The US Navy, which has been waiting for 10 years, has finally waited for its own new radar.
According to the Pentagon, Raytheon won a $677 million contract to produce 7 shipborne SPY-6 series radars for the U.S. Navy, which is a follow-up contract for 31 SPY-6 radars worth $3 billion in 2022, and the total purchase volume of this radar has reached 38, according to the arrangement of the U.S. Navy, these radars will be installed on Burke Type III., Burke Type II.A missile destroyers, Constellation-class frigates, American-class, San Antonio-class amphibious assault ships, As well as on the Nimitz-class and Ford-class aircraft carriers, almost all of them have been reequipped.
Since its naming in 2014, it took 10 years for this new generation of American shipborne radar to achieve mass production.
From the point of view of related technology, this radar uses a large number of high-tech, cutting-edge materials and advanced design, so that it has a more powerful anti-jamming and anti-saturation attack capabilities, and can also effectively identify low, slow and small targets such as unmanned aerial vehicles, and also has electronic warfare capabilities.
But as is customary in the US Navy, large capabilities mean that the problem will not be small.
The cost of SPY-6 is expensive, the production efficiency is not high, and the gallium nitride and other materials are greatly affected by supply chain factors, and the export control of gallium and germanium announced by the mainland at the beginning of this year is likely to directly affect the production efficiency of SPY-6.
And the platform equipped with SPY-6 also has a lot of problems.
The potential of the Burke-class guided missile destroyer platform has been exhausted, and the SPY-6 is very reluctant to get on board, so far only one Burke has been equipped with this new radar, and it is said that due to the limitation of Burke's power generation, once the radar is turned on at full power, it means that all other electronic equipment will be shut down.
The envisaged Constellation-class frigate will not only have to be postponed for three years, but its weight is likely to exceed the standard, resulting in a decrease in the speed of the ship and the inability to follow the aircraft carrier to perform anti-submarine and air defense tasks, so this SPY-6 is basically useless on the Constellation-class.
Although the problem is not small, it does not prevent the US Navy from considering the Burke-type destroyer equipped with this radar as a hole card that can wrestle with the 055 big drive. Since the mainland's 055 destroyer was put into service, the US Navy has fallen into the same dilemma as the US Air Force facing the J-20, and the US Navy and Air Force have been suppressed by the PLA more and more times in frequent electronic confrontations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. The US Navy urgently needs to update its electronic warfare system to ensure its "absolute superiority", and this radar is where the hope of the US Navy lies.
But the US Navy overlooked a very fatal problem.
According to relevant information, the progress of the new batch of 8 055 large drives has passed halfway, and there is only one US warship currently equipped with SPY-6 radar.
On the 26th of this month, the Republican senator of the United States said at the hearing that China's current annual shipbuilding volume is about 540 times that of the United States, a fact that makes the US Navy desperate: with the speed at which US warships are launched, even if every new ship is equipped with SPY-6 radar from now on, it will be difficult to form an overwhelming advantage over Type 055 destroyers in a short time.
No matter how strong the radar is, it is useless if it is not carried by a warship.