- The U.S. Army awarded Raytheon a $904.6 million contract modification for five LTAMDS units and six spares, bringing total program value to $5.35 billion.
- Work will be performed in Andover, Massachusetts, with $725.8 million in Fiscal Year 2026 Army funds obligated and a completion date of August 29, 2031.
The U.S. Army has awarded Raytheon Missiles and Defense a $904.6 million contract modification to produce five additional Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) units and six spare systems, the Department of War confirmed. The award, a modification to an existing contract, pushes the program’s total cumulative value to more than $5.35 billion, underscoring the military’s accelerating push to field next-generation air defense radar capability.
Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, managed the award, with work to be performed at Raytheon’s facility in Andover, Massachusetts. The program carries an estimated completion date of August 29, 2031.
Of the total contract value, $725,878,580 in Fiscal Year 2026 Missile Procurement, Army funds were obligated at the time of award. The solicitation was conducted via the internet, with one bid received — a reflection of Raytheon’s singular position as the system’s developer and primary manufacturer.
Tom Laliberty, president of Land and Air Defense Systems at Raytheon, said the company is actively scaling its industrial base to meet growing demand. “With demand surging for this high-impact 360-degree radar, we are investing in advanced facilities to scale production and accelerate delivery, ensuring service members receive this critical capability without delay,” Laliberty said. “This latest contract demonstrates the critical need for LTAMDS amid increasingly complex and large raid threat tactics.”
At its core, LTAMDS is designed to overcome a fundamental limitation of its predecessor. The legacy AN/MPQ-65 radar — the sensor component of the Patriot air defense system — relied on a single-face radar array, leaving coverage gaps that adversarial planners have increasingly sought to exploit. LTAMDS replaces that architecture with three active electronically scanned array (AESA) faces arranged to provide full 360-degree detection capability without blind spots. The system can track and discriminate between multiple simultaneous threats across the battlespace, including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, advanced aircraft, and increasingly, the dense salvos of unmanned aerial systems now common on modern battlefields.
The sensor is designed to integrate with the Patriot weapon system, feeding targeting data to the fire control system and launchers already fielded across the U.S. Army and dozens of allied nations. Rather than replacing the entire Patriot architecture, LTAMDS slots in as an upgraded radar component, substantially improving the capability of existing batteries without requiring a wholesale system replacement.
Across multiple theaters, adversaries have refined tactics involving coordinated barrages of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones — designed to saturate and overwhelm legacy air defense sensors. The 360-degree detection capability offered by LTAMDS is a direct response to those evolving tactics. Allied interest in the system has also grown, with Poland having previously selected LTAMDS as part of its own Patriot modernization program.
The broader Patriot system remains one of the most combat-proven ground-based air defense platforms in the world. Recent operational use in Ukraine and across the Middle East has demonstrated both the system’s effectiveness and the intense demand placed on air defense infrastructure when confronting modern threats. Those same operational conditions have driven urgency in U.S. procurement timelines, with the Army seeking to field advanced radar capability as quickly as Raytheon’s production ramp can support.