Northrop’s F-16 jammer deal tops $1.9 billion

The U.S. Air Force has added $87.4 million to Northrop Grumman’s contract for the AN/ALQ-257 Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite, a new radar-jamming and threat-warning system for the F-16 fighter, the U.S. Department of War announced.

The modification funds low-rate initial production, the first small production run before full-rate manufacturing. It raises the total value of the contract to $1.92 billion, up from $1.83 billion. Work will take place at Northrop Grumman’s plant in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, and is scheduled to finish by Dec. 31, 2029.

The Air Force obligated $79.4 million at award: $11 million in fiscal 2025 research and development funds and $68.4 million in fiscal 2025 aircraft procurement funds. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, manages the contract. The announcement did not say how many systems the money will buy.

The system, known as IVEWS, warns F-16 pilots when enemy radars are tracking them, jams those radars and helps locate and identify the threats. Northrop Grumman says it covers an ultra-wide frequency range, including millimeter-wave radars, which operate at very high frequencies used by some modern missile seekers and fire-control systems.

IVEWS is built into the aircraft. Earlier F-16 self-protection jammers, such as the ALQ-131 and ALQ-184, hang in pods under the jet’s belly and take up the centerline weapons station.

The Air Force picked Northrop Grumman for the program in 2021. Two F-16 Block 50 jets flew more than 70 sorties and over 100 flight hours during a seven-month operational assessment at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, and Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, which wrapped up in 2025. By July 2026, the system had logged more than 550 flight-test hours across 300 sorties, company officials said.

In September 2025, the Air Force issued an urgent operational need to get IVEWS into service with F-16 units in the Middle East. The next month, Northrop Grumman reported that the suite had been integrated with the APG-83 radar being installed on upgraded F-16s.

The first Air Force production batch will equip 72 F-16 Block 50 jets, Northrop Grumman vice president Jim Conroy told Air & Space Forces Magazine in October 2025. Up to 450 U.S. F-16s are to receive the system in the initial program, Militär Aktuell reported in January. Northrop Grumman is also offering IVEWS to foreign F-16 operators, whose fleets together with the U.S. total more than 2,800 aircraft.

Congress set aside $187 million in last summer’s reconciliation bill to finish development testing and begin initial production, Conroy said at the time. He said the fiscal 2026 appropriations bill, then still pending, included $250 million for the first full-rate production lot.

The F-16 is expected to remain one of the main fighters of the U.S. Air Force and dozens of allied air forces into the 2040s, alongside the F-35. IVEWS is one of several upgrades meant to keep the jet competitive, together with the APG-83 radar and Northrop Grumman’s LITENING targeting pod.