Shade
The cheap lie. Shade spoofs radars, jams shooters, and holds a mesh hole open just long enough for Vanguard and Lance to finish the job. It is supposed to die.
Shade
EQ-26F
Meridian design bureau
Conceptual · not a program of record
- Unit cost
- $45K
- Combat radius
- 160 nm
- Endurance
- 3.2 h
- Speed
- 140 kt
- Ceiling
- 18,000 ft
- Payload
- 6 kg
- FY26 buy
- 1,800
- Rate / year
- 6,000
Launch / recover
Launch. Same canister geometry as Lance-L / air-drop from Harrier
Recover. Optional belly skid in relay mode; expendable in decoy / EA mode
C2. Pre-planned EA profile or live retask on the Vanguard/Harrier mesh
Why it is better
- Same canister as Lance — any Lance launcher is a Shade launcher
- Three personalities: decoy, jammer, gateway — load at the magazine
- Exists to be spent so $18M Vanguards are not
- Local GNSS deny to protect a raid without blinding the whole theater
Nav (GNSS optional)
- inertial
- mesh relative
- GNSS-optional
Sense
- wideband RWR
- emitter geolocation
Effect
- radar spoof / DRFM decoy
- comms jam
- GNSS deny (local)
- mesh gateway
Against the public program
MALD / Coyote multi-role / Altius EW payloads
Public. Coyote LE-SR advertised as decoy, relay, or EA; MALD is exquisite and inventory-limited
Gap. EA and decoys are still boutique stores, not a magazine you fill like chaff
Meridian. Priced like a store, launched like Lance, saturates an IADS so Vanguard can live