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Patriot’s AESA radar soon to be ready for production 41410154.


| 2015
Defence & Security News - (Raytheon)
 
Patriot’s AESA radar soon to be ready for production
The Patriot air defence system will soon be ready to be equipped with an AESA radar. Raytheon has recently completed a series of engineering milestones of the internally funded Gallium Nitride (GaN) based AESA technology. Its engineers are currently constructing a full-size main panel radar array and will have a full-scale demonstrator at the beginning of 2016.
     
Patriot’s AESA radar soon to be ready for production
Patriot's new Gallium Nitride AESA  technology radar (Source: Raytheon)
     

This technology will provide 360-degrees of coverage and will be able to located simultaneous and diverse threats whether they are drones and aircrafts or ballistic and cruise missiles. The US Armed Forces and the 22 other nations that currently field Patriot air defence systems, as well as potential buyers, such as Poland, will benefit from the new technology. Further to its new capabilities, the GaN AESA radar has 50% less maintenance costs.

The Raytheon-built GaN-based AESA Patriot uses three antenna arrays mounted on a mobile radar shelter to provide 360-degrees of radar coverage. The main AESA array is a bolt-on replacement antenna for the current Gallium Arsenide based antenna. The GaN-based AESA array measures roughly 9' wide x 13' tall, and is oriented toward the primary threat. Patriot's new rear panel arrays are a quarter the size of the main array and let the system look behind and to the sides of the main array, enabling Patriot to engage threats in all directions.

Earlier this year, Raytheon built a GaN-based AESA Patriot rear-panel array, integrated it with the current Patriot radar using the existing, recently modernized, back-end processing hardware and software, and tracked targets of opportunity to seamlessly create a 360-degree view.

The recently accomplished milestones include:

  • Completing construction of the AESA main array structure.
  • Constructing the AESA arrays' radar shelter.
  • Integrating receivers and a radar digital processor into the radar shelter.
  • Delivering the shelter to Raytheon's test facility in Pelham, N.H.
  • Testing the radar's cooling sub-system.
Raytheon's GaN-based AESA Patriot radar will work with future open architecture as Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System and retains backwards compatibility with the current Patriot Engagement Control Station.  It is also fully interoperable with NATO.
 

 

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