WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has awarded Raytheon Applied sciences a contract value as much as $3.16 billion to offer radars for as many as 31 ships over the subsequent 5 years.
The award covers the household of SPY-6 radars, which incorporates the massive V1 Air and Missile Protection Radar that might be put in on new Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, in addition to smaller and rotating variants that can go on plane carriers, amphibious ships, frigates and older destroyers.
If all of the choices within the contract had been exercised, that may carry Raytheon’s complete to 46 radars offered to Navy ships, in response to Scott Spence, an government director for naval radars on the firm.
Spence instructed reporters April 1 that the household of radars had been modular and scalable, which implies the corporate can use the identical array modules to construct all 4 variants, as massive because the V1 that has 4 faces of 37 Radar Modular Assemblies every, and as small because the V2 Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar that has a single nine-RMA rotating face. It additionally means there might be a diminished price all through the deliberate 40-year lifetime of the radars.
Sustainment price might be “significantly diminished,” he defined, attributable to widespread coaching, widespread spare components and customary software program updates that can be capable of add new capabilities to all 4 variants with no further integration issues.
Spence stated the SPY-6 was already a terrific technological enchancment over the legacy SPY-1 radar.
Navy operators “want the larger detection ranges [and] elevated sensitivity, particularly in contested environments — you get a extremely contested setting, you want a radar that may see by means of all that muddle and be capable of detect these targets at nice distances and provides the warfighter extra time to react, and decide precisely what they’re taking a look at after which learn how to defeat these explicit threats,” he stated.
Ken Spurlock, the necessities and capabilities director for strategic engagement methods at Raytheon, stated throughout the presentation that SPY-6 permits Navy ships to take fuller benefit of the potential and vary of the Normal Missile household of methods, additionally constructed by Raytheon.
“What SPY-6 permits us to do is, mainly, it provides us the pliability to have interaction that max vary, so now you could have some choices on how we have interaction the menace,” he stated, including it additionally gives “higher readability on what we’re taking pictures at so we don’t must waste rounds.”
Spence stated Raytheon has a typical manufacturing line for the RMAs, which then go to 2 separate meeting areas for the massive V1 and V4 radars in addition to the smaller V2 and V3 radars.
The corporate is already ready to accommodate the total quantity of labor included within the contract award and its choices, he stated. The corporate at this time builds at a tempo of three V1 radars a 12 months, and that may basically double to fulfill the total workload underneath the brand new contract.
“We’ve hit our stride, production-wise,” Spence stated of the work already taking place underneath two smaller SPY-6 contracts, noting the corporate was already delivering V1 radars for brand spanking new destroyers and would begin delivering smaller radars for plane carriers subsequent.
The V1 Air and Missile Protection Radar is essentially the most refined within the household and is a centerpiece of the Flight III destroyer design.
The V2 EASR is a small, rotating radar that can go on amphibious ships and might be backfit onto Nimitz-class carriers.
V3 has three fastened faces of 9 RMAs every. It’ll go on the brand new Ford-class carriers and the Constellation-class frigates.
The V4 radar has 4 faces of 24 RMAs every and might be backfit onto Flight IIA Arleigh Burke destroyers as a part of the DDG Mod 2.0 improve program.
Megan Eckstein is the naval warfare reporter at Protection Information. She has lined army information since 2009, with a give attention to U.S. Navy and Marine Corps operations, acquisition packages, and budgets. She has reported from 4 geographic fleets and is happiest when she’s submitting tales from a ship. Megan is a College of Maryland alumna.