On a project for the United States Army, Raytheon completed a live-fire engagement with its 360-degree Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) this week, proving the radar’s developmental progress.
With its operational capability up for assessment by year’s end, the system is in crunch time, as the defense contractor pushes to show off what it calls the next generation of air and missile defense radar. LTAMDS is an advanced, active electronically scanned array powered by gallium nitride. It can track manned and unmanned aircraft, as well as incoming threats like cruise missile, ballistic missiles and hypersonics.
“When the LTAMDS contract was awarded four years ago, this was what we told the Army we would deliver: the world’s most advanced and highly capable air and missile defense radar,” Tom Laliberty, president of land and air defense systems at Raytheon, said. “Seeing LTAMDS come to life is not only gratifying to the scores of experts who designed and developed it, but it reaffirms the commitment we made to deliver this exceptional radar to air defenders around the globe. We’re now closer than ever to doing just that.”
This come to life moment consisted of a test with a cruise missile surrogate flying as a representative threat. LTAMDS successfully acquired and tracked that target before passing it to the Integrated Battle Command System for launch command, and ultimately guided a PAC-3 missile to intercept it. The whole exercise took place at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico.
In October 2019, when the affiliated contract for these systems was struck, six radars were called for, and at this point, all six have finished production. All are now in various stages of testing, and will continue that testing into 2024, including environmental and mobility qualification, and expanded system testing.