US Army exercises option on 44 Northrop Grumman STARLite radar systems for MQ-1C Gray Eagle UAS
ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill. – An additional 44 Northrop Grumman AN/ZPY-1 Small Tactical Radar – Lightweight (STARLite) wide-area surveillance radars will be leveraged by the U.S. Army for the MQ-1C Gray Eagle Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). The STARLite systems are composed of ground moving target and discount moving target indicator ability, as well as synthetic aperture radar, and have proved an effective instrument in providing aerial intelligence to warfighters. The deliveries that commence in April of 2013 and end in March of the following year, will bring the total number of contracted systems to 174.
At 65 pounds, STARLite has been demonstrated on the U.S. Army Threat Detection Systems aerostat, and is capable of being leveraged for all-weather, wide-area tactical reconnaissance for a number of manned and unmanned systems beyond the Gray Eagle UAS platform. The system has also displayed its digital interoperability capacity to cue non-collated sensors and share data over networks in recent demonstrations at Camp Robert in California.
