Northrop Grumman Wins $888M Deal To Develop Advanced Airborne Radar

SPACEWAR

E-767 Airborne Warning and Control System

El Segundo (SPX) May 04, 2004
The U.S. Air Force's ability to track and identify stationary and moving vehicles, and low-flying cruise missiles will increase dramatically using a new airborne radar system being developed by Northrop Grumman.

The company will develop, integrate and test the Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) radar under a new six-year, $888 million contract awarded by the Air Force's Electronic Systems Center.

The contract marks the beginning of Phase II of the MP-RTIP program, also known as the system development and demonstration (SDD) phase. Northrop Grumman, the MP-RTIP prime contractor, designed the radar during Phase I of the program, a three-year, $410 million effort that began in December 2000.

MP-RTIP is a modular, active electronically scanned array radar system that can be scaled in size for integration on manned and unmanned airborne platforms. The Air Force plans to deploy the radar on its RQ-4B Global Hawk unmanned aerial reconnaissance system and the E-10A/Multi-Sensor Command and Control Aircraft (MC2A).

The radar builds on the capabilities of its predecessors, the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) and Global Hawk, and gives commanders the unprecedented ability to simultaneously conduct air-to-air and air-to-ground combat missions over a wide geographic area.

"MP-RTIP's advanced target detection, identification and tracking capabilities are central to helping the E-10A and Global Hawk reach their potential as critical nodes in the Air Force's command and control constellation," said Gary Ervin, sector vice president of Northrop Grumman's Air Combat Systems, a business unit of its Integrated Systems sector.

Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems leads the overall MP-RTIP system development and demonstration effort. The company's Electronic Systems sector is working with Raytheon Space & Airborne Systems to develop and produce the MP-RTIP hardware. Integrated Systems will integrate the radar on both Global Hawk and the E-10A aircraft.

During Phase II, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon will produce six MP-RTIP radar systems: three for Global Hawk, three for the E-10A. The team expects to begin flight-testing the first Global Hawk development unit in 2006.

The MP-RTIP radar offers commanders several new ways to collect and exploit critical battlefield information. Unlike currently fielded airborne ground surveillance systems, for example, it will be able to collect ground moving target indicator imagery and synthetic aperture radar still images simultaneously.

The radar will also be able to detect, track and identify more targets faster and with higher resolution than ever before. Finally, it will feature a radar mode known as air moving target indicator, which will allow it to track low-flying cruise missiles.

SPACEWAR

Lockheed Martin Awarded Contract for Space Based Radar Phase A Concept Development Tuesday

Denver - Apr 21, 2004
Lockheed Martin was awarded a $220 million contract by the U.S. Air Force for the concept development phase of the Space Based Radar (SBR) program. The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center awarded the 24-month study contract to continue the definition of SBR system requirements and evaluate alternative design concepts for the SBR system architecture.

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