Whittaker Electronic Wins $7.1-Million NATO Contract

Whittaker Electronic Systems of Simi Valley has been awarded a $7.1-million contract by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to produce radar simulators and jamming devices to train military personnel to evade and counter enemy radar and missiles.

Whittaker Electronic Systems, a division of Los Angeles-based Whittaker Corp., designs and manufactures early-warning systems and simulators, and other military devices for the United States and its allies.

The NATO contract calls for the Ventura County company to build 11 new Electronic Warfare systems and modify 15 existing ones. Eighteen of those systems would be jamming devices, used to misdirect enemy radar. The other eight systems would simulate a range of enemy radar signals, to train ground and air personnel in the detection of those signals.

Joe Rodriguez, Whittaker’s program manager on the project, said the simulators and jammers consist of electronic mechanisms mounted in pods attached to the wings of supersonic aircraft.

The NATO project follows on the heels of a similar contract that Whittaker Electronic Systems completed earlier this year. For that, Whittaker built 42 pod-mounted systems for the training of Royal Navy and Royal Air Force pilots in Britain.

Rodriguez said the back-to-back projects bode well for the future of the Simi Valley operation.

“With those 42 systems out there and these additional 26, it puts us in a position to go out and solicit other countries that have their own training requirements,” he said. “The Pacific Rim countries require training of their pilots and so do the friendly Middle East countries.”

Whittaker Electronic Systems has been given 30 months to complete the NATO project.