Raytheon, an RTX business, has been awarded an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Navy ManTech project from Penn State University Applied Research Laboratory's Electronics Manufacturing Center of Excellence to streamline the production of SPY-6 Transmit/Receive (TR) modules. Manufacturing advancements like automation, new material sources and process yield improvements will result in cost-savings for the U.S. Navy across the life cycle of the SPY-6 radar.

"TR modules are a key component in many of the military's critical sensing systems," said Colin Whelan, president of Advanced Technology at Raytheon. "These manufacturing advancements will greatly benefit future capabilities and can be implemented on other U.S. Navy and Department of Defense programs."

SPY-6 is the U.S. Navy's family of radars that performs air and missile defense on several classes of ships. They enable ships to simultaneously detect, track and discriminate air, surface and ballistic missile targets, providing a 360-degree integrated air and missile defense for ships.

The four variants of SPY-6 use common hardware and software, and their construction is modular — making it more reliable and less expensive to maintain. Manufacturing advancements will further increase performance while reducing overall production costs.

Work on this contract is being conducted in Andover, Mass. New SPY-6 RF TR modules are expected to be delivered in 2026-2027.