Raytheon’s RACR Competes in South Korean F‑16 Radar Procurement

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Nov. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Raytheon Com­pa­ny (NYSE: RTN) is respond­ing to the Repub­lic of Korea’s offi­cial launch of the F‑16 radar upgrade com­pe­ti­tion with the Raytheon Advanced Com­bat Radar sys­tem (RACR).

RACR employs active elec­tron­i­cal­ly scanned array (AESA) tech­nol­o­gy, which Raytheon pio­neered for the U.S. Air Force’s F‑15C and field­ed in Decem­ber 2000. RACR incor­po­rates the lat­est devel­op­ments in AESA radar, in a design specif­i­cal­ly suit­ed for small­er air­craft such as the F‑16.

Raytheon AESA tech­nol­o­gy is cur­rent­ly flown on a wide range of U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and inter­na­tion­al cus­tomer plat­forms. AESA radars allow pilots to acquire tar­gets at much greater dis­tances, and track many more tar­gets simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, than tra­di­tion­al mechan­i­cal­ly scanned array systems.

“Raytheon AESA radars are the only com­bat proven AESA radars cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion. They have logged more oper­a­tional flight hours and have the largest installed cus­tomer base of any AESA sys­tem in the world,” said Mark Kula, vice pres­i­dent of Tac­ti­cal Air­borne Sys­tems for Raytheon Space and Air­borne Sys­tems. “RACR lever­ages Raytheon’s indus­try-lead­ing AESA tech­nol­o­gy for a cost-effec­tive, high­ly reli­able sys­tem that has been suc­cess­ful­ly flight test­ed on the F‑16 platform.”

Key advan­tages of Raytheon AESA tech­nol­o­gy include:

• Increased over­all radar performance
• The abil­i­ty to con­duct simul­ta­ne­ous air-to-air and air-to-ground missions
• More effec­tive track­ing of wide­ly spaced targets

Raytheon’s AESA radar sys­tems also offer unique sav­ings due to their low required main­te­nance costs.

“Based on 250,000 oper­a­tional flights hours, we know that Raytheon AESA radars require rough­ly one-tenth the main­te­nance expen­di­tures that tra­di­tion­al mechan­i­cal arrays require,” said Jim Hvizd, vice pres­i­dent of Inter­na­tion­al Strat­e­gy and Busi­ness Devel­op­ment for Raytheon Space and Air­borne Sys­tems. “We will work close­ly with the Repub­lic of Korea to make sure our RACR solu­tion best meets their com­bat radar upgrade needs, with­in cost and sched­ule requirements.”

About Raytheon

Raytheon Com­pa­ny, with 2010 sales of $25 bil­lion, is a tech­nol­o­gy and inno­va­tion leader spe­cial­iz­ing in defense, home­land secu­ri­ty and oth­er gov­ern­ment mar­kets through­out the world. With a his­to­ry of inno­va­tion span­ning 89 years, Raytheon pro­vides state-of-the-art elec­tron­ics, mis­sion sys­tems inte­gra­tion and oth­er capa­bil­i­ties in the areas of sens­ing; effects; and com­mand, con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and intel­li­gence sys­tems, as well as a broad range of mis­sion sup­port ser­vices. With head­quar­ters in Waltham, Mass., Raytheon employs 72,000 peo­ple world­wide. For more about Raytheon, vis­it us at www.raytheon.com and fol­low us on Twit­ter at @raytheon.

Media Con­tact
Faith Jen­nings
310.647.9741 (office)
310.977.1963 (cell)
saspr@raytheon.com

SOURCE Raytheon Company