ALQ-214
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A joint United States Navy and United States Air Force program is building an Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM) system, initially for the F-18 Super Hornet and the B-1 Lancer aircraft; the Radio Frequency Countermeasures RFCM subsystem of the IDECM is the AN-|AN/ALQ-214 (V). The other part of the IDECM is the AN-|AN/ALE-55 towed fiber optic decoy. IDECM, according to BaE Systems, breaks a traditional electronic warfare paradigm, which had split the mission into onboard coherent jammers and end-game-only towed repeaters. This paradigm was judged inadequate to threats including both home-on-jam and man-in-the-loop threat guidance. In the new model, in which the RFCM and decoy are under common control, the defense model has three parts:[1]
ArchitectureIn the ALQ-214 (V) designation, the (V) indicates the system is modular. It consists of a mounting rack, three preamplifiers, and up to five "Weapons Replaceable Assemblies (WRA)" (i.e., Line Replaceable Units):[2]
WRA-1 through 3 are the "Techniques Generator" core. For the Super Hornet, WRA-4 and -5 are optional; remember that Super Hornets may be teamed with an EF-18 Growler for active jamming. B-1's, however, would often need self-contained jamming as well as the towed decoy. References
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