One product that US firm L3Harris was promoting at the Indo Defence 2025 exhibition, held in Jakarta from 11-14 June, was the ALQ-254 Viper Shield, an electronic warfare (EW) suite designed specifically for the F-16 fighter.
Speaking to Asian Military Review, Travis Ruhl, Director, International Business Development, Viper Shield Lead & EW SME at L3 Harris Space & Airborne Systems, said Viper Shield gives “the level of self-protection that you need on today’s battlefield”.
This is because enemy air defence radars can see farther, and air-to-air missiles have hugely impressive ranges too, keeping aircraft at arm’s reach. However, Viper Shield compresses those distances and allows fighters to get in closer, Ruhl explained.
Viper Shield has two components – a radar warning receiver that identifies threats, and an electronic countermeasures system that jams those sources.
When asked if Viper Shield is relevant to Asia, Ruhl responded, “Absolutely! I think the country we’re sitting in, to a variety of other countries that fly the F-16 – as well as some that are new to the F-16 community – it’s a perfect solution from a cost perspective, the capability and the deep integration with the United States.”
The Viper Shield is being fitted on new-build F-16V Block 70/72 fighters but, of interest to existing F-16 users, the system can also be retrofitted to older, in-service F-16s. This is what makes it relevant to F-16 operators in Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
More than five years in development, the ALQ-254V(1) version of the system is integrated and installed inside aircraft, whilst the ALQ-254V(2) is an external pod. The latter is obviously the most suitable for air forces wanting to upgrade older blocks of F-16s, as it does not require such complicated installation.
In fact, Ruhl said, “We expect to have the first retrofit customer announced in the very short term. That’s pretty exciting because it opens up an entire additional market.” Still in development, another advantage of the ALQ-254V(2) is that it can be fitted onto different aircraft within a fleet as required.
Ruhl said 168 Viper Shield systems are currently on order by six nations, with others expected to follow. As a baseline system on the latest Block 70/72 jets, customers include Bahrain, Bulgaria, Jordan, Morocco, Slovakia and Taiwan.
The L3Harris representative said the system is now in its culminating development phase. After flight testing started earlier this year, production is now under way, and the first units will be delivered to Lockheed Martin in late 2025.
With wide instantaneous bandwidth, the EW system can detect any threat in the radio frequency spectrum. Viper Shield’s software-defined system can be easily updated to meet emerging threats too, making it more rapidly adaptable, even in real time. It is also fully integrated with the APG-83 active electronically scanned array radar.
Viper Shield automatically identifies threats, prioritises them, and then responds by jamming them. The automatic nature of the system frees up the pilot to focus on their mission.
Ruhl described Viper Shield as the most advanced EW system on the market today, and “there will be nothing that anyone can match for a few years on an F-16”.
In competition, Northrop Grumman offers the ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite (IVEWS), which the US Air Force (USAF) selected as its sole F-16 EW solution in 2020 after a competition. A Northrop Grumman spokesperson told AMR: “Operational assessment was completed this year, with very positive feedback from the pilots who have flown with and against it.”
The USAF continues to “actively execute its ongoing IVEWS flight test programme at multiple locations,” the company said.
[This article was updated with additional information provided by Northrop Grumman.]
by Gordon Arthur, Jakarta
