BAE Contracts for EA-6B Prowler Upgrades Rise to $55M

EA-6B Prowler(click to view full) The U.S. Navy’s EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare/jammer, which will remain America’s only tactical jamming aircraft until the EA-18G Growlers arrive around 2009-2010. These aircraft carry an installation of advanced computer equipment and power systems, antennas, and special jamming pods. Armed with precision attack weapons and/or anti-radar missiles like the AGM-88 HARM, the Prowlers are used for a wide variety of tasks, from attacking enemy air defense installations, to flights over roads in Iraq to suppress IEDs by jamming their electronics. DID recently covered major ICAP III upgrades to the Prowler’s key electronic warfare systems. Now the U.S. Navy’s NAVAIR has contracted with BAE Systems to produce additional low-band transmitter-antenna groups for the Navy’s EA-6B Prowler electronic countermeasures aircraft. Under the $24.3 million contract with the Naval Air Systems Command, the company will provide 13 transmitter-antenna groups, each consisting of a radar and communications jammer. Work will be performed at Lansdale, PA. The contract follows a $4 million producibility program awarded in October 2004 and previous production orders. Including this most recent order, the Navy has called for BAE Systems to produce a total 30 transmitter-antenna ship sets worth about $55 million.