Raytheon’s Air & Missile Defense Radar tracks simultaneous missile targets for the first time

Raytheon‘s AN/SPY-6(V) Air and Missile Defense Radar acquired and tracked multiple threat-representative targets simultaneously during its third dedicated flight test at the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii. 

The Air and Missile Defense Radar (AN/SPY-6[V]) is the US Navy’s next generation integrated air and missile defence radar, .advancing through development and on track for the DDG-51 FLIGHT III destroyer.

Test success proved AN/SPY-6(V) integrated air and missile defence performance against a short-range ballistic missile target and multiple anti-ship cruise missile targets. The radar searched for, detected and tracked all targets from launch throughout their flights. The test demonstrated the radar’s sensitivity and resource management, a critical multi-mission capability to extend the battlespace and safeguard the fleet from multiple threats.

“The speed, range, trajectory and complexity of multiple targets proved no match for AN/SPY-6 – it acquired and tracked them all,” said Raytheon’s Tad Dickenson, AN/SPY-6(V) Program Director. “It was truly gratifying for our government-Raytheon team to see the culmination of our engineering efforts in action, and achieve our third straight success.”

“This radar was specifically designed to handle ballistic missiles and cruise missiles simultaneously and it’s doing just that,” US Navy Cpt. Seiko Okano, Major Program Manager for Above Water Sensors, Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems, continued. “AMDR is successfully demonstrating performance in a series of increasingly difficult test events and is on track to deliver advanced capability to the navy’s first FLIGHT III Destroyer.”

Successes for AN/SPY-6 continue to stack up, following its second ballistic missile test flight in July. The radar has now demonstrated its performance against an array of singular and simultaneous live targets of increasing complexity, including integrated air and missile defence targets of opportunity, satellites and aircraft.

Thanks to gallium-nitride-based technology, the new radar is many times more capable than the current AN/SPY-1 that is installed on the current generation of ARLEIGH BURKE–class destroyers and TICONDEROGA-class missile cruisers. Indeed, compared to the SPY-1D(V) on the current DDG-51 ships, the SPY-6(V) can spot a target of half the size at twice the distance of the existing radar. The system is, “over 30 times more sensitive than AN/SPY-1D(V) in the Flight III configuration,” according to Raytheon.

The system is completely digital and software programmable, based on commercial computer hardware, which means that the SPY-6(V) can easily be adapted for the future. The SPY-6 (V) is capable of, “adaptive digital beamforming and radar signal/data processing functionality provides exceptional capability in adverse conditions, such as high-clutter and jamming environments,” according to Raytheon. “It is also reprogrammable to adapt to new missions or emerging threats.”

DPM