Interview: Rear Adm. Pete Fanta, Director of Surface Warfare, N96

January 14, 2016

Raytheon is developing the Air Missile Defense Radar for the Flight III destroyers, which you’re to begin construction on this year. Are you happy with what you’re seeing?

It is absolutely on track. The initial indications are that it’s working very well. The software development is on track. The question is will we hit something we haven’t seen? The same technology is being used on the Air Force radar and the Marines’ new radar and just about every other radar that’s going on every modern platform in the world. It really is how I take that radar face, the drivers for it and the software and integrate it with a weapons control system for the Aegis system. I’m on track right now for the install, and we’re starting construction of the ship that will have the radar in 2016.

Congress just appropriated funding for two more modernizations, but you still have a number of ships not in the modernization plan. How many are left out right now?

The thing I’m really looking at is the rate of modernization. If I just build new I won’t have a high-end modernized fleet before about 2035. If I modernize at one a year it moves into the late 20s. If I modernize at two a year it moves into the mid-20s, if I modernize at three a year it moves into the early 20s.

My threshold for modernized or new construction is about 40 of what we call integrated air missile defense ships. The ability to shoot down both an incoming ballistic missile while also looking for that incoming cruise missile. And every threat parameter I see out there in the next 10 years or so tells me I have to have that capability in numbers by the early to mid-20s. That would drive me towards about three modernizations a year if I can get there, two at a minimum.

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