay, if this box is mature, I'm just going to
be hypothetical here. If, if you know, the exciter is
mature but the structure is not, what can I do with that?
If the power amp is mature but the antenna is not, what can I do
with that? And that's what I've told
OPNAV that I owe to them early in the year is,
here's what I can do, here's the capability I can give you in three
years. Is that what you want me to go off and do? So
then where does that leave the high band, which is a third piece? Has
that even been approached yet or started yet? Or is
that going to be something that materializes in the near
future? It. I, I would say it might be something that
materializes in the future. I don't know if I'd go so far to say near
future, but. Okay, you know, we. Ngj
Next Generation Jammer, it started as one program. And
so our capability development document, cdd,
it captures everything low, mid and high. And then
in the 2012 timeframe, the decision was made to split it into three
separate ACAP programs instead of like one gigantic program.
So I have defined requirements for high band.
However, I think OPNAV and Australia.
I haven't mentioned Australia yet, but remember that Australia is our cooperative partner on
all things ngj. So the two nations
requirements officers are talking and going, what are the threats today
that are up in high band? What, what do I need to go after? What
effect do I need to have up in high band? I mentioned mid
band extended earlier. Mid band extended will provide some
relief. So that'll kind of, you know, factor into the calculus
of, okay, given when MBX is fielding,
what is the, the driving need for high band or
when is there that driving need? So maybe a long way of
saying we've got requirements. We are still
trying, you know, working with our resource sponsors and the requirements officers to figure
out when is the right time to actually put money into that and to
go after it. And I think, I think you started off with it. The adversary
gets a vote. So, you know, they could field something tomorrow and high
band could go from the back burner to the front burner really quick. Moving
forward with your job, a lot of different irons in the
fire trying to keep different programs moving along. What do you need
most from industry as a program manager
in terms of working with them for where technology
is going? How can industry best
support your efforts as the program manager? Two things
always come to mind when I'm asked this question. So
one, on the hardware side, it's
how do I generate more power? You know,
more RF power using less electrical power
and generating less heat. Right. Which, which is really hard physics problem.
But as we're trying to package things to be smaller, I mean,
we talked about next Generator NGJ midband. It's
phenomenal. Each pod has a gigantic
titanium disc that generates 82 kilowatts. So it's
phenomenal, but it's. I can say 82
kilowatts. It's phenomenal, but it. It comes at a cost,
right, in terms of size, weight, power. So that's one piece of it. The
other one is industry work with us
on open architectures. So, you know, Open
architectures is, you know, the. The big
buzzword now, one of the efforts that we're working on, it's
separate from the product lines I mentioned earlier, but we are working with
the other services to really define. Define. What is that EW
open architecture. You've probably heard of Big Iron. I'm sure other people have talked about
Big Iron. So that's what we're working on is, okay, great, we got
the name, but no kidding, what are the details? And so how would you implement
it? What are the standards that need to be for
FPGA fabric layers to. No kidding, have a
open standard for jammer techniques?
Well, Captain Meter, thank you so much for taking time joining
me. That is all the time that we have for today. And I know that
you have an extraordinarily busy schedule. It's always hard to get a hold of you,
but it's always a pleasure to sit down and chat with you, get an update.
Looking forward to our next visit down to Pax River. We still
would like to do something where we get all the program managers down there that
you work right next door to in a room and really kind of
help sync what we as an association need to do to
help, to help all you out, but just to kind of get a good idea
of where Navy EW is going, y'all are down at Pax River.
You do a great job. It's always a pleasure to visit. So thanks for taking
time to join me here on from the Crow's Nest. Hey, no. Again, thanks for
having me, Ken. It's always a pleasure. All right, thank you.
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Sapika.