By Geoff Fein
Earlier this month, Raytheon [RTN] unveiled its latest naval self-defense radar technology–the AN/SPY-5, phased-array system, which can track more targets compared to dish arrays and simultaneous threat illumination, according to a company official.
The SPY-5 is also “significantly linked to the existing NATO SeaSparrow systems, and the radar’s range, accuracy and beam agility enable the full performance of the Evolved SeaSparrow Missile, Mike Moe, director of surface combatant capability, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
[SPY-5] really brings additional capability to those missiles,” he said.
The radar is being developed at the company’s Seapower Capability Center (SCC), in Portsmouth, R.I. Moe said the pre-production engineering development model (EDM) work is being done at SCC.
“We are not creating a completely new system from top to bottom, but the array is what we focused our internal investments on…to bring a solid state array that will tie in very well with these missile systems,” Moe said. “As we looked at the broad market place there was a clear advantage to offering an affordable radar system in this frequency range.”
And because the SPY-5 is an open architecture system, it can work very well with different combat management systems, he added.
That capability should help Raytheon market the AN/SPY-5 to international customers, Moe noted.
On the United States side, Raytheon sees the potential of SPY-5 because of the wide use of both the Sea Sparrow system and ESSM, in particular on big deck amphibious ships and aircraft carriers, he said.
“We see the potential there to upgrade those systems with an open architecture, COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) approach in a solid state passive,” Moe said.
SPY-5’s size, weight and overall self-defense capabilities make it equally well suited for smaller navy ships with a displacement of less than 1,000 tons as well as large-deck aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, according to a statement from the company.
On the international side, Moe said there is a lot of opportunity to provide SPY-5 for smaller classes of frigates and patrol craft that would have a compatible combat management system, because of the open architecture approach.
“I think it will do well for itself over time, if you have an open system that you can provide at an affordable level and provide additional capability and meet what we think is a need in the market,” he said.
“The international market…that’s the market we are looking at. There are a lot of countries that have their own indigenous platforms that they could certainly take advantage of this small affordable radar,” Moe added. “And some countries that have ships they have leased or bought from us in the past…this would also fit very nicely as an upgrade.”
The initial light off was at Raytheon’s Rhode Island facility and the pre-production system was brought to SCC in July, Moe said. “We will continue to do further development through this next year here, working towards hopefully a market place that will see great value as they to add this to their combat management system.”
The other thing, Moe pointed out, is that a majority of the radar components have already been built, proven, and deployed–components such as the below deck Mk 73 solid-state transmitter system and the Mk 30 processor.
“That’s the advantage you have in this thing to keep the affordability factor. You can take advantage of that in an open architecture environment, integrate that with the new passive solid state array, and achieve the capability [you] are looking for,” he said. “We are doing all that here and will continue to evolve that with additional work in the pre-production system as we go through this next 12 to 14 months.”
SPY-5 can provide a full 360-degrees of coverage depending on whether three or four faces are used. Each face has a 120-degree “view,” Moe said. “It provides you a full hemisphere of coverage.”
And SPY-5 can track up to 80 targets per face, he added.
“Because it is a passive solid state array as compared to the old dish arrays, you don’t have the single target issue. In other words, the dish array working against the threat medium,” Moe explained. “On a per face basis, you can get up to 80 tracks…80 targets per face. That’s a significant improvement there.”