SNA 2016: Raytheon's SPY-6 Air and Missile Defense Radar program reaches milestone

Raytheon Company announced its AN/SPY-6(V) Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) team has completed the first full radar array, fully populated with component Line Replaceable Units (LRUs), including more than 5,000 Transmit/Receive elements, in 140 days.

Raytheon's AMDR AN/SPY-6(v) showcased on an Arleigh Burke Flight III guided missile destroyer (DDG 51) scale model at SNA 16

In less than two years, the radar has been designed, built and transitioned to test; the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the program is now more than 66 percent complete. The program remains on track to begin production and deliver on time to the FY16 authorized DDG 51 Flight III destroyer.

"As each milestone is completed, development of the SPY-6 radar progresses on schedule," said U.S. Navy Captain Seiko Okano, major program manager, Above Water Sensors (IWS 2.0). "With this array, now built and operational in the Near Field Range, we're proceeding to plan and commencing full-scale integration and test of AMDR's unprecedented capability."

Subcontractor Major Tool and Machine delivered the array structure to Raytheon's Near Field Range on July 29; and Raytheon installed all passive RF components before September 1. The first Radar Modular Assembly (RMA) was powered up in October and testing began. All RMA chassis were installed by October 16, complete with cooling, power, fiber-optic control and data interfaces. In 79 days the array infrastructure was complete – verification of the simplicity of the AMDR array design. Population of the array with Transmit Receive Integrated Multi-channel Modules and Distributed Receiver/Exciter LRUs completed on December 16.

These recent achievements are among the many successes and milestones realized to date, including:

- Nine of nine major program milestones completed on schedule, including hardware and software Critical - Design Reviews and the Development Test Event 2 (DT-2) Readiness Review
- Transition to DT-2 - currently in process, culminating in 2016 with verification of hardware level specifications to requirements and shipment of the array to the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii for system validation testing (DT-3)
- Completed Build 2 software early, with all planned functionality (30 capabilities), formally qualified in July 2016; Build 3 is more than 75% percent complete
- 95% of EMD hardware production is complete; awaiting final power systems delivery in early 2016

"Our solid performance leverages our high-power AESA radar and digital beam-forming expertise and our collaborative partnerships with the Navy and a network of dedicated suppliers," said Tad Dickenson, Raytheon's AMDR program director. "Benefits in productivity, quality and affordability continue to be realized as a result of our mature Agile development methodology. In fact, the AMDR software development team achieved a greater than 99 percent pass rate at system test, all driven by Agile processes for early and incremental testing and defect identification."

SPY-6(V) is the next-generation integrated air and ballistic missile defense radar for the U.S. Navy, filling a critical capability gap for the surface fleet. It is the first scalable radar, built with RMAs - radar building blocks. Each RMA, roughly 2' x 2' x 2' in size, is a standalone radar that can be grouped to build any size radar aperture, from a single RMA to configurations larger than currently fielded radars. All cooling, power, command logic and software are scalable, allowing for new instantiations without significant radar development costs.