MQ-4C UAS first flight with AN/ZPY-3 MFAS search radar

Triton UAS flies with MFAS search radar - News - Shephard

The US Navy’s MQ-4C Triton UAS flew with the new Multi-Function Active Sensor (MFAS) search radar on 18 April.

The MFAS radar covers a large geographic area while providing all-weather coverage to the Triton. According the navy, this will enhance maritime domain awareness by expediting the detection, classification, tracking and identification of points of interest.
During the flight, the MFAS radar exercised its Maritime Surface Surveillance primary operating mode. The MQ-4C Triton UAS will carry the following mission sensors:

• the MFAS radar
• an electro-optical/infrared sensor that provides still imagery and full motion video of potential threats
• electronic support measures package to geo-locate radar threat signals
• Automatic Identification System (AIS) to detect and track vessels with AIS responders.

Sean Burke, Triton program manager, said: ‘This first sensor flight is a huge achievement for the program.
‘Our navy and Northrop Grumman team has worked extremely hard on this developmental effort, completing more than 40 surrogate flights over the last three years, and we saw the realization of that development work.’
Lt. Cmdr. Glenn Rioux, government flight test director, said: ‘Our primary objective was to test this new radar, but we also looked at how the aircraft performed as well as testing additional data links.

AN/ZPY-3 Multi-Function Active Sensor (MFAS)
The AN/ZPY-3 MFAS is a 360-degree field-of-regard active electronically scanned array radar designed for maritime surveillance. The X-Band two-dimensional sensor features a combination of electronic scanning and a mechanical rotation, allowing the radar to spotlight a geographic area of interest for longer periods to increase detection capabilities of smaller targets, particularly in sea clutter.
The AN/ZPY-3 MFAS sensor is the first radar system to provide full 360-degree persistent coverage of both open oceans and littoral regions from extremely long ranges.
The AN/ZPY-3 MFAS sensor operates with a rotating sensor that incorporates electronic scanning and provides mode agility to switch between various surveillance methods. These include

• maritime-surface-search (MSS) mode for tracking maritime targets and
• inverse-synthetic-aperture radar (ISAR) mode for classifying ships.
• Image-while-scan capability is used to interleave very short duration ISAR functions (ISAR snapshot and high- range resolution) during MSS scans.
• Two synthetic aperture radar (SAR) modes are used for ground searches;
• spot SAR for images of the ground and stationary targets and
• strip SAR for images along a fixed line.

PEO(U&W) Overview