The Air Force awarded Raytheon an $81.7 million contract for Lot 6 production of 202 Miniature Air Launched Decoy Jammers and their containers, announced the company on Monday. “This weapon will provide unprecedented capability and flexibility to the US Air Force and improve the survivability of our airmen and their aircraft,” said Harry Schulte, Raytheon’s vice president of air warfare systems, in the company’s April 22 release. MALD-J adds a radar-jamming capability to the basic MALD design, which is designed to confuse enemy air defenses by duplicating the flight profiles and signatures of friendly aircraft. Raytheon began delivery of MALD-Js last fall, states the release. (See also Miniature Advances and MALD Jammer Moves into Operational Flight Testing.)
Unmanned aerial vehicles and autonomous aircraft may provide a solution to operating in heavily contested domains such as the Taiwan Straits, according to a panel of expert who suggested operationalizing artificial intelligence for such purposes sooner rather than later. The group gathered virtually to help launch the Mitchell Institute for…