UK Defence Industry Team Strengthens Partnership to Bid for Royal Navy's Replacement Medium Range Radar System

The BAE Systems and QinetiQ partnership bidding to supply a new Naval Medium Range Radar (NMRR) system for the Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates and aircraft carriers has been further strengthened through a teaming agreement with research and development specialist, Roke Manor Research Ltd.

Paul Laity, BAE Systems Integrated System Technologies (Insyte) naval programmes director, said:

"The team is confident that it is now well positioned to deliver a robust and significantly enhanced radar system for the Royal Navy, which can be installed without interruption to ships’ operational programmes."

The team's offering, ARTISAN 3D, is a robust and significantly enhanced radar system which has greater functionality, improved performance and increased operational availability compared with the existing E/F-Band surveillance and target indication Type 996 radar. The Type 996 was delivered by BAE Systems to most of the RN fleet over a ten-year period beginning in 1986 and is still maintained by them through a long-term support contract. The first replacement radar systems are expected to enter service early next decade.

David Salter, account director for defence at Roke Manor Research said:

"Roke is delighted to be part of the BAE Systems/QinetiQ NMRR bid team. Having successfully supplied electronic protection measures designs into all the major Royal Navy surveillance radar programmes, we are keen to see this experience and history fully exploited to provide the UK with an effective and affordable solution."

QinetiQ's managing director for its defence business, Andrew Sleigh, said:

"The addition of Roke Manor Research to the team completes the set of key technical partners. All of us are currently providing our respective areas of expertise to ongoing UK research programmes, which effectively means that the team is already contributing to the rapid pull-through of innovative radar technology solutions into the Royal Navy."

Close links already exist between the team members through other UK research programmes such as ARTIST (Advanced Radar Technology Integrated System Test-bed). The ARTIST programme supports the next generation of maritime multifunction radar (MFR) and covers development, build and evaluation of a research demonstrator system and assessment techniques.