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Raytheon has announced the successful completion of a second live fire demonstration of the advanced, 360-degree Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
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For this test event, conducted in partnership with the US Army, a tactical ballistic missile surrogate was launched, flying a threat-representative trajectory.
The target was acquired and tracked by LTAMDS, its track data was passed to the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS) for launch command, and LTAMDS guided a PAC-3, Cost Reduction Initiative (CRI), missile to intercept.
This tactical ballistic missile live fire represents the latest in a series of test event successes, closely following the cruise missile live fire test and the recently completed contractor verification testing. Each of these milestones serves to validate the radar’s performance and progression through developmental testing.
US Army Colonel Jason Tate, STARE project manager for PEO Missiles and Space, said: “With each test, we’re putting the radar up against realistic threats that our forces could face on the battlefield. And with each success, we see capability improvement for this transformational radar.”
Six LTAMDS radars are currently progressing through integration and test activities simultaneously at multiple government and Raytheon test sites; formal testing will continue in 2024.
“From the start, the goal was to design a next-generation radar capable of outpacing the full range of current and future threats – and we will achieve that goal with LTAMDS,” COL Tate explained.
Tom Laliberty, president of Land and Air Defense Systems at Raytheon, echoed the sentiment of COL Tate earlier in the year following the first successful test, saying: “Seeing LTAMDS come to life is not only gratifying to the scores of experts who designed and developed it, but it reaffirms the commitment we made to deliver this exceptional radar to air defenders around the globe. We’re now closer than ever to doing just that.”
LTAMDS is the next-generation air and missile defence radar for the US Army. The system incorporates a 360-degree, active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, powered by Raytheon-manufactured gallium nitride; LTAMDS provides dramatically more performance against the range of threats, from manned and unmanned aircraft to cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and hypersonics.
