Thursday, April 18, 2024
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Raytheon today announced that one of its new radar systems effectively traced targets for the first time during recent testing with the Navy.
The company said the variant of its Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar that is slated for outfitting on the Navy's amphibious assault ships and amphibious transport dock vessels efficiently tracked multiple targets at Wallops Island, VA.
"Moving quickly from radar installation at Wallops Island to 'tracks on glass' in less than three months is a major accomplishment," Capt. Jason Hall, the Navy's above water sensors program manager, said in a statement.
"The EASR program is progressing extremely well. We are now one step closer to production and delivering the radar's unmatched capability to the surface fleet," he continued.
Raytheon in a press release said the radar in one test "continuously" tracked several targets throughout multiple hours, while the first test featured a commercial plane as a target.
The Navy plans to backfit this EASR variant, which Raytheon describes as "a single-face rotating array," onto the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.
Raytheon bills EASR as part of its new Air and Missile Defense Radar system family, commonly referred to as SPY-6.
Scott Spence, Raytheon's Naval Radar Systems senior director, said the company anticipates the first rotating variant of EASR in 2021.
"Because EASR is built off the same hardware and software baseline as the SPY-6 (V)1, the [air and missile defense radar] program, what we're really concentrating on is testing the new functionality that EASR has above . . . the original baseline from AMDR," Spence told Inside Defense.
"So AMDR, while it has an integrated air and missile defense capability that has been tested out in Hawaii, EASR adds both the air traffic control mission, as well as a weather tracking mission," he continued.
Another variant of EASR will go on the Navy's new Ford-class aircraft carriers and the next-generation frigate program, while the service is outfitting SPY-6 onto the Arleigh Burke Flight III ships.
Raytheon is planning to finish a technical data package in October to backfit a scaled-down form of the SPY-6 radar onto Flight IIA of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, Spence said.