Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems through the summer is continuing assembly of an engineering-manufacturing development (EMD) model of the SPY-6 air- and missile-defense radar (AMDR), which eventually will be fielded as the centerpiece of the combat system for future Arleigh Burke–class destroyers. The system also potentially could go aboard other surface combatants, aircraft carriers, and amphibious-assault ships.
Tad Dickenson, director and manager of the company’s AMDR program, said the EMD model, which is a production-representative SPY-6, then will be integrated and tested at the company’s Sudbury, Massachusetts, facility through late 2015, with completion of that work expected by March of next year.
The SPY-6 will be fielded on board the Flight III variants of the Burke DDGs, beginning with the second ship to be funded in Fiscal Year 2016—now expected to be DDG-124. The new radar will replace the SPY-1(v) phased-array radar, long the primary sensor in the Aegis combat system for the Burkes and Ticonderoga-class cruisers. The AMDR, integrated with the Aegis system on board the Flight III ships, will conduct surveillance, target detection, and tracking for defense against both ballistic missiles and advanced high-speed antiship missiles.
Raytheon won the contract for AMDR engineering and modeling development, design, development, integration, and delivery of the AMDR S-band radar and radar-suite controller in late 2013 in an intense competition with Lockheed Martin, longtime builder of the SPY-1 and design agent for the Aegis combat system.
In May, the AMDR went through a successful Navy critical design review, a comprehensive evaluation of progress achieved during the EMD phase that started in January 2014.
Dickenson said the EMD included risk-reduction analysis carried out by inserting a radar modular assembly (RMA)—essentially a stand-alone AMDR measuring two feet high, wide, and deep—that includes transmit-receive modules and a radar exciter, into a pilot radar array to conduct hardware, software, and integration testing.
Raytheon is working as part of a collaborative Combat Systems Working Group with the Navy and Lockheed Martin to develop the interfaces required between the Aegis combat system and the AMDR. In that effort, Raytheon’s AMDR team has delivered an initial set of external combat-system interface definition language modules, which will serve to integrate the radar with the Aegis system.
The working-group effort will use the modules for development of the enhanced combat system, designated Advanced Capability Build 20, the next in a series of ACBs that represent upgrades to the Aegis system.
Raytheon stresses that scalability—the flexibility to configure varying numbers of RMAs as complete AMDR systems for a range of ship types—is a key element of the development and systems-integration effort. An AMDR, Dickenson said, essentially consists of a number of RMAs integrated and synchronized within the radar array. For example, nine RMAs “stacked” would be capable of the same degree of radar sensitivity as the SPY-1. The system planned for the new Burkes would be considerably larger, and thus far more sensitive than the SPY-1 now in service, he added.
A major factor in achieving AMDR scalability, according to the company, is the use of gallium nitride (GaN) for fabrication of the semiconductors for the system, called monolithic microwave integrated circuits, or MMICs. Radio-frequency amplifiers that use GaN semiconductors, according to Raytheon, are five times more sensitive than those using conventional semiconductors.
Raytheon now is inserting GaN devices into several systems in addition to AMDR, including the air-defense radar for the Army’s Patriot air-defense system and the Navy’s next-generation jammer.
The current Raytheon AMDR program will provide S-band capability for search, tracking, cueing, missile communication, surveillance for self-defense, and kill assessment. The Navy originally planned that the system also would include an X-band radar for horizon and surface search, navigation, and periscope detection and discrimination. However, the Navy has deferred development of the AMDR X-band segment and will use the SPQ-9B surface-search target-detection radar to perform the X-band function for AMDR for the initial Flight III ships.
Dickenson points out that the “back-end” processing for the EMD model at Sudbury is already completed. The company then will carry out development testing, consisting of verification of requirements for the system hardware-configuration items. The radar then will be shipped to the Pacific Missile Test Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, for final system integration.
Further development testing, consisting of overall system verification, will be completed by 2017.