Raytheon has delivered about 40 Miniature Air Launched Decoy Jammers to the Air Force since the beginning of September, Joe Staton, the company’s MALD growth manager, told the Daily Report. The MALD-J is the second variant of MALD, following the baseline decoy. MALD-J adds a radar-jamming capability to the baseline decoy, which is designed to duplicate the combat flight profiles of US and allied aircraft to fool enemy air defenses and help protect aircrews from anti-aircraft missiles. The Air Force intends to buy about 3,000 of the decoys and jammers. So far, Raytheon has been contracted to deliver about 600, said Staton in a Sept. 10 interview. Click here to read the full report.
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…