By Geoff Fein
The Marine Corps’ Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR), a three dimensional, Humvee-mounted radar designed to detect rockets, artillery and mortars, completed its system functional review (SFR) and is now preparing for preliminary design review (PDR) in early ’08.
G/ATOR is an effort to replace 11 existing Marine Corps radars, Anne Sandel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Integrated Warfare Systems (DASN IWS), told Defense Daily yesterday in an interview.
“It’s their first 3-D high mobility radar. It’s a significant leap in technology within the S-Band community,” she said.
G/ATOR replaces five legacy systems and will be delivered with one hardware solution in four increments, according to the Navy.
By combining all the functionality of the legacy radars together into one system, the Marine Corps will be taking and leveraging bits and pieces of those older systems, Sandel said.
Increment I is short range air defense and air surveillance. Increment II addresses Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) counter fire/targeting missions. Increment III incorporates tactical enhancements of the air mission requirement and Increment IV will support air traffic control missions, according to the Navy.
“So every sensor that the Marine Corps currently has, or will have a requirement for, will be addressed by this system,” Sandel said. “It’s very significant, but very achievable.”
G/ATOR should also provide the Marine Corps with cost savings, she added.
Legacy systems often face issues with obsolescence and the cost of maintaining and repairing these systems is more than the cost of combining all the functionality, Sandel explained.
“So it’s a cost avoidance as much as it is a cost savings. You are not pouring money into trying and keeping something working that’s not giving you the additional capability that you require,” se said.
Each of the Increments will include some software and some hardware upgrades, Sandel noted.
“It depends on how challenging that increment is that they are going to add a new requirement to,” she said. “Some of it is a lot of software to have a different interface, some of it is additional trailers, additional power requirements.”
Northrop Grumman [NOC] was awarded the $256 million G/ATOR contract in March. The company was originally awarded the contract in September 2005. However, Lockheed Martin [LMT], Raytheon [RTN] and Technovative Applications all filed protests with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) over the contract award. A fourth company, ITT [ITT], did not protest the award (Defense Daily, April 4).
In November 2005, the Marine Corps issued a revised G/ATOR solicitation. However, the competition was only open to Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Technovative Applications, and ITT, the Marine Corps said at the time (Defense Daily, Nov. 10, 2005).
Although there was some schedule movement to the right, Sandel noted that since the award took place, the Navy has met all the requirements.
“We are going to have first delivery and IOC (initial operational capability) will be in FY ’12,” she said.
Full operational capability, of all the increments, will be in FY ’17, Sandel added.
Sixty-five systems will eventually be delivered to the fleet, according to the Navy.
Sandel noted there were some who questioned why the Navy would choose S-Band radar for G/ATOR.
“One of the many pros is that Northrop Grumman has had tremendous success with S-Band radar work that we are able to leverage and bring to bear in a different environment,” she said. “And, we are going to have the ability to reflect the usage of the TR (transmit receive) modules we are developing for the Cobra Judy Replacement. The S-Band [radar] will also be tested in the environment necessary for G/ATOR, [so] we are leveraging learning there.”