The U.S. Navy SPS-49 marshalling, surveillance and weapons queuing radar is essential to the Navys mission across the fleet. Performance and affordability of these radars is paramount. Performance encompasses the inherent ability to execute the mission: technical capability and system availability. Affordability encompasses all elements of life-cycle cost Total Ownership Cost (TOC): development, acquisition, operation and long-term sustainment expenses. The system has been deployed 30+ years and requires significant improvements in reliability, operational readiness, TOC and capabilities. The Navy requires a complete above deck technology refresh to mitigate component and system obsolescence, reduce maintenance and energy consumption, reduce weight and cost, and increase performance with an aggressive deployment schedule. Colorado Engineering, Inc. (CEI) formed a team of experts and is leading the effort to design, develop and produce an upgraded SPS-49 antenna addressing these requirements. The team has designed and modeled two antenna architectures within the trade-space of performance, weight, cost and polarization.
Benefit: The primary target for this antenna is the upgrade and technology refresh program of ~30 Navy ships. CEI is also working to propose a land version of the SPS-49 to address homeland defense applications. Due to the relatively low cost of the SPS-49, this could yield even higher volumes than the ships. CEI is talking with the Navy, Air Force, NORAD/NorthCom and Department of Homeland Security about this application; the FAA also has interest in a multifunction capability of the SPS-49.
Keywords: Electronic Elevation Scan, Electronic Elevation Scan, Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), Passive Electronically Scanned Arrays (PESA), Electronic Phase Shifting, Digital Beam Forming
