GhostEye MR Gains Speed ​​- Breaching the defense

GhostEye® MR has come a long way since then debut at the Association of the US Army Annual Meeting in October 2021.

“It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since we introduced the new radar,” said Carl Hartford, chief program engineer and CTO of Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a division of Raytheon Technologies. “From advanced search and tracking of live targets to a week-long US government demonstration showing the sensor’s multi-functional capabilities, progress is palpable.”

GhostEye MR, an advanced medium-range air and missile defense radar, reveals, tracks and detects a wide range of threats, from cruise missiles and drones to fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. And the new 360-degree surveillance and fire control sensor shares commonality with the Low Level Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, that Raytheon Missiles & Defense makes for the U.S. military.

Testing and integration

After completing the design and development of the GhostEye MR hardware and software in mid-2021, the program team built a complete system prototype.

“Using our open-air test facility in New England, we integrated our seek/track capabilities with hardware and successfully tracked target capabilities,” Hartford said.

Using hardware and software simulations and real-time tracking results, the team began to test the system’s performance and confirm its full capability.

“Given the rapid development and integration our team has achieved, we are ready to demonstrate GhostEye MR to more potential customers and partner with the US government for multi-mission experiments in 2023,” Hartford added.

In the coming months, the GhostEye MR team will conduct additional hardware and software tests and use instrumented targets to test the system’s fire control accuracy.

“It’s important to maintain our momentum,” said Rob Leskanetz, RMD’s director of land warfare and air defense requirements and capabilities. “The United States and its allies face increasingly sophisticated threats, such as cruise missiles and advanced aircraft, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles such as drones. This has led to a high demand for medium-range air defenses to protect this space.”

GhostEye MR for NASAMS next level

The idea to create GhostEye MR arose in early 2020 as an opportunity to improve National advanced surface-to-air missile system.or NASAMS to counter the new generation of threats.

This system uses Raytheon Missiles & Defense missiles An improved medium-range air-to-air missile with increased range, or AMRAAM®-ER, and GhostEye MR will allow this effector to extend the reach of his full kinematic envelope or reach. The GhostEye MR program is working on testing a radar integrated into NASAMS.

In addition to GhostEye’s flexible architecture, two key technologies will give NASAMS an advantage: an Active Electronically Scanned Antenna, or AESA, which improves detection, targeting and tracking, and a military-grade gallium nitride, or GaN – which amplifies the radar signal, increasing its sensitivity for longer range, higher resolution and increased capacity.

“GhostEye MR improves NASAMS’s decision-making ability, extends the range and altitude the system can reach and defend,” Leshkanets said. “All of this leads to improved accuracy and performance in the battlespace, which is critical as counter-threats become ever faster, smarter and more ubiquitous.”

Learn more about GhostEye MR.