US Navy awards Northrop Grumman follow-on order for shipboard multimission radar systems

Northrop Grumman Corporation has received a follow-on order from the US Naval Sea Systems Command for additional AN/SPQ-9B shipboard radar systems.

Under the fixed-price $41.4 million contract option, Northrop Grumman's Maritime Systems facility in Melville, N.Y., will supply six radar shipsets, including the third radar of a three-system procurement for the Royal Australian Navy's Air Warfare Destroyer, and three antenna groups.

The follow-on order is part of a five-year $281.5 million contract awarded last October to Northrop Grumman with options that encompass a number of ship classes including US Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers, Ticonderoga-class cruisers and amphibious assault ships, the US Coast Guard National Security Cutter, as well as the first international sale of SPQ-9B to the Australian Navy.

"The high-resolution X-band AN/SPQ-9B search radar sets greatly improve the ability to defend against small, high-speed threats, such as surface-skimming anti-ship missiles, and will be integrated with the ships' fire-control systems," said Todd Leavitt, director of Northrop Grumman's Maritime Sensors business unit. "This sensor is a key part of helping meet littoral and blue-water naval defense challenges, and we are committed to enhancing the multimission capability of surface ships, now and in the future."

The multimission radar is designed to detect small, fast-moving targets in the presence of clutter from ocean waves, rain and land returns, as well as chaff and jamming. Additional capabilities now in final development include 3-D volumetric search, demonstrated late last summer for the US Navy in live aircraft tracking tests at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dam Neck Naval Base, Va.

Source: Northrop Grumman