Raytheon just won a $384 million contract to build the Army's Patriot radar replacement for future air-and-missile defense

• Raytheon announced that it has won the $384 million contract to deliver the new Low Tier Air and Missile Defense Radar.
• Army leaders revealed at the Association of the United States Army, where Raytheon had a full-scale floor model of its LTAMDS solution on display, that it had selected a vendor, but it held off on announcing the winner as the service and the company were still hammering out a deal.
• Incumbent Raytheon defeated a Lockheed Martin-Elta Systems team and Northrop Grumman to win the contract for what will eventually replace the Patriot radars that have been in service for decades.

Raytheon announced Thursday that it has been selected by the Army to build the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS), a replacement for the Patriot radar that has been in service for decades.

The company, which also built the Patriot air-and-missile defense system radars introduced in the 1980s, says it will receive over $384 million to deliver six prototypes of the next-generation system, a 360-degree Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar powered by refined Gallium Nitride (GaN), which Raytheon says strengthens the signal and improves sensitivity.

At the Association of the United States Army event in Washington, DC, Raytheon unveiled a full-scale floor model of its LTAMDS solution.

During the conference, Brig. Gen. Brian Gibson, head of the Army's Air and Missile Defense Cross-Functional Team announced that the Army had selected a vendor for the LTAMDS program, but it refused to say which company had been selected as the service was "still actively negotiating."

Read more: The Army says it has picked who will build the Patriot radar replacement, but it isn't saying who the winner is

Incumbent Raytheon was competing against two other players, namely a Lockheed Martin-Elta Systems team and Northrop Grumman. The three competitors went head to head in a "sense off" event at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico earlier this year.

"Our clean-sheet approach to LTAMDS reinforces Raytheon's position as the world's premier air and missile defense radar capability provider," Ralph Acaba, President of Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, said in a press statement.

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