Raytheon Company of Waltham, MA, USA has been awarded a $6m study and demonstration contract by the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) to further develop an enterprise air surveillance radar (EASR) powered by gallium nitride (GaN) technology.
Raytheon’s EASR concept leverages proven Radar Modular Assembly (RMA) architecture matured on Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR). EASR’s flexible approach meets the performance needs of different candidate ship classes for ship self-defense, situational awareness, air traffic control, and weather monitoring.
The Radar Modular Assembly affords EASR the scalability to be used on a variety of ship sizes across a diverse set of mission requirements, ultimately offering reduced total ownership cost across all the EASR-equipped platforms. The RMA has been designed and tested to prove that it operates successfully in the stressing EASR naval marine environments.
“The Navy is committed to leveraging the latest in technology and innovation to stay ahead of evolving threats,” says Paul Ferraro, VP of Advanced Technology Programs for Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) business in Tewksbury, MA. “The next-generation EASR radar program is the latest example of Raytheon’s partnership with ONR to drive advancement and provide affordable best in class solutions,” he adds.
Raytheon claims that it is the world’s largest producer of active phased arrays and has a long history of providing naval radar systems. Its experience as the provider of Dual Band Radar (DBR) and SPS-49 is directly applicable to EASR. Raytheon says that its EASR approach directly benefits the US Government by applying proven technologies and leveraging investment by both the Navy and Raytheon in the ONR Digital Array Radar (DAR) and AMDR programs.