From the Crows' Nest

Ken Miller [00:00:09]:
Welcome to From the Crows' Nest, a podcast on Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations, or EMSO. 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 host@fromthecrowsnest.org. As always, thanks for listening. Well, hello everyone. It's great to be back with you. Just a quick note before we get started. We recorded this episode in earlier June due to summer schedules. However, I just wanted to mention that we are monitoring the escalating conflict in the Middle east between Israel and Iran and we expect to cover this conflict a bit more in the coming weeks in future episodes.

Ken Miller [00:00:47]:
At the time of this recording, however, the US has not yet entered the conflict, but that of course might change. I want to take a moment to send our thoughts and prayers to the many innocent civilians on both sides who are in harm's way. The latest we've heard before recording was about an Iranian missile strike that hit an Israeli hospital. Thankfully no one was killed, but unfortunately this shows that no one is safe in conflict, especially with advanced technology. As you've heard me say before, in today's world, geographic distance means absolutely nothing. Even as far away as the United States, civilians are just as near to the front lines as our warfighters. So that's really why we do this show, to raise awareness. MSO Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations saves lives, both civilian and warfighter.

Ken Miller [00:01:41]:
It's why we can't expect to win and protect civilians and our men and women in uniform unless we have an advantage in this mission. So we will be covering this conflict a lot more in the coming weeks. But today's topic hopefully is part of the answer that we need for MSO moving forward. So today I welcome Chuck Angus. He is the Director of Requirements and Capabilities for Electronic Attack Systems with Raytheon and we are going to be discussing the evolution and the production of the Next Generation Jammer Mid Band. As our listeners may know, I sat down with Captain David Reader, US Navy from Navair. He is the Program Manager for the Next Generation Jammer. It was our first episode in 2025.

Ken Miller [00:02:25]:
It's great episode. If you haven't listened to it, please go back and take a listen. I subsequently met Chuck at AOC Europe back in May and decided that the time was right for an industry perspective on this game changing and long overdue capability. So with that, let's listen in to my conversation with Chuck Genghis. All right, I am pleased to be here with Chuck Angus. He is the Business Development Director for Electronic Attack Systems at Raytheon. Chuck, it's great to have you on from the Crow's Nest. Thanks for taking time to join me and it's good to see you again.

Chuck Angus [00:02:54]:
Thanks, Ken. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. I missed you at AOC Europe, but I'm sure we'll catch up soon.

Ken Miller [00:03:00]:
Absolutely. And AOC Europe was a phenomenal event. It's really a great opportunity to kind of just see the global community. They all come together and I'm glad that you were able to get there. With these shows. The schedules just go insane. And so it's good that we were able to catch up here. So, you know, I wanted to have you on the show to talk a little bit about Next Generation Jammer Mid Band program that is currently in production.

Ken Miller [00:03:24]:
For those who listen to the show regularly, they'll know that I interviewed Captain Reader from PMA234, had him on the show. It's the first episode of 2025 back in January. That episode was released right after some really important developments that applied to Raytheon with production and so forth. So now, six months in the year, I wanted to revisit this important program and get your take on where things are at where things are going and kind of why we need this next Generation Jammer Mid band in capability in the field supporting our military operations. So thanks for taking some time to shed some light on on this program.

Chuck Angus [00:04:01]:
Well, thanks, ken. You know, 2024 was. Was really an exciting year on Next Generation Jammer Mid Band. You know, we've got contract awards for production lots. We've got a contract award to extend the frequency coverage from the US Navy. And probably most importantly, as Captain Reader had mentioned to you, is that they got NGJ deployed, they saw combat operations and they saw IOC in December. And 2025 is starting off in a really, really good place. And you know, we're really excited to partner with the Navy.

Chuck Angus [00:04:39]:
And I think the Navy's been very pleased with the performance they're getting out of this disruptor of an offensive electronic attack system.

Ken Miller [00:04:46]:
Yes, absolutely. And so you mentioned a lot of key developments there, and we're going to get to each one of those. Just to begin, I wanted to kind of paint the picture for our listeners. Many of our listeners aren't experts in ew. They're listening out of interest or they're just not familiar with where the program's come over in recent years. To begin, I wanted to talk a little bit about where we've been on this program. I know from my experience on Capitol Hill, like 20 years ago. I think right before I left, I had a briefing with the some Navy Navy leaders coming right out of what was the airborne electronic attack analysis of alternatives that identified the F18 Growler F18G models to be the replacement for the EA6B.

Ken Miller [00:05:36]:
And at that time there was a widespread recognition that the Jammer that was on that platform, on the EA6B and what would be on the F18G out of the gate was that AL Q99, but it was obsolete and we needed to improve the capability of that jamming pod. So there was talk about 20 years ago about the need for a next generation Jammer. Obviously it took a long time to kind of get that going in the Navy. It's now 20, 25, but we have this capability emerging. So I wanted to get your perspective on kind of where we've been as from the Navy perspective and the industry perspective over these last couple decades in terms of how this program went from paper to product into the field and especially focusing on the need for an upgrade to the ALQ 99.

Chuck Angus [00:06:33]:
Well, Ken, that's great. That's good history there. You know, this program is, as you mentioned, it's been around for a while now. I remember working on it probably almost 15 years ago when we were working through some of the competition. I could tell you that, you know, the Navy's been the leader on offensive electronic attack for many, many years. You know, and at this point, since the, since the Air Force retired EF111, you know, the Navy has been the sole provider of offensive electronic attack essentially you know, since the, since the 90s. And you mentioned the ALQ 99 and of course that is the Vietnam era electronic attack system that was on the Prowler and of course now, you know, on the Growler and ngj. What's interesting about it is it is really a revolutionary change from where the Navy came with ALQ 99.

Chuck Angus [00:07:31]:
You know, you no longer have the mechanically scanned antennas, right. You don't have the missionization that you had with the ALQ99. And you also have the Gan Aesis on NGJ, which really opens the door to a tremendous capability that nobody else worldwide has seen with simultaneous targets with extremely high power with instantaneous switching. So it has really done a lot for the Navy and actually for the joint fight. But I think the issue that everybody is seeing right now is, and you saw this at AOC European, is that everybody sees the need for offensive electronic attack. The Problem is that it does cost a lot of money, does take a lot of time, and the capacity just isn't there in the joint fight. So what we've been offering along the way, Ken, is that how do you take the mature system that NGJ is right now and how do you take it to new platforms, new services, and new international partners? And that's really what we've been working on as we extend this franchise and also extend the capabilities of NDJ midband.

Ken Miller [00:08:52]:
And so with that transition, you know, for the ALQ 99, it's 53 years in service and what's inside it today is actually not 53 years old. I mean, it's been through upgrades, you know, over the, over the years, but it's still obsolete. And in defense acquisitions talk, you know, we can talk about something being obsolete or something being modern or next gen. It's a lot easier to pick those words and choose those words than it is actually execute development of a next generation system identifying what is necessary not just today, but what's going to be necessary for 10 years. Because next gen Jammer is going to be the airborne jamming pod for the Navy and probably other services and other partners and allies for decades. So it's really hard to look into a crystal ball in technology and say, okay, this is what we're going to need 10, 15 years from now. From a business perspective, though, how hard was it to kind of come together, work with the Navy to say, okay, here's what we've got ALQ99, we know it's old, we know it's not suitable for 21st century combat in terms of where technology is going, how do you go about working with the Navy, working with war fighters who are in the field to figure out, okay, here's where we need to go on this system. And what was kind of the.

Ken Miller [00:10:13]:
For Raytheon, for the mid band, what was that moment where it kind of settled like, we have this capability that we need in the field today and we can provide that.

Chuck Angus [00:10:23]:
I mentioned previously that we've been very, very pleased with working with the Navy and they've been great partners. And so all through the process of developing a concept, with developing a design, you know, we work closely with the Navy, not only the program office, but the folks at OP Nav as well as the folks that are, you know, flying, they were flying the Prowlers, you know, at the time. And you know, that that was what's really important is to understand what they see. Right, right. And what they think they need. And so we worked with them very, very closely to put together what we thought was a competitive offering that frankly utilized some of the greatest things that we had inside the company. And one of those is gan, right? Have our own foundry. GAN is a.

Chuck Angus [00:11:12]:
Is a key contributor and key aspect of NDJ all along. So working with the GAN and putting that system around it to support it, it became very apparent, I think, to a lot of people that we kind of cracked the code, and we really cracked the code on how do you get all this stuff in a size that is the right size for the growler, as well as the right weight for the growler and provided the right power, Right? So it's all about that trade and how do you get that in the right spot? And I think that was the key to moving forward is we put it in a package that had the right. The right weight, it had the right power to produce it, and it provided the right effects that the Navy was after. The other thing that's interesting about this, and you'll appreciate this, is that after you get this thing in the hands of the fleet and the young war fighters that are flying it, you learn a lot. And those young guys that are smarter than all of us put together find ways to use it in ways that we probably didn't think of that makes it better. Just by the way they have the ConOps way they have the TTPS, and that's what we see, right? So it's really exciting to see this thing moving forward and getting better every day.

Ken Miller [00:12:37]:
And one of the things we talk about a lot in the AOC is in the development cycle, how do you get the warfighter input earlier into those development schedules. Because there are too many programs out there that wait until the very end, put it in the hands, and you kind of touched on it, the operational relevance that this. You need that war fighter feedback for the operational relevance piece. I think that was one of the things going back to the LQ99 that was always fascinating was it was built with this idea that it was going to. It was going to grow, the mission was going to grow, is going to change. And they had the space, the technology space to kind of changed it in as it moved on, because it was developed for a specific threat in Vietnam, but It was in 72, and there was this idea of like, this is going to change the fight. And therefore, we need to. We can't just develop a piece of equipment that is only relevant to one particular type of target.

Ken Miller [00:13:32]:
So this operational relevance piece is just really critical in, in development. So it's great to hear that. The. Because the warfighters, you're right, they are the smartest and most, I would say smartest and just kind of they understand what they are going to face and how, what they need to be successful and to return home safely. And that's amazing to hear. I'm glad that everything is coming back with a real positive impact for the warfighter you mentioned a couple times. And I want to touch on this a little bit, the GAN technology that kind of sets Next Gen Jammer apart. Talk to us a little bit about what is GAN and why is it important that you have the foundry to produce that? Because whenever you're dealing with technology, you're dealing with certain materials that we we don't have naturally, we don't have natural access to.

Ken Miller [00:14:21]:
So we have to create foundries, we have to kind of build up that capacity. You have that foundry. What is gan and why is that a game changer?

Chuck Angus [00:14:31]:
Well, you know, I'm going to run out of altitude and airspace really quick here, Ken, about gan, but here's what I will tell you. I'll tell you that us having a foundry is critical for the supply chain, right? So we're able to get access to the GAN and create those ACA arrays without having to go through a third party. So that's important what the GAN really does. It helps us build that power density that's so critical, right? If you've ever seen these arrays, they're not as big as you might think. They're big enough to support, you know, the physics on the wavelength and stuff. But what's really important is the power that comes out of that. The RAM turbine generator in NGJ generates all the power you need to to jam, right? You may need some housekeeping power to get the pod going, but once you open the doors to do your offensive electronic attack mission, it'll transmit all that power to those AESA arrays, right? And having the GAN there and the liquid cooling to go with it enables you to generate all the power you need in a very, very tight beam across a wide frequency range, right? And so that's really, truly critical. And I wanted to cover this too.

Chuck Angus [00:15:56]:
As you had mentioned earlier about something being static, right? Clearly, NGJ is developed in a way that you can grow that capability on that system. And that thing we talked about earlier, which was mid band extended, right? The Navy came to us and said, hey, can you improve the frequency coverage on this system? And technology had evolved to a point where we could Take that existing AESA array, make some modifications with the GAN and extend that frequency coverage. So now we can increase the frequency coverage to get after an emerging threat the Navy was very interested in.

Ken Miller [00:16:39]:
And so the mid band covers, I think generally Speaking, unclassified, approximately 2 to 6 gigahertz, correct?

Chuck Angus [00:16:46]:
Yeah, I probably shouldn't discuss the, the bandwidth. I can just tell you that, that what we say in an unclassified world. Can we talk about the critical threats? And it covers the majority of the critical threats that the Navy's interested in.

Ken Miller [00:17:03]:
From a threat standpoint. I know like this is one of the challenges of ew, you know, trying to make sure that we get the right information out in this type of environment. But with these threats, we know the pace of technology, we know the proliferation of advanced technology and how oftentimes how much more inexpensive it is for the adversary to attain it on the black market than it is for our military to respond and protect and execute a mission. As you're developing this to address threats, generally speaking, how have threats evolved in a way that have caused the Navy or led the Navy and Raytheon to understand that this type of technology housed in the next gen Jammer mid band is critical for mission success.

Chuck Angus [00:17:55]:
So we designed next generation Jammer to be flexible and agile to grow. The common electronics unit is essentially the brains of the operation. It processes all the assignments as well as all the techniques and essentially operates as a software defined radio. So it enables you to put in a new technique when you have a new threat. And we always say that Ken, the adversary has a vote, right? They always have a vote. So you have to keep your eye on what they are doing, whether it's a tactic, technique and procedure, whether it's a new system or new way of using their systems. We have to be able to modify that system to prosecute that threat. Right.

Chuck Angus [00:18:44]:
And that's what we've done on ngj. So not only do we get new threats from our partners in jato, but we also have the ability to change some of the processing, some of the capabilities inside the system that enables you to get after what that additional threat is. And the other thing I think that's really, really important is how you use it. So let me talk about a couple things here, if you got a second.

Ken Miller [00:19:10]:
Absolutely.

Chuck Angus [00:19:11]:
So offensive electronic attack is just that it's offensive, Right. It's not the self protect stuff that you hear about about trying to protect that airplane. Right. Well, we always talk about support the protected entity. So maybe that protected entity is a strike Package going in to drop its ordinance. Maybe that protected entity is a fighter going up against another fighter. Maybe that protected entity is a hava high value asset, like a tanker or an awacs. Right? And what we're learning a whole lot more, Ken, is how offensive electronic attack can support weapons to the target.

Chuck Angus [00:19:57]:
And all the conversations that we've been having around various military organizations, they really like the fact that I can support that weapon to the target and hopefully reduce the magazine size that's required to get the effect that we want on that combat operation.

Ken Miller [00:20:18]:
You mentioned earlier the obviously the price tag that's always associated with developing and producing new technology. When you look out at the world and you see the evolution of threats and so forth from an EW perspective, I mean, it's our view here at aoc, obviously in the greater EW community, EW is still, if not even more so, the most important element that you need to win the next fight to complete the mission. You need to, as you mentioned, protect those entities, whether they're. It's air to air combat or whatever or. And you need to support the weapon to the target. From your perspective, how important is it to have that advantage in the electromagnetic spectrum with advanced EW capabilities for mission success?

Chuck Angus [00:21:06]:
It's critical. I don't think you can overstate how critical it is. And as you know, when you go to one of your events, all you hear about is all of the EW challenges that many countries experience in operations going on today, right? How many times do you hear about those kind of things going on in Russia and Ukraine? Just even the recent news about Iran and Israel, right? Think about what happened back in April when, when Israel went in and attacked Iran and think about what they did to their, their surface air threats, right? Their air defenses. So that is critical, right? Whether you're trying to do it through surface to air or you're trying to open up a lane so you can get the strikers in to drop their ordinance. It is exceptionally critical. I was talking to a guy the other day and he was mentioning the fact that you're flying in combat and your screen goes blank. Chances are your screen didn't go blank because there was something wrong with your airplane. Chances are your screen went blank because somebody is jamming you, right? So you lose all situational awareness.

Chuck Angus [00:22:27]:
So it's critical, critical, critical, critical.

Ken Miller [00:22:30]:
And so we're here now, it's halfway through 2025. Kind of want to go talk a little bit about where we're at in terms of the schedule you had mentioned. The expansion effort that was awarded, I think that was in October or toward the end of 2024. And then there was a production contract for, I guess, IOC in December 2024. So could you give us a snapshot of like where we're at here and kind of what is the production schedule moving forward?

Chuck Angus [00:23:04]:
Sure. And so as you mentioned, we did get the mid band extended award at the end of last year. We also received a Lot 4 production award as well. We just received the Lot 5 production award here within the last month. And we're ready to start working on the follow on production awards. You would expect that we will continue to get annual production awards for the next several years. And if you remember, the program or record for the Navy's NGJ is 129 ship sets or 258 pods. So we expect production to go on for the next eight, nine, ten years.

Chuck Angus [00:23:49]:
And as part of that, you'll have all the sustainment, activity and capability upgrades, you know, along the way. And we're working with the Navy now on a flight plan, a roadmap to increase those capabilities, you know, across the board for them.

Ken Miller [00:24:07]:
And so with the mid band and then the expansion, are the next generation jammers that are produced, are they all going to be the expansion or is the expansion just a variation on what will be delivered? Is it a variation to address a specific threat versus the rest of the production? And the rest of production will just be the mid band as it currently is, or is everything going to be the expansion version?

Chuck Angus [00:24:34]:
So the Lot 5 award we just received is when we will cut in the mid band extended.

Ken Miller [00:24:40]:
Okay.

Chuck Angus [00:24:41]:
We have offered to the Navy retrofit program to go get the pods that had the previous array in them. And I expect that that will also come with those annual production awards as well.

Ken Miller [00:24:57]:
Okay. With the production you mentioned, it's going to continue to receive production dollars here for the next five to 10 years, possibly even longer. It's going to be in service. The service life, I'm sure, is going to extend well beyond that. Can the next generation jammer, obviously with modifications. Is this a pod that could potentially be retrofitted on other platforms, or does it represent a type of system that, because of, like you mentioned, swap the size, weight, power and so forth, it's not conducive to moving on to other platforms.

Chuck Angus [00:25:38]:
We've been working with lots of customers, Ken, to take this mature NGJ system and extend it to other platforms. And I think it's very appropriate for other platforms. I think you would recognize that there's not a lot of dedicated EW platforms in development or in production today. So how do you get those offensive electronic attack capabilities when you are purpose built for the Growler? So why don't we put it on a bomber, why don't we put it on another fighter? Why don't we put it on a uas, maybe a maritime patrol? But I think there's lots of opportunities.

Ken Miller [00:26:23]:
Yeah, because you never know where the next fight is going to be or when it's going to happen. And we don't have enough Growlers today, quite frankly, for global security challenges that we're facing tomorrow. So at some point we're going relying solely on a Navy platform in the Growler that has a limited number today, not enough, quite frankly. In my opinion. You're going to reach a point at some time in the future that we need. We need other systems to carry this technology. And so that's really good to hear that you're already looking into that because I think that that is going to be a critical piece for mission success is being able to have it on multiple platforms, but also being able to talk to multiple platforms too. So I want to move on to talking a little bit about the partner and ally element to the next gen Jammer.

Ken Miller [00:27:20]:
I think you're involved in contracts or at least arrangements with UK and Australia.

Chuck Angus [00:27:27]:
Australia has been a great partner for us for, for many, many years. And as you know, just like Growler, Australia is a cooperative development program on ngj.

Ken Miller [00:27:37]:
And so when are the systems going to be delivered to the Royal Air Force in Australia versus Is. Is that kind of wrapped up in each of the lots that you had mentioned, including Lot 5? Are they, do they have a piece of each or is there a timeline that's different for partners and allies will.

Chuck Angus [00:27:56]:
Be really pleased to offer their first pod this summer. So probably about August or September, the raft will receive their first pod that was procured under Lot 3. They will continue on getting pods throughout the next several lots to fill up what their requirement is. Again, they've been extremely good partners for us, not only for NGJ Mid band Assistant, but also mbx.

Ken Miller [00:28:26]:
And so you mentioned that it's been in the field, it's seen action, it's gotten positive marks. So what lessons were learned from. I believe it was on. I have in my notes that it was on the USS Abraham Lincoln, so correct me if I'm wrong on that, but what lessons were learned from that operational experience?

Chuck Angus [00:28:49]:
So Ken, as you can imagine, we have field service representatives on board the Lincoln when it first went out. And those guys are experts on the system and we're able to work with the operators on a daily basis to make changes, make some modifications to the system, help them sustain it, as you expect that they would. I would like to tell you that the first combat, and I think you've read this in the open press, can I just emphasize it here, is that the first combat operation that NGJ saw was supporting the Air Force, right? So again, to your point about the capacity, right. Is that the Air Force took their biggest, baddest airplane they have into combat and what'd they take with them? They took with them a growler with ngj. So one of the conversations we've had with the Air Force is how do we get additional capacity in the system, right? So how could you put it on an Air Force platform? So if there are no growlers and ngjs available, that you may have another platform that is available that can provide those combat effects you need to support, you know, a critical strike.

Ken Miller [00:30:04]:
And capacity is always a tough obstacle to overcome because when you're dealing especially with electronic warfare, you're dealing with a limited number of systems and sometimes only in the hundreds, depending on the size of the fleet that you have or the size of the number of systems that you have. How does industry, or what does industry need to do in cooperation? DOD to kind of address the need for cost and capacity considerations? Because we can't have those conversations when we're at war.

Chuck Angus [00:30:39]:
You can't.

Ken Miller [00:30:40]:
We have to have those conversations now to make sure that we have the capability in the field. So how do we address, or is there a way that we can better address this need for capacity and additional resources to increase the amount of the number of NG next generation jammers out in the field?

Chuck Angus [00:30:58]:
So we have been having those conversations with our DoD partners when we look at the classified operational analysis, right? So they can see the combat relevance that they get out of about of NGJ or that capability. So that's one way that we can help move that along is to express clearly what capability they get and why that's so important. The other thing is the things that you do, Ken, which, which is how do you express the need to this in thought pieces on your podcast with your missionary work you're doing with aoc, Right? And I get that word out, whether it's in lobbying with Congress or think tanks and stuff like that. I think that is critical to this, to get that message out to the folks that help make those decisions.

Ken Miller [00:31:52]:
We've been Working with our government affairs team. Obviously, these past two weeks, you know, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, they're doing posture hearings before Congress. And these are the types of questions that we are urging Congress to ask. And it's really a matter of helping our leaders become comfortable in talking about it because it is not an easy concept to understand. A lot of attention does go to the weapon side of the conversation, and we often hesitate in our communication to discuss, as you mentioned, making sure that that weapon system is supported to the target. Because in today's fight, you know, 100ft can mean a huge difference in terms of the target you're hitting.

Chuck Angus [00:32:41]:
It does. It does. So just imagine. I'll make up numbers. Imagine if you're going to shoot 10 jasms at a target to have the combat effect you're after. Imagine if you had jamming and you could shoot five, right? So what have you done? You've increased your magazine depth, right?

Ken Miller [00:32:58]:
Exactly.

Chuck Angus [00:32:59]:
So now you have to fly less sorties. Now you need to have less ordinance per sortie. Gives you a chance to go after more targets. And frankly, it makes you more effective.

Ken Miller [00:33:09]:
In the past, I've had the pleasure and opportunity to observe various exercises or tests of various capabilities. And one of the things that always jumps out at me is the assumptions that are made about our capabilities when that trial or the test or the exercises is executed. You mentioned the first deployment supported the Air Force. Have you encountered any assumptions or false assumptions or wrong assumptions that we need to really address? Because too often we're supposed to train like we fight, but we end up kind of filling the gaps with assumptions that oftentimes are not. Are not accurate or are not helpful to mission success. So through this experience of lessons learned with the first deployment, are there certain assumptions that we need to be addressing as a community to say, hey, look, when we're talking, ew, we can't assume these realities. We need to make sure, we need to verify, and we need to put all of our effort into understanding exactly what's going on.

Chuck Angus [00:34:15]:
So, you know, a lot of times, can we talk about layered defense? Right? And so think about trying to protect a ship. If an adversary is so far away, use certain weapon. If an adversary is closer, you use a different weapon. If an adversary gets really close, you use something else, Right? So it's a layered defense to protect something. Well, I like to talk about layered offense, right? So it's not just stealth, it's not just weapons. It's not just electronic Attack and it's not just self protect, it's all together. Right. So my point is, is that you can't just assume that one thing is going to get you the results that you need.

Chuck Angus [00:35:01]:
You need all them working together with hopefully with the result being is you're going to put that warhead on that target, get it to go out of commission and move on to the next one. So I think the assumption of one thing being the end all to be all is the wrong assumption. They all have to work together to get those combat effects and hopefully be successful. You want to have a overwhelming advantage and you can only do that if you have all those things working together.

Ken Miller [00:35:35]:
Fantastic. So to kind of wrap this up, we talked a little bit about some of the production awards and so forth. The schedule up until now, looking into the future. What are some of the milestones that our community and DoD need to be paying attention to that you are pursuing?

Chuck Angus [00:35:53]:
Well, I think the Navy is going to have a full reproduction decision sometime in the late summer, early fall. And that just gives them the, the authority to continue awarding production lots. And that's just an acquisition thing that'll be done. I think what you really need to pay attention to is how we continue to improve the capability and how we continue to extend this system to other platforms and not just DoD platforms, but international platforms as well. How can we put it on something else that'll get that capacity into the system? You know, you were, you were at AOC Europe. You know, the NATO guys are really interested in having electronic attack in their portfolio and we even talk to them as well. Right. So everybody recognizes the need to have this capability and we're working with them to help them, help provide that capability to them so they can meet the mission requirements.

Ken Miller [00:37:00]:
And we're going to actually have a couple episodes or an episode later in the summer here with NATO. And I'm sure this will be a topic of conversation in some form or fashion, whether or not it's specific to the next gen jammer. But certainly that collaborative integration across allies is a key topic that we need to address more.

Chuck Angus [00:37:21]:
Yeah, it gets critical. Right. And we've talked to lots of NATO countries in the past 18 months and they've all told us the same thing, is that we have not been investing in this area and we need to go do that. So how do I get this capability into my system so we can carry on that need? I'll tell you one more thing, Ken, if you got another minute, is that, you know, NGJ is a pretty good sized pod that I think is appropriate for lots of other platforms. So what we're doing is we're trying to take the, what I would, what I always say is the 14ft, 1200 pounds NGJ and putting into a smaller form factor so I can put it on smaller platforms like an international F16, like a Eurofighter, like smaller UASs and then CCAS. As you know, that, you know, electronic attack and EW is critical to accomplishing the mission with CCAS.

Ken Miller [00:38:27]:
Well, Chuck, it's been really great to have you on the show to talk about this program. It's very exciting that it's out in the field and the achievements that have been accomplished, particularly recently to kind of get this into the hands of war fighters. Greatly appreciate everything you do. Raytheon has done, the Navy has done. It's been a long time coming and I really appreciate every everybody's work on this and I'll look forward to having you and possibly the Navy back on in the near future to kind of give us an update because I have a feeling that this is going to hopefully change the game. We've needed it for a long time and it's great to see it here. So thank you for all your, your work on this.

Chuck Angus [00:39:08]:
Well, thanks, Ken. Thanks for having me. And, and like I like to say, it's a great time to be an EW guy right now.

Ken Miller [00:39:14]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree. All right, thank you, Chuck.

Chuck Angus [00:39:17]:
Thanks, Ken.

Ken Miller [00:39:19]:
That will conclude this episode of From the Crow's Nest. I'd like to thank my guest, Chuck Angus for joining me. Also, please take a moment to review, share and subscribe to this podcast. We always enjoy hearing from our listeners, so please take a moment to let us know how we're doing. That's it for today. Thanks for listening.