The Royal Australian Air Force just received the most advanced electronic warfare system ever mounted on a fighter jet. Raytheon confirmed on April 22 that the RAAF has taken delivery of ALQ-249 Next Generation Jammer — Mid Band (NGJ-MB) pods for its fleet of EA-18G Growlers, replacing the Vietnam-era AN/ALQ-99 system that has been the backbone of Western airborne electronic attack for over five decades. The first shipsets arrived ahead of schedule in September 2025. Photos of an Australian Growler carrying the new pods surfaced in December, and deliveries have continued through 2026. Australia’s initial buy covers eight shipsets — two pods per aircraft.

From Analogue to Digital Warfare

The AN/ALQ-99 was designed in the late 1960s and first flew on the EA-6B Prowler. Its analogue architecture was state-of-the-art when Apollo astronauts were walking on the moon. Fifty-five years later, it was still strapped to Growlers — the electronic warfare equivalent of running a modern air force on vacuum tubes. The NGJ-MB changes everything. Its active electronically scanned array (AESA) antennas can shape, steer, and switch jamming beams in microseconds. The fully digital backend allows operators to reprogram the system in flight, adapting to new threats without hardware changes. Where the ALQ-99 was a broadband noise generator, the NGJ-MB is a precision instrument — capable of targeting individual radar emitters while leaving friendly communications untouched.

Why Australia Matters

Australia is not just a customer — it’s a development partner. The RAAF has been cooperating with the US Navy on NGJ since 2017, contributing to both the Mid-Band and Low-Band variants. That partnership gives Canberra early access to technology that most US allies will wait years to receive. Australia operates 11 EA-18G Growlers, making it the only country besides the United States to fly the type. In a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific, those Growlers would be expected to suppress Chinese air defences alongside American strike packages — a mission that demands the latest jamming technology, not Cold War leftovers.

Beyond the Growler

Raytheon isn’t stopping at airborne jamming. RTX recently announced it has repackaged the NGJ technology for land and sea platforms, creating ground-based and shipborne variants that use the same software-defined architecture. The implication is a unified electronic warfare ecosystem where a destroyer, a ground station, and a Growler can coordinate jamming across the electromagnetic spectrum. For Australia’s integrated defence force — which operates Hobart-class destroyers, Hunter-class frigates, and Growlers — that kind of cross-domain electronic warfare capability could be transformative. The ALQ-99’s retirement is long overdue. Its replacement arrives not a moment too soon.

Sources: The Aviationist, The Defense Post, FlightGlobal, Breaking Defense, Janes