Raytheon is promoting a new series of air defense radars at the Farnborough Airshow that it claims can detect air threats at greater distances and higher velocities, from any direction, including ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The first radars are being supplied to the U.S. Army as the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS). The range is classified, but Raytheon is marketing lower-cost medium-range versions for export, branded GhostEye. Poland will be the first overseas customer. Raytheon said that more than a dozen other countries have expressed formal interest.
“It’s transformational,” Bill Patterson, LTAMDS executive director for Raytheon Missiles and Defense told AIN. “It’s a solid-state AESA radar with three antennas that constantly views 360 degrees using gallium nitride [GaN processors] for tremendous power efficiency.” Raytheon has built its own GaN foundry in Massachusetts and Patterson said the technology will find increasing military applications. In that case, GaN strengthens the radar’s signal, enhances its sensitivity, and increases its reliability.
Last April, Raytheon shipped the first LTAMDS to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for testing by the U.S. Army. It is the first of six such radars being delivered this year. Patterson said they will integrate easily with the Army’s new C2 network and Patriot PAC2 and PAC3 surface-to-air missiles and with new interceptors that the Army might introduce. “It can also be used to command non-kinetic effects,” Patterson added. The radar operates in C-band.
GhostEye will be an evolving family of radars, according to Raytheon. The first of them uses one of the LTAMDS secondary arrays on a rotator and is designed to work with the National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System (NASAMS) that Raytheon co-developed with Kongsberg of Norway and that has entered widespread use, launching a variety of missiles against air-breathing threats. “It is approved for export to all the Patriot partners,” Patterson said.