Naomi Cooper
The U.S. Marine Corps has tested a Raytheon Technologies-built airborne radar system on the F/A-19 Hornet aircraft at the Naval Air Weapons Station in California.
The flight test comes a year after Raytheon’s intelligence and space division delivered the first APG-79(V)4 active electronically scanned array radar prototype to the military service to help pilots detect and track enemy aircraft from far distances, the company said Tuesday.
During the flight, the Hornet demonstrated the gallium nitride-powered radar’s integration with the fleet’s legacy avionics.
“[The flight test] allowed our partners to see the V4 radar’s enhanced detection and tracking abilities in real-time,” said Thomas Shaurette, vice president of F/A-18 and Global Strike Radars for Raytheon Intelligence & Space.
Succeeding flight tests will focus on supporting weapons system integration on the aircraft.
Raytheon secured two APG-79(V)4 radar orders worth $63 million from the Marine Corps in December 2021 for the service’s F/A-18 C/D Hornet aircraft.
