US Army receives first five Sentinel A4 Air & Missile Defense Radars

News, US June 16, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

U.S. Army received the first five Sentinel A4 Air and Missile defense radars of its initial contract with Lockheed Martin.

The Sentinel A4 radar is expected to provide improved capability as part of the U.S. Army’s modernization efforts. The system is developed and manufactured by leading defense firm Lockheed Martin and has been on an accelerated schedule since the project was awarded in September 2019.

Sentinel Product Director for the U.S. Army Sentinel A4 program office Leah Cook said “We are one step closer to getting this enhanced capability to our warfighters. The delivery of the first five radars is a result of collaboration and a continued commitment to the U.S. Army.”

According to the Lockheed Martin release, “The Sentinel A4’s open scalable radar architecture is the cornerstone of the radar system’s design and allows for addressing evolving threats with software modifications only.”

“The new air and missile defense radar will provide improved capability over the previous iteration”, the Sentinel A3 (AN/MPQ-64A3) air and missile defense radar. The Sentinel system is expected to outperform the legacy radar, “delivering improvements in contested environments against cruise missiles, unmanned aerial systems, rotary wing and fixed wing aircraft, and rocket, artillery, and mortar threats. This includes enhanced surveillance, detection, and classification capabilities to protect U.S. Army maneuver formations,” the statement added.

*^{Sentinel A4 Air Missile Defense System. (Image Credit: Lockheed Martin)}*

Director of Army Radars for Lockheed Martin Mark Mekker said “Our team understands the criticality of this technology and the need to get it fielded. Our soldiers are in unpredictable environments, and the Sentinel A4 will provide improved eyes on the field to keep them safe.”

The $281 million contract to develop the Sentinel A4 system was awarded to Lockheed Martin in September 2019. Since then, the Sentinel program has achieved several milestones ahead of schedule, including System Requirements Review/ System Functional Review (SRR/SFR), Preliminary Design Review (PDR), and the Critical Design Reviews (CDR). In September of 2020, the Sentinel A4 radar array prototype became operational, five months ahead of schedule, the Lockheed statement highlighted.