New radar for aircraft carriers, amphibs passes preliminary design review

The Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar under development for the Navy's aircraft carriers and amphibious ships has passed its preliminary design review, contractor Raytheon announced today.

The radar went through combined systems requirement and system functional reviews, and an integrated baseline review prior to completing the PDR, according to an April 26 Raytheon statement.

"Each EASR development milestone brings us closer to providing this needed mission capability to our Sailors and Marines deployed on aircraft carriers and amphibious ships," Capt. Seiko Okano, major program manager for above water sensors, said in the statement. "As the PDR confirmed, the technical and design maturity of this advanced radar is right where it should be."

The Navy awarded Raytheon a $92 million contract for the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the EASR program last August. A rotating, phased-array variant will be developed for amphibious ships, while a three-face, fixed-phased array version will be built for aircraft carriers.

The first ship expected to receive EASR will be the third America-class amphibious assault ship (LHA-8). The first carrier, meanwhile, to get EASR will be the second Ford-class aircraft carrier, the John F. Kennedy (CVN-79). Last year, the Navy announced plans to install EASR on CVN-79 rather than the more powerful but more expensive Dual-band radar (DBR).