SALINA, N.Y. — The Salina plant of Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) will work on two new TPS-77 radars for Romania under a new contract the firm announced on Monday.
The Bethesda, Maryland–based defense contractor didn’t provide any terms of its latest radar agreement in its news release.
The radars will include digital array row transceivers (DART), which the company said lead to “energy efficiency and greater performance.
Lockheed Martin said that since 1995 it has provided Romania with more than two dozen ground-based radars.
“For over 20 years, Lockheed Martin and Romania have built a strong partnership to enhance Romania’s air surveillance and weather radar network,” Mark Mekker, Lockheed Martin director of surveillance radar, said in the release. “The feedback we receive from our ongoing collaborations with countries like Romania leads to the development of system enhancements, like DART. Our teams thrive on developing leading-edge technologies to meet our customers’ needs.”
The TPS-77 DART uses gallium nitride (GaN) technology, allowing the high-power amplifiers to consume much less power, “ultimately increasing” reliability, lowering life-cycle costs and extending the radar’s useful life.
Lockheed Martin has been using GaN in its radars for more than six years, the company added.
The defense contractor has produced and maintains more than 175 surveillance-range radars, all of which are “operational around the world detecting targets at ranges up to 250 miles, 24 hours a day,” according to the release.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com