A revamped development strategy for the US Air Force's Space-Based Radar (SBR) has led Raytheon to re-emerge as a surprising contender two years after being shut out of the programme.
Faced with Congressional resistance, the USAF has returned the programme to the drawing board. The focus has turned from deploying an operational system to launching a quarter-scale demonstrator system by 2008.
USAF officials had planned to limit the demonstrator effort to the two teams selected in 2003 to compete for the operational system – Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Only the latter has shown interest in participating in the demonstrator plan.
Raytheon lost the initial down selection in 2003, but continued developing a space-based radio-frequency sensor capability, as well as new ground systems intended to process and disseminate intelligence data provided by both airborne and space-based systems.
The company has submitted an unsolicited proposal to assume control of the demonstrator activity, which is a potential challenge to Northrop Grumman's apparent lock on the contract. Raytheon aims to take on the role of prime contractor for the demonstrator, then downgrade to subcontractor for the operational system. "We saw the demonstrator as a different programme," Raytheon says.
Raytheon's proposal for the demonstrator is based on launching two interoperable satellites with active arrays providing ground moving-target indication and synthetic-aperture radar imagery. The data would be fed into ground processing systems based on the Raytheon Block 10.2 upgrade to the Distributed Common Ground Station.
Source: Flight International
