Precision sensors like the Raytheon SPY-6 radar can help defend U.S. Navy warships from anti-ship missiles

April 15, 2021
SPY-6 combines the ability to track and help destroy enemy drones, attack aircraft, cruise missiles, and long-range incoming ballistic missiles.

WASHINGTON – Descending from high altitudes at lethal speeds guided by precision sensors, technically improved enemy ballistic missiles increasingly can hold large surface warships and even groups of vessels at risk. Kris Osborn at The National Interest reports. Continue reading original article

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

15 April 2021 -- Many of these threats, to include long-range anti-ship missiles, can travel hundreds of miles to their targets, moving beyond the horizon toward surface ships challenged to detect the approaching weapon with line-of-sight radar systems.

Recognizing the seriousness of these threats, which are increasing quickly, the Navy is working with industry partners like Raytheon to integrate a family of new radar systems across a wide swath of its surface fleet. The goal is not only to arm surface ships with a new generation of sensitive discriminating radar, but also to network these radar systems together.

This way one ship's radar can detect targets from beyond the horizon and share the information with vulnerable ships miles away to give ship commanders time to choose the best response. These new radars are called the SPY-6 -- the most powerful of which is being designed into the Navy’s USS Jack Lucas (DDG 125), a Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

Related: BAE Systems to provide sensor fusion-based missile seekers for Lockheed Martin LRASM in $60 million contract

Related: Navy orders radar-guided Harpoon anti-ship missile with GPS guidance kit for in-flight navigation changes

Related: DRS Laurel to build 59 more AN/SPQ-9B shipboard missile-defense radar systems for cruisers and destroyers

John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics

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