U.S. Air Force Awards Raytheon $97 Million for More Miniature Air Launched Decoys

[Raytheon MALD]

Raytheon: The U.S. Air Force awarded Raytheon Company $96.7 million for a third production lot of the Miniature Air Launched Decoy.

MALD™ is a state-of-the-art, low-cost, decoy flight vehicle that is modular, air-launched and programmable. It weighs less than 135kg and has a range of approximately 900km.

"MALD protects aircrew and their aircraft by mimicking the signatures and combat flight profiles of U.S. and allied aircraft," said Ken Watson, the U.S. Air Force's MALD program manager.

For enemy commanders, when the MALD comes up on their radars, they would have to take a quick decision on whether this is a hostile or friendly- UAV, fighter craft, decoy or something else. If they decided to fire at it, they would give away the location of their critical ground equipment including surface-to-air missile launchers and possibly waste these on a decoy thus protecting air assets.

MALD is currently in production, and Raytheon has delivered more than 100 units to the U.S. Air Force. This new contract calls for the company to build approximately 300 additional decoys -- nearly equal to the total of Lots I and II combined. Additionally, the contract requires the delivery of the MALD-Jammer in preparation for the MALD-J™ initial operational test and evaluation phase, with production expected to begin in 2011.