$34M to Conjure Up More Warlocks Against IEDs
EDO Communications and Countermeasures, Thousand Oaks, CA received a $34 million modification to a firm-fixed-price contract for Warlock Green and Red Electronic Countermeasure Devices. As DefenseTech.org reports:
“The Warlock radio frequency jammers are made by the New York and Simi Valley firm EDO. And they’re based on an earlier EDO product called the Shortstop Electronic Protection System, which is designed to protect troops against proximity-fused weapons like mortar rounds and artillery shells [by detonating them early]. The Warlock doesn’t do anything quite so dramatic. Instead, “it basically works by intercepting the signal sent from a remote location to the IED instructing it to detonate,” an Army official told Inside Defense (which has a wrap-up of all its recent IED stories here.) “The signal ‘cannot make contact, therefore when it can’t make contact it doesn’t detonate,’ much like a cellular phone call that does not connect, he added. “The cell phone never gets through, but [enemy forces] think it go through.”
The jammers come in two flavors, each interrupting different frequency bands. Warlock Green connects off of the 24V DC power supply of any military vehicle, an Army document notes. Warlock Red is “designed to connect off the cigarette lighter and/or 12V DC power supply.”
It has taken a good deal of pushing to get the Warlocks through the procurement pipeline, and they will join other innovative technologies like the JIN in Iraq. Shades of the Arabian Nights.
Work on this contract will be performed in Thousand Oaks, CA, and is expected to be complete by Dec. 31, 2005. There were an unknown number of bids solicited via the World Wide Web on June 8, 2005, and one bid was received. The U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command, Fort Monmouth, N.J issued the contract (W15P7T-04-C-L001).
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