EMS Technologies will supply radar front-end switch assemblies for the US Navy’s Phalanx close-in weapon system (CIWS) under a contract awarded by Raytheon Missile Systems.

Under the $5.4m contract, the company will provide its high-performance rugged switches which will enable the Phalanx CIWS’s tracking radar to detect and track threats early in flight.

CIWS is a shipboard rapid-fire radar-guided gun system currently operating on all the US warships specifically designed to counter missile attacks and other close-in air threats by simultaneously tracking multiple targets.

Deliveries of the radar switch assemblies are scheduled to begin in February 2011 and continue until 2013.

To date, EMS has supplied switches for 650 of the 900 systems that have been deployed by the programme.