Rockwell Collins bagged a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract to develop new electronically scanned array (ESA) antenna technology as part of the Arrays at Commercial Timescales (ACT) program.
This program aims to make ESAs, a common building block component that is digitally interconnected, reconfigurable, and readily upgradeable. It also aims at reducing the total cost of procurement by 80 percent.
ESA antennas offer numerous system level benefits such as rapid beam movement, reconfigurable antenna patterns, and graceful degradation of performance as the system ages. This program will make ESA solutions affordable for smaller, low cost applications.