Raytheon [RTN] announced Tuesday it has completed a demonstration of its offering for the Army’s next radar for the Patriot air and missile defense system.
The demonstration of Raytheon’s offering for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) program took place at a two-week “sense-off” event at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, as the Army looks to move the effort towards a prototype contract this fall.
LTAMDS is intended to replace the Patriot’s current radar, which is built by Raytheon, after Army officials determined incremental upgrades may not provide the necessary capability to handle future threats.
“Raytheon’s clean-sheet approach and decades-long investments in gallium nitride technology allowed us to demonstrate and deliver a mature solution that will meet the Army’s initial operational capability,” Tom Laliberty, vice president for Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems business, said in a statement.
Company officials said the demonstration included tracking threat-representative targets to showcase the system’s mission capabilities and validate maturity of the system design.
Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] are also slated to participate in the sense-off to demonstrate their own radar offerings.
Last week, the Army detailed plans to award a contract in September for one vendor to build six test LTAMDS 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).