Hensoldt reveals developmental airborne attack jammer for German luWES programme

Hensoldt has revealed a new airborne jammer that forms part of a wider family of electronic warfare (EW) systems it is developing for the NATO electronic attack (EA) requirement that the Luftwaffe has committed itself to deliver.

Germany’s Hensoldt hopes that its Kalaetron Attack jammer will provide ‘a national answer’ to the Luftwaffe’s luWES commitment to NATO. The system would equip either the Boeing EA-18G Growler or the Eurofighter ECR (pictured), depending on which selection is made. (Eurofighter)

The Kalaetron Attack jammer, revealed on 23 April, is billed as a modular system that Hensoldt hopes will be adopted by the Luftwaffe to deliver its wider Luftgestützte Wirkung im Elektromagnetischen Spektrum (luWES) capability to NATO from 2025.

“By neutralising enemy fire-control radars at different distances, it preserves freedom of movement for the air forces that deploy it and their allies, even when faced with state-of-the-art air-defence systems,” Hensoldt said.

As noted by the German electronics house, the Kalaetron Attack jammer is a new addition to the Kalaetron EW product family that uses fully digitalised hardware and artificial intelligence (AI) to detect radar-based threats and neutralise them with targeted electronic countermeasures (ECM).

“Kalaetron Attack now adds an active electronic jamming component, which either dazzles or deceives threatening systems using accurately replicated jamming signals. In this way, Kalaetron Attack expands the operational options of fighter aircraft, which can now also operate in anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) zones,” Celia Pelaz, Head of Hensoldt’s Spectrum Dominance & Airborne Solutions Division, was quoted as saying.