HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The competition is heating up for two missile defense industry giants Lockheed Martin and Raytheon as the Army's deadline for accepting future integrated air-and-missile defense radar concepts from industry came to a close Monday.
Both companies are promising radar designs that can be fielded quickly and at agreeable price tags.
The Army has long grappled with when and how it will replace its current air-and-missile defense system — Raytheon's Patriot — first fielded in 1982. And, at one point, planned to bring on the Lockheed Martin-made Medium Extended Air Defense System as the chosen replacement. But the Army canceled its plans to acquire the system. As part of a trinational development agreement with Germany and Italy, the service finished its proof-of-concept development phase and shelved the technology. Germany still plans to develop and acquire MEADS.
The recent request for information the Army released at the end of July shows it's still figuring out its way forward, at least when it comes to the radar that would detect incoming threats as part of the future integrated system. For instance, the Army doesn't know yet whether it wants to replace the Patriot radar or upgrade it.
"A key objective for the [Lower-Tier Air-and-Missile Defense Sensor] acquisition program is to upgrade or replace the current Patriot radar to improve the operational effectiveness against the emerging threat while reducing sustainment cost associated with the current radar," the service writes in the request for information.
The Army goes on to say it wants a sensor that would be relatively mature — at a technology readiness level of 5 — by the end of fiscal 2017 and would cost less than $50 million per unit.
The service has also said it wants 360 degrees of coverage against possible incoming threats.
Raytheon announced Monday that it had responded to the request for information with a "comprehensive vision for the next generation of air and missile defense radars."
The company unveiled in March at the Association of the US Army's Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, its newest Patriot Gallium Nitride (GaN) Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar.
Raytheon's concept submitted to the Army this week takes advantage of over $200 million in internal investment to develop GaN technology over 16 years, augmented with US government investment over time.
"Raytheon's GaN-based AESA LTAMDS radar is designed to serve as a sensor on the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System network," the company said in a statement, adding it will be "fully interoperable with NATO" and will be backwards compatible with current Patriot systems and any future upgrades to systems owned by 13 countries.
The Northrop Grumman-made IBCS will be the command-and-control system for the Army's future IAMD system.
The company notes it is also capitalizing off of other successful programs such as the US Navy's Next Generation Jammer and the Air and Missile Defense Radar while mentioning that other competitors "may draw on lessons learned from the terminated MEADS air and missile defense project or repeatedly re-baselined naval radars."
Doug Burgess, the director of IAMD AESA programs at Raytheon, said in the statement that the GaN radar's debut at the AUSA show in March shows "there doesn't need to be a wait of a decade or longer to get the sensor of the future. It will be available much, much sooner."
The Army's request for information calls upon industry to help inform them on the feasibility of reaching initial operational capability for a radar prior to fiscal 2028.
Lockheed Martin officials speaking at a media briefing at the start of the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville on Monday also expressed confidence the timeline to field a radar could be much shorter than history has previously dictated.
Lockheed will display at the show its new TPY-X GaN-based digital AESA radar that it plans to bring to market next year for long-range surveillance and search, Brad Hicks, company vice president for Mission Systems and Training, said. Historically, it "takes seven years to bring a large scale radar to market," he added.
But Lockheed has recently, routinely demonstrated it can bring a new radar to the field within a few years, according to Hicks, citing the Q-53 radar which was born from an urgent operational needs request and fielded in under three years to units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also noted the current pace Lockheed is on to deliver the Long Range Discrimination Radar in Alaska by 2020 and to operationalize Space Fence for the Air Force in the Kwajalein Atoll by 2019.
For the Army's radar replacement, "we think we can deliver the radar pretty darn quick once we understand the requirements and go through the competition. It won't take the war fighter seven years to get it," Hicks said.
Hicks also stressed that while the Army is debating whether to replace the Patriot radar or upgrade it, Lockheed believes the service should start with a clean sheet design.
"We believe the Army really needs to take a hard look at a new radar to meet the requirements for the future. It's the right time to do it. We believe that modifying existing radar is, one, being able to do a competition around it would be very hard because the Army doesn't own all the rights and, two, is you are still architecting an old radar and trying to upgrade it," Hicks said.
"Taking a clean sheet, you want this radar to last, be upgradeable and scalable for the next 30 to 40 years," he added.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
