Tag Archives: EASR

Navy

EASR radars

The U.S. Navy and Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a Raytheon Technologies business, completed a series of tests on the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) at the Navy’s Wallops Island Test Facility in Virginia. The tests validated the performance of EASR’s two variants: the SPY-6(V)2 rotating and SPY-6(V)3 fixed-face radars.

AN/SPY-6(V)2
SPY-6 radar under test at Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia

The two EASR radars are the newest sensors in the SPY-6 family. SPY-6(V)2 and SPY-6(V)3 provide simultaneous anti-air and anti-surface warfare capabilities, including detecting and tracking uncrewed aerial vehicles, electronic protection, and air traffic control for aircraft carriers and amphibious warfare ships.

«EASR development is progressing rapidly because our engineers are applying knowledge they’ve gained from the SPY-6 family», said Kim Ernzen, vice president of Naval Power at Raytheon Missiles & Defense. «SPY-6’s common architecture saves time and money, and it streamlines training and logistics across software and hardware systems».

The recent tests concentrated on anti-air warfare, air traffic control operations and power system modeling for SPY-6(V)2 and SPY-6(V)3 radars. EASR will replace single-function legacy radars, improving range and performance.

«EASR has proven it performs in high-clutter and dense tracking environments», said Captain Jason Hall, Above-Water Sensors program manager at the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems. «Teams continue to improve and enhance the system, and will integrate the radar with the combat management system using land-based testing».

The AN/SPY-6(V)2 will be installed on amphibious assault ships and Nimitz class carriers. The AN/SPY-6(V)3 will be incorporated on Ford class aircraft carriers and is compatible with frigates for international navies. AN/SPY-6(V)3 will be a centerpiece of the U.S. Navy’s new Constellation class frigates (FFG 62).

Raytheon Missiles & Defense and the U.S. Navy completed engineering and manufacturing developmental testing for EASR in March 2020. In July 2020, the Navy awarded the company a $126 million contract to produce four SPY-6(V)2 rotators and two SPY-6(V)3 fixed-faced radars.

Navy

System-level tests

Raytheon Company and the U.S. Navy completed the first system-level tests of SPY-6(V)2, the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR), at the Surface Combat System Center at Wallops Island, VA. In the first test the radar searched for, detected, identified and tracked numerous targets – including commercial aircraft. In a second exercise, the maturity of EASR integration enabled the radar to track multiple targets continuously for several hours during a test event involving another system.

Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar successfully tracks first targets at Wallops Island Test Facility

EASR, the newest sensor in the Navy’s SPY-6 family of radars, provides simultaneous anti-air and anti-surface warfare, electronic protection and air traffic control for aircraft carriers and amphibious warfare ships.

«Moving quickly from radar installation at Wallops Island to ‘tracks on glass’ in less than three months is a major accomplishment», said U.S. Navy Captain Jason Hall, Program Manager for Above Water Sensors, Program Executive Office Integrated Warfare Systems. «The EASR program is progressing extremely well. We are now one step closer to production and delivering the radar’s unmatched capability to the surface fleet».

Two variants of EASR are being built: a single-face rotating array designated AN/SPY-6(V)2 for amphibious assault ships and Nimitz class carriers, and a three fixed-face array designated AN/SPY-6(V)3 for Ford class aircraft carriers and the future FFG(X) guided missile frigates.

Both versions of EASR are built on scalable Radar Modular Assembly, or RMA, technology as well as a software baseline that has been matured through development and test successes of AN/SPY-6(V)1, the U.S. Navy’s program of record for the DDG-51 Flight III destroyers. Each RMA is a self-contained radar in a 2′ × 2′ × 2′ box. These individual radars can integrate together to form arrays of various sizes to address any mission on any ship. EASR also adds air traffic control and weather capabilities to the mature SPY-6 software baseline.

Upon completion of system-level testing in Q4 2019, EASR will shift from the engineering and manufacturing development phase to the production phase. The 1st delivery of AN/SPY-6(V)2 will be to USS Bougainville (LHA-8), the America Class Amphibious Assault Ship.

Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar