The US Navy has begun installing Raytheon’s SPY-6(V)4 radar aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Pinckney during a modernisation period at General Dynamics NASSCO in San Diego. Scheduled to run until approximately September 2028, the work will replace the ship’s 22-year-old AN/SPY-1D(V) radar with the first shipboard installation of the smaller SPY-6 variant designed for older destroyers.
SPY-6(V)4 is intended for Flight IIA destroyers whose electrical and structural systems cannot accommodate the larger SPY-6(V)1 configuration used on newer ships. The variant contains 96 radar modular assemblies, compared with 148 on the larger system. Raytheon describes it as providing substantially greater range and sensitivity than SPY-1, although no public detection-range figures have been released.
A complete SPY-6(V)4 array has also been installed at the Navy’s Surface Combat Systems Center on Wallops Island, Virginia. Land-based testing of the radar, its power equipment and combat-system interfaces is expected to continue into mid-2028, supporting integration before and during the Pinckney upgrade.
The installation forms part of the Navy’s effort to modernise existing surface combatants without requiring the extensive ship changes associated with the larger radar architecture. Pinckney is the first Flight IIA destroyer scheduled to receive the backfit, expanding the SPY-6 family beyond newer-ship applications.