Derrick Henry
Raytheon has completed a series of flight tests for the Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor, or LTAMDS, and started preparing for its production phase.
The radar went through eight flight tests to stress the system and prove its capabilities against real-world threats, RTX said Monday. Following the trials, the U.S. Army concluded that LTAMDS has reached Milestone C status, triggering the program’s production and deployment stage and certifying the radar as ready to support U.S. homeland defense and expeditionary missions.
LTAMDS’ Rapid Prototyping and Fielding
The collaborative work with the Army and industry partners expedited the LTAMDS program and delivered an “advanced 360-degree integrated air and missile defense capability,” according to Tom Laliberty, president of land and air defense systems at Raytheon. “This is an unprecedented achievement, with a development program of this magnitude transitioning from prototype to production and deployment at an accelerated pace,” he stressed.
The Army employed congressional authority to ensure the rapid prototyping and fielding of LTAMDS, a defense program that typically takes over 10 years to achieve Milestone C. Recently, the service received its first six radar units, with Raytheon set to ship pending orders from the Army and Poland in late 2025. Currently, the RTX company is producing eight LTAMDS radars per year and is ramping up its annual production to 12 units to meet global demand.
