Northrop Grumman [NOC] announced Tuesday it has completed a successful demonstration of its offering for the Army’s next radar for the Patriot air and missile defense system, as the service looks to move the program to a prototype award this fall.
The company completed a test of its offering for the Army’s Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense System (LTAMDS) during a two-week “sense-off” at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico that wrapped up this past Saturday, with plans to to deliver its final proposal for evaluation in the coming weeks.
“Our mature, gallium nitride-based design demonstrated an advanced system with our current capabilities aligned with the Army’s requirements,” Christine Harbison, vice president of Northrop Grumman’s Land and Svionics C4ISR division, said in a statement. “Our solution supports the need for rapid deployment with an architecture that allows for significant margin of capability growth to protect our warfighters today and in the rapidly changing threat environment.”
LTAMDS is the Army’s effort to replace the Patriot’s radar, currently built by Raytheon [RTN], after Army officials determined incremental upgrades may not provide the necessary capability to handle future threats.
Raytheon announced in May it had completed a demonstration of its offering at the “sense-off,” and Lockheed Martin [LMT] has previously confirmed it is slated to participate in a demonstration as well (Defense Daily, May 21).
Northrop Grumman noted its offering includes 360-degree full-sector mission capability, as well as an embedded logistics capability to enable improved sustainability of the radar over the course of the program.
Army officials in May detailed plans to award a prototype contract for LTAMDS in September to one vendor for six test systems to be fielded in FY ’22, with an eventual follow-on production contract for 16 radars “upon completion of a successful prototype” (Defense Daily, May 16).