Raytheon Wins F/A-18 Radar Contracts

Raytheon Company (El Segundo, CA) will produce the radar system for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) F/A-18 aircraft under two contracts worth some $667 million, the company announced recently.

The radar, the APG-73, is an all-weather, multi-mode search-and-track sensor that performs air-to-air and air-to-surface missions It is an upgrade of the APG-65 system and will provide higher throughputs, greater memory capacity, improved reliability and easier maintenance without an increase in size or weight, Raytheon says.

A contract from Boeing for $467.2 million will support F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet aircraft production in fiscal years 2000 through 2004. The other award from the U.S. Navy's Naval Air Systems Command for $200.2 million is for the production of radar and retrofit kits to upgrade existing RAAF, U. S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 aircraft.

Approximately 222 radars will be built for Boeing over the five-year period. Seventy-one complete radars will be built for the RAAF to replace APG-65 radars onboard their F/A-18 A/B aircraft. Forty APG-73 radar retrofit kits, which do not include the antenna or transmitter, will be built to upgrade older U.S Navy and U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 aircraft. Work on the contracts will be performed in El Segundo, CA, Forest, MS, and Andover, MA.

Edited by David Robb