The U.S. Air Force has received the first TPY-4 radar from Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] Syracuse site under the Three-Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR) program after the completion of early phase testing, the company said this week.
Rick Cordaro, the vice president of Lockheed Martin radar and sensor systems, said in a statement that “the 3DELRR program is of the utmost importance to air surveillance and defense capabilities worldwide, as well as defending the nation.”
“The first delivery of TPY-4 to the U.S. Air Force represents the numerous radars to be delivered and fielded as part of the 3DELRR program,” the company said. “TPY-4’s delivery marks the beginning of government testing. The delivery coincides with the award of a contract in a series of radar purchases by the U.S. Air Force, as a part of the 3DELRR program.”
The Air Force chose Lockheed Martin as the 3DELRR contractor in March 2022, and the company may deliver 35 radars to the service under the $360 million program.
Annual Air Force budget requests for 3DELRR have been below $20 million thus far, including about $8 million in fiscal 2025.
A fiscal 2024 U.S. Northern Command/North American Aerospace Defense Command unfunded priorities list to Congress said that 1980s radars, such as the Lockheed Martin FPS-117 for the North Warning System, will reach the end of their service lives this year and that these radars “will begin to fail at increasing rates.”
The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee last September voiced concern about the lack of a radar/sensor grid to detect small drones around U.S. bases (Defense Daily, Sept. 11, 2024).
The TPY-4 is to replace the 1970s-era Westinghouse, now Northrop Grumman [NOC] TPS-75, and Lockheed Martin has said that the TPY-4 will track small drones from hundreds of miles away, as well as missiles in jamming environments.
Lockheed Martin said that C-130 and C-17 airlifters, trucks, trains, and helicopters are able to carry the TPY-4.
Norway is to buy 11 TPY-4s and the country’s Kongsberg builds the radar’s Platform Electronics Subsystem as part of the Lockheed Martin team for 3DELRR (Defense Daily, Sept. 11, 2024).