Huntsville (Alabama): The US Army is just weeks away from making a production decision for its new missile defence radar, following an extra year of ironing out any kinks, according to Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, the service’s program executive officer for missiles and space.
The Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defence Sensor, or LTAMDS, “is a huge, significant capability,” Lozano said at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. “We anecdotally say it doubles legacy Patriot radar capability and not only does it double it, it provides you 360-degree capability.”
The radar is a major modernisation element for the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defence system along with a fully modernised command-and-control capability called the Integrated Battle Command System, which is already fielded.
Building the radar rapidly – the Army awarded a contract to Raytheon in 2019 to deliver prototypes over five years – “was always going to be incredibly technically challenging,” Lozano said.
So, Lozano said he asked former Army acquisition chief Doug Bush for another year to mature the system. “I said, ‘Sir, we’re really close, but we’re just not there yet. I’m not exhibiting the level of performance that I would feel comfortable coming in for a Milestone C production decision,’” he said. Bush, who had the authority to grant such a request, did so, according to Lozano.
The office continued to keep Army and Pentagon leadership apprised of the effort and now, following several successful flight tests, including one that combined other major air and missile defence elements over last fall and early this year, the system is deemed ready for low-rate initial production, Lozano said.
While an Inspector General report recently criticised the program for lacking proper due diligence, Lozano disagreed with the characterisation. “We did provide the requisite oversight and so much so that we, as leaders, knew we needed a little bit more time for the system to mature. We got the time. We did the maturation.”
The program office provided Army decision makers with a brief advocating to approve LTAMDS’ for production at the end of February. “It’s our intent to have that signed in the next week or two,” he said.
The Army’s low-rate production lot will be roughly 10 radars. The service plans to build 94 radars total over the course of the program. Raytheon will also be building Poland’s 10 LTAMDS radars on order simultaneously. Poland is the first foreign customer for the system.
Currently the time to build an LTAMDS is about 40 months on the production line, Lozano said. But the Army is working with Raytheon and has hired the Boston Consulting Group to help work on supply chain management in order to make that 36 months, which is the formal program objective.
“From a cost perspective, I think there’s a huge win here,” Lozano said. The program’s estimated cost is now $13 billion across its life. “It’s a huge program, and it’s likely going to be within the Army inventory for multiple decades. Because it’s a digital radar that is software driven, it’s going to mature and keep pace with the evolving threat,” he said.
Lozano also noted that with the cost of microelectronics coming down and the efforts to miniaturise components, the level of efficiency will increase, capabilities will increase and costs will continue to come down for the system.
“We build the legacy Patriot radar for $110-$115 million a copy,” he noted. “Right now the initial cost of the LTAMDS radar is about $125-$130 million a copy. That cost will continue to come down. We’re building the newest, most advanced radar at almost the same exact price that we’re building the legacy radar.”
