The SPY-6 family is integrated, meaning it can defend against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, hostile aircraft and surface ships simultaneously. And it offers many advantages over legacy radars, such as greater detection range, increased sensitivity and more accurate discrimination.
SPY-6 comes in four variants:
- SPY-6(V)1 is designed for the new DDG 51 Flight III destroyers.
- SPY-6(V)2, also known as the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (rotator variant), is designed for amphibious assault ships and Nimitz-class carriers.
- SPY-6(V)3, also known as the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (fixed variant), is designed for Ford-class aircraft carriers and FFG(X) guided missile frigates.
- SPY-6(V)4 is designed to upgrade the in-service DDG 51 Flight IIA destroyers.
Each variant uses the same hardware and software, and their construction is modular, making SPY-6 more reliable and less expensive to maintain. The radar is built with individual ‘building blocks’ called radar modular assemblies (RMA). Each RMA is a self-contained radar antenna in a 2’x2’x2’ box. The RMAs stack together to fit the mission requirements of any ship – a feature that makes SPY-6 the Navy’s first truly scalable radar.