Raytheon's 'Tippy Two' Radar Gets Back In The Budget -- Knock On Wood

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http://defense.aol.com/2013/03/15/raytheons-tippy-two-radar-gets-back-in-the-budget-knock-on/



Raytheon AN/TPY-2 ("Tippy Two&quot missile defense radar. "T" stands for "transportable": Note the wheels

Raytheon's 'Tippy Two' Radar Gets Back In The Budget -- Knock On Wood
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: March 15, 2013

[UPDATED 7pm with Sec. Hagel remarks] WASHINGTON: This afternoon, newly installed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel gave a nod to a high-tech radar, the AN/TPY-2 -- improbably nicknamed "Tippy Two" -- as a key component of America's burgeoning missile defenses. Next week could bring more good news for the radar's manufacturer, Raytheon: Not only will the company announce the delivery of the eighth TPY-2 system to the Army, but Congress is expected to add back a $163 million radar the administration had cut from the program -- that is, if the Senate manages to pass the defense appropriations bill.

"It's not done yet, no fat lady's singing," said Raytheon's Jim Bedingfield in an interview with AOL Defense this morning, literally knocking on wood at a coffee shop table. Bedingfield is a retired Army air and missile defense officer who works in Raytheon's Missile Defense & Space Programs unit, which makes the TPY-2 radar. He's not come down from his Massachusetts office to DC to meet with members of Congress, he said, but he couldn't speak to what Raytheon's lobbyists are doing in the last-minute scramble to protect -- or insert -- items in the defense spending bill.

Unlike more traditional weapons systems -- tanks, ships, planes -- missile defense is a growing business both in the US and worldwide as concern rises over North Korean, Iranian, and other growing arsenals of ballistic missiles. With government blessing, Lockheed Martin is selling its THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense) anti-missile system to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar -- whose Sunni aristocracies are deeply nervous about revolutionary Shia Iran -- and TPY-2 is the targeting radar for the THAAD package, so Raytheon gets a sale for every THAAD battery Lockheed sells. TPY-2 can also be used independently of THAAD as an early warning system, spotting enemy missile launches and relaying the data to distant missile-defense batteries, be they Army THAADs, Navy Aegis systems, or the Ground-Based Intercept (GBI) sites in Alaska and California that Hagel has ordered beefed up with almost 50 percent more missiles.

Currently there are two THAAD batteries in service and a third being organized, each with its TPY-2. Then there are five independent radars either currently or planned to be forward-based around the world: in Japan (the pending deployment Hagel talked up today) to keep an eye on North Korea; in Israel, Turkey, and (unofficially) Qatar to keep an eye on Iran and, secondarily, Syria; and at the Kwajalein range in the US Marshall Islands for missile defense tests.