The Navy’s new ship-based Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) recently completed system preliminary design review (PDR).
The Navy said the PDR took place on Aug. 28 with prime contractor Raytheon [RTN], which bested rivals Lockheed Martin
[LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] for the contract last year. AMDR will replace the AN/SPY-1 radar currently active on destroyers and cruisers and will link up with the Aegis Combat System–built by Lockheed Martin.
“We continue to execute the AMDR program as if our sailors need this capability today–because they do,” Capt. Doug Small, AMDR’s program manager, said. “This milestone was a significant achievement for the Navy and Industry team and demonstrates that system design effort remains on track… .”
AMDR is the main feature of the Navy’s planned flight III Arleigh Burke-class (DDG-51) destroyers. The first of the flight III ships is scheduled to go under contract in 2016.
The Navy and Raytheon completed a preliminary design review of the hardware portion of AMDR earlier this year. The hardware design review focuses on the size and how it fits on operations on the ship, while the system review focuses on software.
The critical design review (CDR) phases begin later this year, with the hardware CDR set for December and system CDR planned for April, said Tad Dickenson, Raytheon’s program director for AMDR.
The technology risk assessment has been done and any issues were addressed during the earlier technology demonstration phase, and throughout the design review process over the last few months, some minor modifications were made to make the system more production ready.
“We know we fit on the ship. We now about size, weight and power,” Dickenson said. “We have positive margins. We are working with the combat system integration group and Lockheed Martin for the combat system interface.”
“As long as the budgets and Congress stay aligned between flight III and the combat system engineering agent money (for Aegis), and AMDR, the ship should go out on time,” Dickenson said.