Feb 24 2015
The U.S. and its friends and allies will soon have improved defenses against ballistic missile raids -- large quantities of simultaneously impacting ballistic missiles.
Raytheon Company has upgraded the computer processor of the AN/TPY-2 ballistic missile defense radar, enabling the system to both perform better during raids and to more quickly and accurately discriminate between a missile's warhead, and non-threats such as countermeasures.
"We upgraded the AN/TPY-2's electronic equipment unit (EEU) with a state-of-the-art, commercially available computer processor that has approximately five times the processing power as the previous system," said Dave Gulla, vice president of Global Integrated Sensors in Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems business. "This upgrade ensures the AN/TPY-2 will be able to stay ahead of the growing threat and continue to protect the things that matter."
AN/TPY-2 is a critical element of the Ballistic Missile Defense System. It is a mobile X-band radar designed to protect civilians and infrastructure in the U.S., deployed warfighters, and allied nations and security partners, from the growing global ballistic missile threat. U.S. intelligence agencies estimate there are more than 6,300 ballistic missiles not controlled by the U.S., NATO, China or Russia. That number is expected to reach almost 8,000 by 2020.
Raytheon delivered the first upgraded EEU to the Missile Defense Agency on Jan 30, 2015. The MDA previously announced it intends to replace the EEU of a fielded AN/TPY-2 with the upgraded EEU, and send the older EEU back to Raytheon to be upgraded. The process will repeat until all ten EEUs in the U.S. inventory are upgraded. This approach is designed to ensure constant radar coverage throughout the entire upgrade process.
In addition to retro-fitting existing EEUs, new Raytheon-built radars for U.S. and international customers will include the upgrade. The new processor also weighs less, requires less power, and occupies less space than the older system.
Source: http://www.raytheon.com/