Upgrading radars is a ROARing success

David Donald

Thursday, 10 September, 2009

ITT Corporation (Stand 975) has received a contract from the US Naval Sea Systems Command as part of the Radar Obsolescence, Availability Recovery (ROAR) programme. The five-year contract is worth USD169.3 million.

Under ROAR, ITT is upgrading the SPS-48E radars it supplied in the mid-1980s to SPS-48G standard. ROAR is a key element of US Navy plans to extend the service life of selected aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships. The radar upgrade will allow the radar to remain in service beyond 2050.

ITT is modifying the radars with an open architecture system. This allows the easy integration of emerging technologies, and also facilitates connections to existing infrastructure through industry-standard interfaces. The use of commercial off-the-shelf equipment has cost saving and increased reliability implications.

The production award follows a series of development and low-rate initial production contracts. The first of three LRIP systems is scheduled for delivery in October 2010, while the full-rate production systems covered by this latest contract will be delivered between 2011 and 2015.

ITT is also upgrading Sweden’s PS-870 coastal/gap-filler radar system, and has just completed the critical design review of the Reliability and Modification (REMO) 870 Modification Kit Upgrade programme. REMO 870 is based on ITT’s LCR-2020 radar system, and upgrades Sweden’s radars with new processing, transmitter and display technologies. The USD44.9 million contract was signed in May 2008.

For future naval radars, ITT has two development contracts from the Integrated Topside (InTop) programme, managed by the US Office of Naval Research.

InTop is intended to produce a new family of scalable electronic warfare/radar/communications systems. Using integrated multifunction, multibeam arrays can reduce the number of top-side apertures, thereby reducing electromagnetic interference and radar cross-section.