WASHINGTON — The first antenna array for the U.S. Army’s Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor passed through initial testing at Raytheon’s Massachusetts-based facility, and it will embark on future testing at an outdoor range in the short term, a company official told Defense News.

The antenna array went into an indoor, climate-controlled test range, and its performance was evaluated against simulated targets, Bob Kelley, Raytheon’s director of domestic integrated air and missile defense programs for business development and strategy, said during a March 16 interview.

The technology “came out fantastic on the other side,” he added.

Now the array will be mounted on a precision-machined enclosure for integration, Kelley said, and then it will head to a range for testing with real-world targets such as air traffic coming in and out of Boston’s Logan International Airport.

Raytheon is plowing ahead with an aggressive schedule to deliver the first LTAMDS radar to the Army next year. So far it’s on track and on schedule.

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