Raytheon Missile & Defense is pushing ahead with work under a $250 million Navy contract that will field the SPY-6(V)1 air-missile defense radar (AMDR) on board two more Flight III Arleigh Burke–class guided-missile destroyers (DDGs), the eighth and ninth Flight IIIs in the class. The new business unit was created as part of the merger of Raytheon and United Technologies.
SPY-6(V) work continues at the company’s Radar Development Facility in Andover, Massachusetts. An engineering development model went through extensive testing at the Pacific Missile Test Range in Hawaii and at the Surface Combat Systems Center in Virginia.
The SPY-6(V)1 is the centerpiece of a dramatic rebuild and reengineering of the Flight III destroyers, which started with the future Jack H. Lucas (DDG-125). Shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries authenticated the keel for the ship, the official start of construction, in November 2019. In early March, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works started work on the future Louis H. Wilson Jr. (DDG-126).
As the SPY-6(V)1 moved to maturity in the past year, the Navy decided to field variants of the radar on carriers, amphibious ships, and the FFG(X) and to backfit it on Flight IIA DDGs (pennants 79 through 124 as well as 127).
Introduction of the new radar represents a once-in-a-generation replacement of a baseline surface ship system, the Aegis SPY-1(V) phased-array radar, several variants of which are in service on the 22 Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruisers and all 67 Arleigh Burke–class DDGs. The Navy’s selection of Raytheon’s AMDR proposal in October 2013 over Lockheed Martin’s candidate stunned the Navy acquisition community, because Lockheed Martin and its corporate antecedents had built the SPY-1 for the entire Aegis fleet since the 1970s.
Raytheon attributed the AMDR win in part to the introduction of gallium nitride semiconductor technology in place of silicon in the system’s transmit-receive modules. The company says the new material enables order-of-magnitude increases in signal processing speed, considered a nonnegotiable requirement for the radar for 360-degree detection and targeting of high-velocity ballistic and antiship missiles. Gallium nitride’s superior performance allows the engineers to use less of it, thereby achieving significant weight savings, the company says.
The transmit-receive modules are the system’s foundation, which can be assembled in varying configurations for the different sized ships.
The baseline SPY-6(V)1 is destined for the Flight III DDGs, which will face the most demanding mission—ballistic-missile defense (BMD)—as well as defense against cruise missiles and airborne and surface threats. The (V)1 configuration comprises four array faces, each composed of 37 8-cubic-foot radar module assemblies (RMAs). The Navy expects the system to achieve initial operating capability in 2023.
The America-class amphibious assault ships and Nimitz-class aircraft carriers will get SPY-6(V)2—the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR), a rotating radar that uses nine RMAs for cruise-missile, antiair, and antiship-missile defense, as well as air-traffic control. The first (V)2 system will go on board the future America-class Bougainville (LHA-8). The (V)3 AMDR is a three-array-face variant of the EASR for Gerald R. Ford–class CVNs and the future frigate.
The system is scaled up for the (V)4 for the Flight IIA DDGs, with four array faces and 24 RMAs for the BMD mission, as well as defense against cruise missiles, airborne threats, jamming, and electronic warfare.
Company officials note that the extended configurations could readily be engineered because the building-block RMAs are common to all, mixed and matched to ship class requirements, and all variants use the same software programs developed and tested extensively for the (V)1.
The radar is only one component of the combat system, which Lockheed Martin will continue to provide—Aegis Baseline 10. The two companies are coordinating integration at the Combat Systems Engineering Development site near Lockheed Martin’s Moorestown, New Jersey, facility—the longtime home of the SPY-1.