The Navy in October awarded Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems a $385.7 million contract for engineering and modeling development (EMD) and design, development, integration, and delivery of an S-band radar and radar-suite controller (RSC) for the air- and missile-defense radar (AMDR), planned as the primary air-defense sensor on board “Flight III” Arleigh Burke–class destroyers. The Flight III Burke program is expected to start in Fiscal Year 2015.
In Navy plans, the new Burkes will be the Fleet’s primary platforms for defense against both antiship weapons and ballistic missiles, projected to be critical threats in coming years.
The Burke class now is going through an extensive combat-systems modernization that includes significant computer hardware and software enhancements to the ships’ SPY-1D(v) Aegis air-defense radar to provide a ballistic-missile defense capability. Under current Navy thinking, DDG-123, not yet named, will be the first Flight III ship.
Navy officials say though that the Fleet eventually will need to replace the Aegis radar with an AMDR. The new radar system, with a 14-foot-wide aperture, will integrate S-band and X-band radars with the RSC for threat detection and engagement.
The S-band radar conducts wide-area volume search, tracking, ballistic-missile detection, and missile communication. The X-band system provides precision tracking, horizon search, discrimination, communication, and terminal-target illumination. The RSC coordinates resource allocation between the two radars and the ship’s combat system.
The Navy awarded AMDR study contracts to Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and longtime Aegis prime contractor Lockheed Martin in June 2009. In September 2010 the three companies received technology-development contracts to refine their designs. Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman also submitted proposals for the EMD award.
Kevin Peppe, Raytheon vice president for Seapower Capability Systems, said that “some may be surprised” that Raytheon won the EMD contract. “I don’t share that surprise.” He cited the company’s extensive experience in building and integrating ship sensors and combat systems, including the SPY-3 dual-band radar, which consists of X- and S-band radars for the new Zumwalt-class destroyer.
In late October, Lockheed Martin filed a protest of the award with the Government Accountability Office, stating that the company “submitted a technically compliant solution at a very affordable price. We do not believe the merits of our offering were properly considered during the evaluation process.” The GAO is expected to rule on the protest by late January.
Raytheon’s AMDR team includes General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, which is developing the digital receiver/exciter; Anaren, responsible for beamforming; and CGR Technologies, TTM Technologies, and Major Tool & Machine Inc.
Tad Dickenson, Raytheon’s director of above-water sensors, said that the key to the company’s approach is the use of gallium nitride as the “enabling technology” for development of the AMDR transmit-receive modules. He said that Raytheon has invested more than $100 million in development of gallium nitride for use in the fabrication of monolithic microwave integrated circuits, or MMICs, which multiply performance efficiency while permitting substantial reductions in module size and weight.
“Gallium nitride is a very efficient technology—the efficiencies you get in the power amplifier allow you to build a smaller radar with greater power.”
Dickenson also pointed out that the company’s AMDR approach achieves a significant level of open-architecture modularity that, through the use of gallium nitride–based modules, permits a design that can be “scalable” for integration into other sensor systems, thereby allowing the company to reduce both the cost of integrating modules into systems and unit costs.
Peppe added that the scalability of modules allows Raytheon to exploit the “identicality” of module design, to leverage buying power and realize significant cost reductions.
The AMDR award calls for Raytheon to build, integrate, and test the S-band radar and RSC engineering-development models. The first six months following the award will lead to preliminary reviews to finalize the concept design.
The program then will move to critical design reviews for hardware and software, followed by delivery of the first full-up phased array configured for the Flight III ship for testing at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii. The company expects to receive options for low-rate initial production in 2017. Eventually, production options could bring the value of the award to more than $1.6 billion, according to Raytheon.