Raytheon delivers first THAAD radar to track hypersonics to Missile Defense Agency

WASHINGTON — A radar that is capable of tracking hypersonic missiles was delivered to the Missile Defense Agency on Monday, Raytheon announced.

The upgraded radar for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense has a longer range and can provide targeting coordinates to other missile defense interceptors beyond just the Army’s THAAD batteries.

It is the first AN/TPY-2 radar with a complete Gallium Nitride, or GaN, populated array, Raytheon said. The AN/TPY-2 is a missile defense radar that is ready to defend the U.S. homeland and American allies by detecting, tracking and discriminating ballistic missiles in multiple phases of flight.

“What the TPY-2 does now, with the Gallium Nitride front-end in it, is it can see things twice as far, so we can make that command and control decision a lot earlier on which effector to use, whether it’s an SM series or it’s a Patriot, or it’s a THAAD,” Jon Norman, Raytheon’s vice president for Air and Space Defense Systems Requirements and Capabilities, told Breaking Defense.

The radar can be deployed as a standalone, mobile unit rather than being directly wired into a THAAD battery, Norman said, which positions it as a potential contribution to President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome plan to create a comprehensive missile shield for the US homeland.

GaN provides greater sensitivity to increase range, expands surveillance capacity and supports the hypersonic defense mission. The radar also features the latest CX6 high-performance computing software that offers more precise target discrimination and electronic attack protection.

“This is the most advanced version of AN/TPY-2 that Raytheon has built, leveraging years of investment and innovation to produce superior capability at a lower cost to the U.S. armed forces,” said Sam Deneke, president of Air and Space Defense Systems at Raytheon. “As demand increases for missile defense of the homeland, the AN/TPY-2 radar is ready to meet the mission.”

AN/TPY-2 operates in the X-band of the electromagnetic spectrum. This enables it to see targets more clearly and distinguish between a threat and non-threat objects, like separation debris.

Norman told Breaking Defense the combination of greater range and better discrimination makes the upgraded radar optimal for finding and tracking hypersonic missiles. Hypersonic missiles, while flying at about the same speed as a ballistic missile, are able to maneuver in flight, whereas ballistic missiles follow a predictable trajectory. They also are smaller and have a lower radar cross section than a ballistic missile, meaning they are harder to see and, therefore, intercept.

The upgraded AN/TPY-2 can now “detect these very, very small targets, and you can detect them at the separation when the booster separates from the warhead,” he said, adding that with the longer range “we can shoot sooner, and we can hit it before it starts maneuvering.”