The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has awarded Raytheon Company a $10 million contract modification to continue the development of hardware and software that will add gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor technology to the AN/TPY-2 ballistic missile defense radar. The use of GaN will increase the radar's range, search capabilities and enables the system to better discriminate between threats and non-threats. Gallium nitride technology also increases the system's overall reliability while maintaining production and operational costs.
The AN/TPY-2 is already ones of the world's most capable land-based, X-band, ballistic missile defense radar. Adding GaN will make ballistic missiles even easier to detect and defeat in extreme operational environments. This radar is on pace to be the world's first transportable, land-based ballistic missile defense radar to use GaN technology.
The AN/TPY-2 radar operates in two modes:
- In forward-based mode, the radar is positioned near hostile territory, and detects, tracks and discriminates ballistic missiles shortly after they are launched.
- In terminal mode, the radar detects, acquires, tracks and discriminates ballistic missiles as they descend to their target. The terminal mode AN/TPY-2 is the fire control radar for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense ballistic missile defense system, by guiding the THAAD missile to intercept a threat.
Click here to learn more about the AN/TPY-2 Radar.
