U.S. Marine Corps surveillance experts are ordering 30 versions of a new radar system designed to protect Marines on attack beaches from rockets, artillery, mortars, cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and other low observables under terms of a contract worth nearly a billion dollars.
Officials of the Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico Marine Base, Va., announced a $958 million contract Friday to the Northrop Grumman Corp. Mission Systems segment in Linthicum, Md., for 30 full-rate production versions of the Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar (G/ATOR).
G/ATOR is an expeditionary, three-dimensional, short-to-medium-range, multi-role radar system designed to detect low-observable targets with low radar cross sections such as rockets, artillery, mortars, cruise missiles, and UAVs. Marine Corps leaders are developing and fielding G/ATOR in three blocks for use by the Marine Air Ground Task Force across the range of military operations, officials say.
The Northrop Grumman G/ATOR radar is designed to protect deployed Marine Corps warfighters on invasion beaches from rockets, artillery, mortars, cruise missiles, and UAVs. This procurement also includes spares parts and retrofit kits.
Northrop Grumman built G/ATOR for short-range air defense (SHORAD) and tactical air operations Center (TAOC) air surveillance missions, including identification friend-or-foe (IFF). The increment I design was to provide for growth to all following increments without equipment re-design and provide an open architecture to enable upgrades with following increments.
Source: Military & Aerospace Electronics