L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) has secured a $496M engineering and manufacturing development contract to build aircraft-based external jamming system pods for the U.S. Navy.
Naval Air Systems Command said Friday the company will provide eight operational prototypes and four test pods of the branch's Next Generation Jammer Low Band system.
NAVAIR received two offers for the NGJ-LB acquisition program's EMD phase and obligated $20.4M at the time of award, the Department of Defense said in a separate announcement.
The contract also covers the delivery of 10 pod simulators, a pair of technique development systems, two mission system prototypes and two captive mass models.
The Navy will use the test articles to evaluate NGJ-LB's performance and integration with the EA-18G Growler aircraft.
Earlier this month, James Geurts — assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition — signed a memorandum that recognizes the program's milestones and gives the green light for further development.
“The efforts by all those involved enabled the Navy to move forward in a rapid manner to bring this new critical capability to bear for our warfighters, saving years in operational development,” Geurts, a 2020 Wash100 awardee, said.
NGJ-LB is designed to jam modern air and ground-based threats via software-based arrays and replace the current ALQ-99 Tactical Jamming System.
