The Army’s LTAMDS radar is designed to track and identify the full range of threats – drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, even hypersonics – simultaneously. (Photo courtesy of RTX)

WASHINGTON — As the US Army moves to build a layered defense system to protect key locations like Guam from aerial threats, it has officially awarded a high-dollar initial production contract of a key component of that plan: a new 360-degree radar dubbed the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense System, or LTAMDS.

Meant to replace the current Patriot radars, the systems will be the first production units fielded some six years after the US government selected Raytheon, now owned by parent company RTX, to deliver six production representative units for testing and other assessment activities. While the duo encountered technical challenges with those initial LTAMDS units that led to a production delay, on Wednesday the service announced it was awarding the company just north of $2 billion to begin low-rate initial production on an unspecified number of radars. Those dollars, the Army added, will run through the end of November 2028.

The contract announcement notes that money for the LTAMDS radars is also funneled in from Foreign Military Sales figures for Poland. In September 2023 Warsaw announced its agreement to buy 12 of the radars, becoming the first international customer for the system.

“The LTAMDS capability increases sensor/radar performance to maximize the inherent Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) Missile Segment Enhanced (MSE) Interceptor capabilities to engage threats,” the service wrote in fiscal 2025 budget request documents. That spending request, still on Capitol Hill, includes $517 million to purchase four units next year. If the Army’s current plan sticks, it wants to purchase another five LTAMDS in 2026 and another handful in 2027, before upping the production run to eight units per year in 2028 and 2029, according to budget documents.

Service leaders are currently on a quest to modernize the entire force, including by fielding a new Integrated Air and Missile Defense architecture it can deploy abroad. As tensions have risen between China and the US in recent years, Washington is looking to shore up Guam’s defenses.

LTAMDS is expected to provide the sensing capabilities, surveillance and fire control in the lower tier portion of the ballistic missile defense battlespace. But the new radar is just one part of the equation to better protect the US territory in the Pacific Ocean.

To do that, the Pentagon recently formed a new joint program office (JPO) with Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO) head Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch now dual hatted as the lead it.  At a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington this week, the three-star general said he is still waiting for FY24 dollars to be reprogrammed so he can expand the small JPO.

“At this point, early on, I would characterize it as a coalition of the willing,” Rasch said.

“This large JPO that you’re imagining is about eight people right now, those eight people are working really, really hard establishing the network of communications,” he later added, noting there is ongoing work with offices like the Missile Defense Agency and the Army’s Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space.

A requirements document is currently working its way through the approval process, and Rasch said he is waiting for Department of Defense leaders to make “key decisions” about which service or agency will “own” various pieces of Guam defense equipment “at the end of the day.” Historically, such ownership questions can be sticky since it requires a service to dedicate part of its budget to buying equipment for a grander plan. 

For example, in addition to deploying LTAMDS radars on Guam, the evolving plan also includes the Army’s new command and control system called the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS), and the Indirect Fire Protection Capability Increment 2 (IFPC Inc 2) system. The Army Long Range Persistent Surveillance (ALPS), Lockheed Martin’s Remote Interceptor Guidance-360 (RIG–360), Sentinel A3 and A4 radars, as also involved.

The Navy and Air Force also are contributing tech, including the former with Aegis Ashore missile system.

“So really a cacophony of command and control systems. … We’re fighting in a swivel chair fashion and we think we can do better: We think we need to do better,” Rasch told the audience.

In a bid to net together as much as possible before setting up the system on Guam, the Army has embarked on an incremental Integrated Fires Test Campaign. Last year the test series focused on IBCS and LTAMDS integration. This year it is slated to add in Dynetics’ IFPC Inc 2 prototypes. Remaining capabilities will also be folded into the test plan leading up to the 2027 goal of having an operational air defense system protecting the island.

“Not only do I have to get those individual programs across the goal line, they all have to work together,” Brig. Gen. Frank Lozano, the Army’s Program Executive Officer for Missiles and Space said at the same CSIS event this week.