Raytheon, an RTX business, has been selected to modernize U.S. Space Force radar sites supporting missile warning and space-domain awareness under the Ground-Based Radar Digitization (GBRD) programme. The globally distributed facilities provide early warning of missile launches, characterize objects and track activity in orbit. The work will upgrade existing systems rather than replace the radar infrastructure, with prototype solutions preceding rapid fielding at the remaining locations.
The programme will establish a common open architecture for the legacy radars, enabling digital upgrades intended to improve detection performance, reliability and sustainment. The architecture is also designed to reduce dependence on individual vendors and simplify future capability enhancements.
Raytheon is working with the Space Force and other industry partners on what it describes as a high-maturity, rapid-development approach that will create a technical baseline for the GBRD portfolio. The sites form the outermost layer of the US missile-defence architecture and support both ground-based early warning and space monitoring.
Sam Deneke, president of Raytheon’s Air & Space Defense Systems, described digitization as necessary to address increasingly complex global threats. The upgrades are intended to preserve the radars’ operational role for decades, although the available announcement does not disclose the sites involved, contract value, specific radar models or a fielding schedule.