Leonardo DRS has selected RADA’s Multi-mission Hemispheric Radar (MHR) for the mission equipment package (MEP) solution for the US Army’s Initial Maneuver -Short Range Air Defense (IM-SHORAD) capability.
IM-SHORAD will provide interim close-in air defence and counter-unmanned aerial vehicle (C-UAV) systems for the army’s Stryker A1 configuration.
Leonardo DRS announced in June that it had been down-selected to provide its MEP solution to the army.
The IM-SHORAD contract should be awarded in August 2018. The army requires nine prototype systems to be delivered in early 2019. These systems will inform a future production decision for more than 140 systems beginning in 2020, RADA said.
In addition to RADA’s MHR, MEP integrates technologies including Moog’s Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform and Raytheon’s Stinger missiles. The IM-SHORAD solution provides both hard and soft kill capabilities to the Stryker while minimising impacts on the mobility, according to Leonardo DRS.
The MHR is a non-rotating, solid-state digital radar providing 360˚ aerial surveillance to detect and track unmanned aerial systems (UASs), rotary-wing, and fixed-wing threats, RADA said in a statement.
Each IM-SHORAD MEP, according to RADA, includes four MHR radars to provide persistent surveillance, execute at the short-halt, and operate on-the-move capability.
MHR is a family of pulse doppler, software-defined multi-mission radar platforms designed to detect all groups and sizes of UASs, missiles, rockets, and mortars.
According to RADA, MHR can “classify the threats, provide and display tracking and warning/alert, and provide data to external command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems and air defence weapon systems over Ethernet, making them the ideal sensors for man-portable air-defence systems, very short range SHORAD, SHORAD, and tactical integrated air and missile defence systems”.
Additional attributes of the MHR include an Active Electronically Scanned Array antenna based on gallium nitride amplifiers; extremely high elevation angles, up to hemispheric coverage; and the ability to operate on the move.
Photo: RADA’s MHR, seen here on the front and left side of a Stryker combat vehicle, is part of Leonardo DRS’s mission equipment package solution for the US Army’s IM-SHORAD capability RADA
Source: Jane’s 360