EASR to begin live testing

The Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar being built by Raytheon is set to begin live testing at the Surface Combat Systems Center at Wallops Island, Virginia, the company announced on 19 March.

EASR, the newest sensor in the US Navy's SPY-6 family of radars, has recently completed subsystem testing and is now set to undergo system-level testing tracking a variety of aircraft through the end of 2019.

The EASR is under development for the navy's aircraft carriers and amphibious warfare ships, to provide simultaneous anti-air and anti-surface warfare, electronic protection and air traffic control capabilities.

The EASR is being built in two versions – 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 as AN/SPY-6(V)3 for Ford class aircraft carriers and the future FFG(X) guided missile frigates.

Both versions are built on scalable radar modular assembly (RMA) technology as well as a software baseline. Each RMA is a self-contained radar in a two-inch x two-inch x two-inch box. These individual radars can integrate together to form arrays of various sizes to address missions on any ship. EASR also adds air traffic control and weather capabilities to the mature SPY-6 software baseline.

Following completion of system-level testing in fourth quarter 2019, EASR will shift from the engineering and manufacturing development phase to the production phase.