Like nuclear submarines and heavy artillery, it’s one of those weapon systems you don’t read much about during peacetime — but which, during a major war, could prove decisive. It doesn’t help that this particular gadget, unlike Seawolf-class subs and Paladin artillery pieces, has an utterly forgettable name.
The Miniature Air-Launched Decoy, or “MALD,” is a cross between a cruise missile and an aerial drone, able to distract or confuse enemy air defenses to protect attacking U.S. jets. It was already on its way to becoming one of America’s most important unsung weapons when this happened: MALD-maker Raytheon figured out a way to “deliver hundreds of MALDs during a single combat sortie,” company vice president Harry Schulte announced in a recent statement.
Raytheon recently tested the MALD Cargo Air-Launched System, a complex of racks attached to the cargo ramp of an airlifter, on a borrowed C-130. The racks could allow the Air Force to deploy cloud-like swarms of the smart, man-size missiles. In doing so, the MALD (pictured above) would become America’sfirst true swarming drone, and a potentially powerful countermeasure against ever-more-sophisticated enemy air defenses.
The original MALD began as a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency experiment, aimed at producing a relatively cheap flying robot, able to mimic the flight characteristics of American warplanes. The idea was for MALD decoys, launched by F-16s, F/A-18s or B-52s, to fly ahead of the bombers during an air campaign. The enemy would turn on all its radars and waste its Surface-to-Air Missiles on the decoys. Meanwhile, the Navy’s Prowler and Growler jets would jam or destroy the radars busily tracking the MALDs.
MALD had its share of development problems. The first edition lacked the range to be truly useful, so the Pentagon scrapped it and started over. But a new version with a 500-mile range that debuted in 2009 was a huge hit. The Navy said it would buy some. And the Air Force, after announcing plans to buy potentially thousands of the decoys, ordered up a version of MALD with its own tiny radar jammer fitted inside the missile-shaped body. That way, a mixed formation of MALDs could do more than just soak up enemy missiles; it could electronically fight back.
Now, with the airlifter mass-deployment system, the Air Force could put so many MALDs into the air, so fast, that any real warplanes would be safely hidden against any surviving air defenses able to see through the MALD-generated jamming. It’s a high-tech version of the swarm tactics that pirates and poor countries have devised to overpower U.S. forces’ own defenses.
And as if that weren’t enough, Raytheon is also offering to put sensors or warheads inside future MALD versions, adding “eyes” and explosive potential to the swarm.
The Air Force hasn’t decided yet whether to buy the mass-launching racks or the warhead- or sensor-equipped MALDs.
All the same, with every new development, MALD and similar weapons gradually erode the privileged position that radar-evading stealth occupies in the American military-industrial mindset. Stealth exists to thwart enemy defenses. But there’s more than one way to defeat radars: as MALD proves, you can distract, confuse and overwhelm them, too — and potentially at much lower cost than trying to appear invisible.
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