January 2020
The Navy’s Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM) program acquires electronics suites to protect the various F/A-18 aircraft from radio frequency-guided missiles. IDECM achieved MS II approval in October 1995, although it was too small at the time to be anMDAP. Because of changes, it became an MDAP in March 2008 and its managers issued their frst SAR in June 2008. The Mission and Description section of the December 2015 SAR describes the blocks as follows. • IDECM Block 1: A federated suite, consisting of the ALQ-165 On-Board Jammer (OBJ) and ALE-50 expendable decoy • IDECMBlock 2: An integrated suite, consisting of the ALQ-214 OBJ and ALE-50 expendable decoy • IDECMBlock 3: An integrated suite, consisting of the ALQ-214 OBJ and ALE-55 Fiber Optic Towed Decoy • IDECM Block 4: A Hardware Engineering Change Proposal to the ALQ-214 OBJ to render it suitable for operation on F/A-18C/D aircraft, while retaining all functionality when installed on F/A-18E/F
The SAR contains two subprograms: IDECMBlocks 2/3 and IDECMBlock 4. The December 2015 SAR reports an APUC of $2.502 million for Block 4 and a far lower APUC of $0.090 million for Block 2/3. This is because the quantities are so diferent. Block4has a quantity of 324—roughly the number of airplanes they will be protecting. Block 2/3 has a quantity of 12,805, although the Navy bought fewer than 600 F/A-18E/Fs in total. Eighty-fve of the 12,805 were purchased with 1506 Navy Aircraft Procurement funds, and the balance were bought, or will be bought, with 1508 Procurement of Ammunition, Navy and Marine Corps funds. We presume that those purchased with ammunition funding are only the disposable decoys. The unit costs based on the End Item Recurring Flyaway column in each year are presented in Figure 3.
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Defense ARJ, January 2020, Vol. 27No. 1 : 28-59
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