Raytheon, an RTX business, has been awarded a contract from the Office of Naval Research to further develop advanced radar software for next-generation naval radars. Under the contract, Raytheon's Advanced Technology team will develop software that enables each building block within a radar to operate independently, allowing a single radar to perform multiple missions simultaneously. By treating each building block as its own software-defined aperture, the radar can rapidly adapt to changing operational needs and better share crowded frequency bands with commercial networks such as 5G.
Building on Raytheon's long-standing work in software-defined apertures, this flexible, modular architecture delivers capability enhancements through software rather than hardware redesign. This approach allows radar performance to be adapted and expanded over time with greater speed, lower cost, and reduced risk. Once the software development is complete, Raytheon will conduct a series of demonstrations to validate independent control of radar modules and associated capabilities such as multi-mission operation and spectrum sharing.
Upon successful validation, the technology is expected to be transitioned into operational naval radar systems.
