U.S. Air Force wants Northrop jammer to upgrade F-16s

Colin Demarest

Side view of an F-16 on a runway. The pilot is visible in the cockpit. The sky overhead is blue. — An F-16 taxis after testing the IVEWS system at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Photo: Rebecca Abordo/DVIDS

The U.S. Air Force wants to buy 206 upgraded electronic-warfare packages for the F-16 over the next few years, budget documents show.

Why it matters: The Lockheed Martin-made warplanes could be outfitted with Northrop Grumman's Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare Suite as soon as early 2028.

"This is, essentially, putting sixth-generation electronic warfare into a fourth-generation platform," Mark Sandor, Northrop's director of strategy and mission solutions, told Axios.

State of play: This moment is years in the making.

The Air Force first selected IVEWS in 2019. It flew for the first time in 2021, at the Northern Lightning exercise. Test flights aboard the service's F-16s kicked off in 2024. And an operational assessment wrapped in 2025.
That same year, Northrop said IVEWS worked "seamlessly" with the SABR active electronically scanned array radar.
"The hardware and software have been incredibly stable," Phil Louden, Northrop's IVEWS director, told Axios. "The Air Force is really aggressively ramping up."

Flashback: IVEWS got $187 million in 2025 reconciliation money, which funded low-rate initial production.

Zoom out: There has been much international interest in the electronic-warfare suite. Some 2,800 F-16s are in use in more than two dozen countries.

Turkey was widely reported as a buyer in 2024.
"We are actively involved in the foreign military sales process, with many partner nations," Louden said.

Go deeper: Northrop plans to quadruple chip output by 2030

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U.S. Air Force wants Northrop jammer to upgrade F-16s

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