New Radar to Boost Saudi Air Defense

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Saudi Arabia is enhancing its missile defense capabilities. Riyadh will purchase ballistic missile defense radar system and computer algorithms from Raytheon Technologies. The company will build seven AN/TPY-2 ballistic missile hunting radar systems for Saudi Arabia under the terms of a $2.3 billion contract.

The AN/TPY-2 radar is designed to detect, acquire, and track incoming ballistic missiles, and uses its powerful radar and complex computer algorithms to discriminate between incoming armed missiles and decoys. It is capable of providing long-range acquisition, precision track, and discrimination of short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, according to company officials.

The mobile X-band radar helps defend against the more than 6,300 ballistic missiles of so-called rogue states and organizations that U.S. military experts say are not controlled by the U.S., NATO, China, or Russia.

The radar can be deployed in two different modes. In forward-based mode, the radar is based near hostile territory and acquires ballistic missiles in boost phase, and then tracks and discriminates the threat, and passes critical information required by decision-makers to the Command and Control Battle Management network.

When the radar is deployed in terminal mode, the radar detects, acquires, tracks, and discriminates between armed missiles and decoys in the terminal phase.

The radar operating in terminal-mode also leads the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile defense system by guiding THAAD missiles to their targets, according to militaryaerospace.com.