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APQ-187 radar mounted on an MH-60.
TAMPA, Florida—U.S. Special Operations Command’s terrain following radar has proven to be so effective, the command is looking to share.
SOCOM has fielded the RTX APQ-187 Silent Knight terrain following radar on its MC-130J, CV-22, MH-47 and MH-60 fleet. The radar is export controlled for now, and SOCOM is looking to potentially change that.
“Silent Knight is truly an exquisite piece of technology that, in its current form, is so exquisite actually that we are not exporting it,” says Lt. Col. Seth Green, the Silent Knight Radar and CV-22 lead for SOCOM’s program executive office-fixed wing.
Not only is the radar not exported, it is also not in use on regular military aircraft outside of SOCOM.
“Silent Knight is amazing in its own way, but if you ask me what I want for Christmas next year, I’d like to have a ‘Holy Knight’ radar—a radar that I can give out to foreign partners, or to the Army or the Air Force for terrain awareness,” he says.
It does not have to be the APQ-187 specifically, but Green called on industry to come forward with a radar that could provide “a lot of what” Silent Knight does but is allowed for export.
For SOCOM’s platforms, Green in a presentation at the SOF Week event here called for near-term needs to increase processing capacity, open architecture modifications, ways to improve UAS detection and tracking, and an active electronically scanned array.
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