Military & Aerospace Electronics:
U.S. Navy shipboard electronics experts are continuing work to outfit late-model U.S. Navy Arleigh Burke-class (DDG 51) Aegis destroyer with the new AN/SPY-6(V) Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) and AMDR S-band shipboard radar (AMDR-S).
Officials of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington announced a $110.2 million contract modification Tuesday to the Raytheon Co. Integrated Defense Systems segment in Sudbury, Mass., for fiscal 2017 low-rate initial production long-lead material in support of the AMDR and AMDR-S shipboard radar systems, as well as the AMDR radar suite controller.
The Raytheon AMDR will replace the AN/SPY-1 radar that had been standard equipment on Navy Aegis Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers. Long-lead items involve system components that require the longest time to build, which could delay overall system production if money isn’t allocated for production early in the process.
The Raytheon AN/SPY-6(V) AMDR will improve the Burke-class destroyer’s ability to detect hostile aircraft and surface ships, as well as enemy ballistic missiles, Raytheon officials say.
The new radar will provide greater detection ranges, increased discrimination accuracy, higher reliability and sustainability, and lower costs compared to the AN/SPY-1D(V) radar onboard today’s Burke-class destroyers.
The system is built with individual building blocks called radar modular assemblies (RMAs), Raytheon officials say. Each RMA is a self-contained radar in a two-cubic-foot box; RMAs can stack together to form any size array to fit ship mission requirements.
