CATJAT jammer designed to protect soldiers against IEDs

A new system, called CATJAT, has been designed to neutralise much of the IED threat facing Australian troops.

DSTG’s Bathiya Senanayake, left, and RFTeq team member developing and testing the new IED jammer (CATJAT) system in Edinburgh, South Australia.

Imagine a squad of soldiers on foot patrol, somewhere hostile. As they pass by the wreck of an old car, or traverse a culvert under the road, or get spotted by a drone, there is a flash, a bang, and then blood everywhere. They have been attacked by a radio-initiated Improvised Explosive Device (IED) – still one of the most dangerous things a soldier can encounter.

Hence CATJAT: standing for Complex Adaptive Threat Jammer Technology, it is designed to neutralise much of the IED threat facing Australian troops.

The system was designed by scientists and engineers in the old DSTO Electronic Warfare Division. Following last year’s reorganisation they are now part of DSTG’s Land and Joint Warfare Division, reflecting DSTG’s increased focus on missions rather than discrete technologies, but the expertise and experience they bring to bear hasn’t changed.

How does CATJAT work? That’s mostly classified, says DSTG’s Counter Improvised Threat program lead Jeff Vesely.

In broad terms, says the Australian company that commercialised the technology, Adelaide-based RFTeq, CATJAT’s advanced algorithms adaptively deal with complex threat signals in real-time, in a very congested operating environment. Those radio signals could trigger an IED and might come from something as simple as the remote control for a garage door, or something more sophisticated such as a smartphone, or something really sophisticated the army and DSTG won’t talk about. It doesn’t matter – CATJAT is designed to counter them all.

And CATJAT isn’t just designed for the current threat, says Vesely: RFTeq has made it modular so that it can be adapted to a range of active and passive electronic warfare techniques and use cases in the future. Versions of it could remain in service for several years aboard ships or armoured vehicles as well as being carried by soldiers on foot patrol.

The program had its start in 2017 when DSTG launched its Grand Challenge to Counter Improvised Threats. That first grand challenge had two testing scenarios and IEDs and drones featured heavily in both. RFTeq had just been formed specifically to develop electronic warfare systems, and especially countermeasures techniques, and it responded to the challenge’s request for tender, supported by both DSTG and local hi-tech firm Consunet. It was awarded an R&D contract to commercialise the CATJAT technology that had been developed by DSTG but was still at a low Technology Readiness Level (TRL).

The TRL scale goes from TRL 1, which is no more than a bright idea, to TRL 9 which is a product or system that’s actually proven in service.

The first commercialisation stage for RFTeq was the TRL 4 or 5 grand challenge; this led in turn to a demonstration of initial CATJAT hardware at the army innovation day in 2021, followed quickly by a three-year, $5.3m Defence Innovation Hub contract designed to bring the product up to TRL 7 by 2024, and which will see production prototypes used in the field. The concept of CATJAT has evolved to fill a need in the Australian defence landscape and become a sovereign capability against current and emerging communication threats, the company says. It has invested $1m of its own money in the program.

Jeff Vesely won’t talk about sizes and power outputs. He points out the earlier Redwing Electronic Warfare system, developed by DSTG for a similar purpose and commercialised by L3Harris in Brisbane in 2018, measures roughly 15 x 10 x 5 cm.

CATJAT won’t be bigger than this but will be much more clever and capable. And it could be exported as widely as Redwing, which was designed originally for the Afghan Army but has been adopted widely elsewhere.

The threat keeps changing as technology evolves, says BRIG David Westphalen, DSTG’s military adviser on improvised threats and a former sapper who spent nearly two years in Iraq and Afghanistan battling IEDs along Coalition supply routes.

The importance of a sovereign capability is illustrated by his experience in Afghanistan: it once took 72 hours to get a response from the US to a technical question he posed. Having a sovereign capability means being able to address the issue immediately, on the spot – that could be vital.

But he points out those 72 hours built on three decades of R&D and experience: it can take that long to develop the technical expertise to give an immediate reply, regardless of the technology domain concerned.

That expertise is precious: it’s hard-won and easily dissipated. To use a military term, it represents depth in capability and expertise, says Brig Westphalen.

Without it DSTG would be unable to even define accurately, let alone tackle, significant technology problems. And it’s that depth which gives DSTG such international credibility in the electronic warfare domain.

So will the army actually acquire CATJAT? There are no absolute guarantees, say both Jeff Vesely and BRIG Westphalen, but Australia’s defence industry policy emphasises sovereign industry capability as well as the development of a robust, resilient industry base. Industry policy also increasingly encourages companies to go to the technological forefront where possible.

RFTeq is already there with a world-class sovereign capability and is aiming to have a full CATJAT capability ready for service in 2025, with elements of it potentially ready for service in 2024.

Given the warm reception it has enjoyed from end users in the ADF, CATJAT could enter the market through a number of future Australian defence acquisition programs.