ALQ-214

A joint U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force program is building an Integrated Defensive Electronic Countermeasures (IDECM) system, initially for the F-18 Super Hornet and the B-1 Lancer aircraft; the Radio Frequency Countermeasures RFCM subsystem of the IDECM is the AN/ALQ-214 (V). The other part of the IDECM is the AN/ALE-55 towed fiber optic decoy.

IDECM, according to BaE Systems, breaks a traditional electronic warfare paradigm, which had split the mission into onboard coherent jammers and end-game-only towed repeaters. This paradigm was judged inadequate to threats including both home-on-jam and man-in-the-loop threat guidance. In the new model, in which the RFCM and decoy are under common control, the defense model has three parts:
 * 1) Suppress enemy acquisition and tracking: deny, delay and degrade the enemy capability to find the protected aircraft
 * 2) Deceive guided missiles that do achieve tracking lock and launch
 * 3) Seduce the missiles that make it through the first and second parts, making the towed decoy more attractive than the electronically more modest aircraft

Architecture
In the ALQ-214 (V) designation, the (V) indicates the system is modular. It consists of a mounting rack, three preamplifiers, and up to five "Weapons Replaceable Assemblies (WRA)" (i.e., Line Replaceable Units):
 * WRA-1 Receiver
 * WRA-2 Modulator
 * WRA-3 Processor
 * WRA-4 Low-band transmitter
 * WRA-5 High-band transmitter

WRA-1 through 3 are the "Techniques Generator" core.

For the Super Hornet, WRA-4 and -5 are optional; remember that Super Hornets may be teamed with an EF-18 Growler for active jamming. B-1's, however, would often need self-contained jamming as well as the towed decoy.