General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) and Raytheon said Thursday they will integrate the Advanced Radar Detection System (ARDS) onto a Predator B/MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
GA-ASI manufactures the Predator B/MQ-9 Reaper UAV while Raytheon’s Deutschland GmbH German subsidiary produces airborne electronic warfare and sensor systems and airborne radars. The ARDS, designed and developed by Raytheon, is a scalable Electronic Support Measure (ESM) system for passive radar monitoring. It is designed on the basis of modules which are produced in Spain and the United Kingdom.
Photo: U.S. Air Force
ARDS provides a passive, wide-area electronic intelligence (ELINT) over land and sea and also enables high-fidelity detection and direction-finding of RF emitters, GA-ASI said.
The ARDS is planned to be integrated onto a standard pod that will be mounted on the centerline hard point of a Predator B.
“Adding an ELINT role to Predator B by integrating ARDS will help our customers to map air defense radar threats in contested airspace, from stand-off distances,” Linden Blue, CEO of GA-ASI, said in a statement.
“Predator B is the ideal platform for our ARDS as it deploys the ELINT capability with significantly greater endurance at much lower cost per flight hour compared with other platforms,” Andreas Radermacher, managing director at Raytheon Deutschland GmbH, added.
A combined GA-ASI-Raytheon team is currently freezing the design of the integration hardware that will make the capability available to customers beginning in 2018. The team plans to execute developmental and operation flight tests in the second half of 2017, the companies said.
A combined GA-ASI and Raytheon team is currently freezing the design of the integration hardware that will make this capability available to customers in 2018. The team plans to execute developmental and operational flight tests in the second half of 2017, GA-ASI said.