Raytheon awarded contract for Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar systems

The contract action provides for transmit-site monitors, receiver-site monitors and integrated replacement shelters. Work will be performed at multiple sites across the U.S. with an expected completion date of September 2022.

The ROTHR is a long-range land-based radar system designed to track aircraft and ships off of coastlines. It can track aircraft at any altitude and can detect ships longer than 100 feet long. It works by bouncing radar waves off of the ionosphere

The system can provide surveillance of the U.S. coastline out to a range of over 1500 miles and covers 10 million square miles of ocean and airspace. It was originally designed and deployed in 1986 for tracking Cold War-era Soviet aircraft. The current ROTHR network plays a large role in drug interdiction missions and routinely detects and tracks over 8000 targets a day.

The ROTHR network is currently operated out of the Navy Operations Control Center in Virginia.