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BAE Systems Unveils Scalable Electromagnetic Warfare Capabilities for MALE and HALE Drones.
BAE Systems flight-tested a modular airborne electromagnetic attack pod with the United States Air Force on 23 February 2026, demonstrating a small-form-factor electronic attack payload sized for Group 4 and 5 unmanned aircraft. The test signals a shift toward distributed electronic warfare, where swarms of UAVs deliver coordinated jamming effects inside contested airspace.
On 23 February 2026, BAE Systems announced that it had successfully flight-tested a modular airborne electromagnetic attack system with the U.S. Air Force, using a prototype housed in a weapon pod on a test aircraft representative of a Group 4/5 unmanned aerial vehicle. According to BAE Systems, the scaled hardware is derived from its high-power electronic attack systems and is designed to neutralize integrated air defenses and disrupt adversary use of the electromagnetic spectrum for battlespace coordination. By shrinking this architecture into a UAV-compatible pod that runs proven counter-C5ISRT software, including a third-party application, BAE Systems is effectively transforming large unmanned aircraft into networked jamming nodes. For future high-intensity operations in contested airspace, this development points directly to a form of warfare in which control of the spectrum by distributed unmanned platforms becomes as decisive as control of the air itself.
BAE Systems flight-tested a modular airborne electromagnetic attack pod with the United States Air Force, demonstrating how high-power jamming systems can be scaled for Group 4 and 5 unmanned aircraft to conduct distributed electronic warfare missions (Picture Source: BAE Systems)
The modular pod demonstrated with the U.S. Air Force, reuses the core building blocks of BAE Systems’ existing airborne electromagnetic attack weapon systems, which are optimised for counter-C5ISRT missions. Packaged into a compact, podded form factor, the system combines wideband transmitters, high-density digital receivers and software-defined radios with an open-architecture processing backbone that is compliant with SOSA and aligned to so-called “Big Iron” standards used on larger standoff jamming platforms. In practical terms, this means that waveforms, threat libraries and electronic attack techniques matured on strategic platforms can be scaled down and containerised, then deployed on smaller airborne nodes without rewriting the entire mission system. The integration of a third-party EW application during the test points to a plug-and-play model where government, prime contractor and specialist software houses can all contribute techniques to a common hardware baseline, accelerating the cycle from algorithm development to operational use.
The decision to validate the pod on an aircraft representing a Group 4/5 UAV is central to the concept of operations. In U.S. Department of War taxonomy, Groups 4 and 5 comprise the largest unmanned systems, with maximum take-off weights above 1,320 lb and operating altitudes that extend up to and beyond 18,000 ft. These aircraft, broadly corresponding to MALE and HALE classes, are designed to carry sizeable payloads, often combining synthetic-aperture radar, EO/IR sensors, signals intelligence suites and precision weapons over long endurance missions.
Mounting an EA pod on such a platform takes advantage of available power and cooling, allows optimal antenna placement on wing or fuselage stations, and leverages long-on-station times to maintain persistent jamming or electronic surveillance orbits around an adversary’s integrated air defence system. Because the pod is self-contained, the same hardware can be moved between different UAV types or even to manned aircraft without structural redesign, reflecting a deliberate shift from platform-centric to payload-centric planning in airborne electronic warfare.
From a tactical standpoint, scaled EA on Group 4/5 UAVs sits between self-protection jammers carried by fighters and the U.S. Air Force’s EA-37B Compass Call, a dedicated standoff electromagnetic attack aircraft based on the Gulfstream G550. The new pod is not intended to replace that high-power standoff capability, but to extend it forward and laterally. A typical air package could see an EA-37B shaping the electromagnetic environment at theatre level, while multiple UAVs equipped with modular pods fly racetrack patterns nearer the threat envelope to deliver focused, high-duty-cycle jamming against fire-control radars, tactical C2 links and key nodes in the enemy’s C5ISRT network. Because the pod uses the same class of counter-C5ISRT software as the larger platform, commanders can orchestrate a layered SEAD/DEAD and non-kinetic fires plan in which wide-area barrage jamming, narrowband spot jamming and sophisticated deception techniques are coordinated across manned and unmanned assets.
What gives this architecture particular weight for future operations is its ability to generate “mass electromagnetic effects” using many small nodes instead of relying on a handful of exquisite aircraft. In a dense anti-access/area-denial environment, an adversary can try to track, target or politically pressure against a single large jammer, but it is much harder to counter a distributed constellation of UAVs, each radiating agile waveforms at different points in the battlespace. With enough pods in the air, a force can attack multiple links in an A2/AD kill chain at once: early-warning radar integration, track-quality handover from surveillance to engagement radars, long-range surface-to-air missile fire control datalinks and theatre-level C2 networks that coordinate fires. By pushing non-kinetic effects deeper into contested airspace ahead of kinetic shooters, such as stand-off cruise missiles or stealth aircraft, these unmanned jammers can help create temporal windows of reduced sensor performance and fragmented situational awareness, increasing the survivability and effectiveness of follow-on strikes.
The same modularity that makes the pod suitable for large UAVs also aligns it with emerging concepts of multi-domain command and control. BAE Systems’ electronic attack portfolio is built around open architecture, containerised functions and software-defined radios specifically to allow rapid integration of new applications and techniques as threats evolve. On Group 4/5 platforms with robust SATCOM and line-of-sight datalinks, the pod can function as a smart node in a wider kill web: it ingests cueing from space-based sensors, surface ships, ground EW units or other aircraft, and in return feeds back real-time emitter geolocation and jamming effectiveness data. In a JADC2-style construct, tasking for these pods could be updated dynamically from theatre-level C2, allowing a UAV orbit to retune its focus in minutes from suppressing a sector of long-range surveillance radars to disrupting a specific brigade-level C2 net or an airbase’s ground-controlled intercept network. That shift turns EA from a pre-planned, target-list-driven activity into a continuously managed, data-driven function of the joint fires process.
Looking ahead, this kind of scaled EA is likely to reshape how air forces and navies think about spectrum operations in high-end theatres such as the Western Pacific or Eastern Europe. Rather than treating electronic attack primarily as a prelude to kinetic strikes, commanders will have the option to maintain permanent “spectrum pressure” on adversary networks using persistent UAV orbits equipped with podded jammers. Over time, such orbits could become standing features of deterrence posture, much like combat air patrols or ballistic missile defence stations, signalling to potential adversaries that their C5ISRT backbone would be under immediate and continuous stress in any crisis.
At the operational level, using attritable or at least lower-cost unmanned platforms to carry EA payloads changes the risk calculus: losing a UAV-borne pod to long-range SAMs or fighter interception becomes an acceptable cost of prising open an A2/AD bubble, whereas the loss of a dedicated manned jammer would be far more consequential. This, in turn, supports more aggressive manoeuvre in the electromagnetic domain, with unmanned EA nodes deliberately probing the edges of threat envelopes to map, exploit and saturate defences.
The diffusion of modular EA pods will also accelerate an arms race in electronic protection and cognitive EW. As BAE Systems itself notes in its public material on electromagnetic warfare, modern A2/AD architectures are built on dynamic, software-defined C5ISRT systems that can change waveforms, frequencies and network topologies at high speed. Adversaries facing swarms of EA-capable UAVs are likely to respond by investing in low-probability-of-intercept/low-probability-of-detection communications, distributed passive sensors, adaptive beamforming and AI-driven receivers that can recognise and work around jamming patterns in real time. The competition thus shifts from simple power-on-target to algorithmic agility: the side that can update its EW techniques, retrain AI classifiers and push new waveforms to pods and platforms faster will gain the upper hand. In that sense, the BAE Systems demonstrator is both a hardware milestone and a signal that future electromagnetic campaigns will be decided at machine speed, with humans setting intent and guardrails while autonomous or semi-autonomous systems execute pulse-to-pulse manoeuvre in the spectrum.
Geostrategically, the fact that the modular EA system is platform-agnostic and designed to scale across aircraft, helicopters, ground vehicles, surface ships and weapon stations has important alliance implications. For NATO members and close partners seeking to strengthen their own counter-C5ISRT posture without fielding entirely new aircraft fleets, a common, exportable EA building block offers a way to thicken the electromagnetic layer using existing airframes and UAV programmes. Because the architecture is SOSA-aligned and uses open interfaces, allies can adopt a shared library of techniques and potentially integrate national or third-party applications while retaining interoperability at the message and timing level. That opens the door to coalition EA planning where a mixed force of national platforms carries compatible pods, enabling coordinated theatre-wide jamming plans rather than fragmented, nation-by-nation efforts. It also raises questions about escalation and norms: as more states acquire the ability to disrupt each other’s tactical networks at scale, the line between shaping operations and strategic coercion in the electromagnetic domain will become a central topic in defence diplomacy and arms control.
By proving that high-end electromagnetic attack hardware and counter-C5ISRT software can be repackaged into a modular, UAV-compatible pod, BAE Systems and its U.S. Air Force partners have taken a concrete step toward a battlespace where distributed unmanned platforms contest the spectrum continuously and at scale. In future crises involving sophisticated A2/AD systems, the side that fields large numbers of such pods on Group 4/5 drones, coordinated with standoff assets like the EA-37B, will be able to fracture enemy kill chains, impose persistent uncertainty on command and control, and open windows for kinetic action when and where it chooses. For air forces and alliances planning for great-power competition, this capability is less about adding another jammer to the inventory and more about establishing a resilient, software-driven electromagnetic grid that underpins freedom of action across all domains.
Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group
Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.