HUNTSVILLE, Ala.\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The competition is heating up for two missile defense industry giants\u00a0Lockheed Martin and Raytheon\u00a0as the Army’s deadline for accepting future integrated air-and-missile defense radar concepts from industry\u00a0came to a close Monday.
Raytheon’s concept submitted to the Army this week takes advantage of over $200 million in internal investment to develop GaN technology over 16 years, augmented with US government investment over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Raytheon\u2019s GaN-based AESA LTAMDS radar is designed to serve as a sensor on the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System network,” the company said in a statement, adding it will be “fully interoperable with NATO” and will be backwards compatible with current Patriot systems and any future upgrades to systems owned by 13 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Northrop Grumman-made\u00a0IBCS will be\u00a0the\u00a0command-and-control system for the Army’s future IAMD system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company notes it is also capitalizing off of other successful programs such as the US Navy\u2019s Next Generation Jammer and the Air and Missile Defense Radar while mentioning that other competitors “may draw on lessons learned from the terminated MEADS air and missile defense project or repeatedly re-baselined naval radars.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doug Burgess, the director of IAMD AESA programs at Raytheon, said\u00a0in the\u00a0statement\u00a0that the GaN radar\u2019s debut at the AUSA show in March shows “there doesn\u2019t need to be a wait of a decade or longer to get the sensor of the future. It will be available much, much sooner.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Army\u2019s request for information calls upon industry to help inform them on the feasibility of reaching initial operational capability for a radar prior to fiscal 2028.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Lockheed Martin officials speaking at a media briefing at the start of the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville on Monday also expressed confidence the timeline to field a radar could be much shorter than history has previously dictated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lockheed will display at the show\u00a0its new TPY-X GaN-based digital AESA radar that it plans to bring to market next year for long-range surveillance and search, Brad Hicks, company\u00a0vice president for Mission Systems and Training, said. Historically, it “takes seven years to bring a large scale radar to market,” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Lockheed has recently, routinely demonstrated it can bring a new radar to the field within a few years, according to Hicks, citing the Q-53 radar which was born from an urgent operational needs request and fielded in under three years to units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also noted the current pace Lockheed is on to deliver the Long Range Discrimination Radar in Alaska by 2020 and to operationalize Space Fence for the Air Force in the Kwajalein Atoll by 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the Army\u2019s radar replacement, “we think we can deliver the radar pretty darn quick once we understand the requirements and go through the competition. It won\u2019t take the war fighter seven years to get it,” Hicks said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hicks also stressed that while the Army is debating whether to replace the Patriot radar or upgrade it, Lockheed believes the service should start with a clean sheet design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We believe the Army really needs to take a hard look at a new radar to meet the requirements for the future. It\u2019s the right time to do it. We believe that modifying existing radar is, one, being able to do a competition around it would be very hard because the Army doesn\u2019t own all the rights and, two, is you are still architecting an old radar and trying to upgrade it,” Hicks said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Taking a clean sheet, you want this radar to last, be upgradeable and scalable for the next 30 to 40 years,” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Email: jjudson@defensenews.com<\/a>Twitter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n@JenJudson<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Possible Patriot Radar Replacement Competition Heats Up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":114072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":129,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,14,129,30],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3330],"class_list":["post-60301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-land","category-space-missile-defense","category-smr"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"ARMN3L5T5RBH7DGISZAN74XGCU","arc_canonical_url":"\/smr\/space-missile-defense\/2016\/08\/16\/possible-patriot-radar-replacement-competition-heats-up\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n