GUEST BLOG: The worldwide markets for military radar, sonar, electronic warfare, and communications
BlogJuly 30, 2024
Ray Alderman
VITA Standards Organization
WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: So far in this series, we have explored the worldwide markets for military platforms (tanks, ships, submarines, airplanes, and drones). These segments are interesting to the companies that bend metal, but for us, we want to know about the electronic systems inside those platforms. That insatiable yearning is the inspiration for this article. There’s a plethora of these systems, scattered around the services, so we can’t identify all of them here. I'll just mention the major programs and let you discover the rest on your own.
This is a broad topic, so let’s start at the top and work our way down. According to Spherical Insights (a market research company), the worldwide market for global defense electronics was $223.7 billion in 2022, growing to $379.2 billion by 2032 (a compound annual growth rate of 5.4%). There are some other reports claiming growth rates above 6%, so let’s just say this market is growing at about 6%. Some of the reports include software in their numbers, so you have to sort that out to get to the hardware numbers.
Next, we need to break the market down into bite-size chunks, so we'll start with radar. According to Fortune Business Insights (another market research company), the worldwide market for military radar systems was $55.58 billion in 2022, growing to $211.12 billion by 2032 (a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.96%). These numbers include the antennas, transmitters, receivers, duplexers, cabling, and the boxes they were shipped in, so you have to sort that out to get to the printed circuit board and backplane numbers. Even subtracting those superfluous elements, this market is growing like crazy. As an example, the European Union (EU) countries have embarked on a new program (SkyShield), to install an integrated and interconnected air defense radar system facing east (at Russia). About 80 of these radar systems and missile launchers are already on order.
Looking at the U.S. Navy, they are installing the advanced AN/SPY-6 air and missile defense radar on 29 new ships, and replacing the older radars on existing destroyers, carriers, and amphibious assault ships with a variant that fits their superstructure (as they come in for maintenance). That’s a few hundred systems over time, and they cost about $300 million each.
To read more Warfare Evolution Blogs by Ray Alderman, click here.
When you look at the U.S. Army’s radar systems, you have to look at M-SHORAD (maneuver short range air defense, using the Xenta-M radar) that targets helicopters and low flying aircraft. Then, there’s the Patriot missile system (medium range air defense, using the AN/MPQ-53 and 65 radar). And finally, there’s the long-range THAAD system (terminal high altitude air defense, using the AN/TPY-2 radar). The Army wants a total of 162 SHORAD systems at a cost of roughly $10 million each in low volume. There are over 250 Patriot systems already deployed. They cost about $1 billion each ($400 million for the radar and launcher, $600 million for the missiles). There are seven THAAD batteries in operation and orders are coming from EU countries for more. They cost about $800 million each.
After you chew through the existing systems above, take a look at the Army's LTAMDS (Lower Tier Air And Missile Defense Sensor) program. Then, look at their IFPC (Indirect Fire Protection Capability) program. The variants of this system fire missiles, high-power microwaves, or lasers at incoming enemy missiles and aircraft. The Army has six LTAMDS for testing (they cost about $130 million each), but we don’t know how many they want in the future. In addition, the Army wants 71 IFPC systems, and the prices are dependent on whether it fires missiles, microwave beams, or lasers. Add all this up, and you’re looking at 300-400 radar systems.
For the Marines, they are replacing five of their old radar systems with the new AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR system (ground/air task oriented radar) for air defense and ground targeting. They have 21 systems operational and want another 36 in the future. According to a recent order for eight G/ATOR systems, they cost about $30 million each.
Finally, we have the Air Force. The big programs are the F-35 (with its AN/APG-81 radar), the new F-15EX (with its AN/APG-82(V)1 radar), and the new B-21 stealth bomber (its radar is secret for now). There’s also a radar upgrade on the F-16 fighters with the new AN/APG-83 SABR system. Also, add in new radar upgrades for the B-52 bombers, the new E-7 Wedgetail early warning and control aircraft, and upgrades going on all their long-range drones, and you have hundreds of radar systems being built and deployed.
Let’s move on to sonar. When you look back at my article on ships and submarines, you’ll see that the worldwide capacity to build these boats is limited and it takes years to build them. According to 360 Market Updates (a market research company), the worldwide market for military sonar systems was $1.955 billion in 2023, growing to $4.362 billion by 2032 (a CAGR of 12.4%). Recently, the French navy has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm for passive sonar systems (listen only, no pings). It's very good at discovering and interpreting weak signals in the noise in the water, it can find targets at longer ranges, identify the type of ship (military or commercial), identify the type of propulsion system and the propeller speed, and how many blades are on the propellers. New AI algorithms seem to be contributing to the growth rate of naval sonar systems.
Next, we’ll look at electronic warfare (EW) systems. According to MarketsandMarkets (a market research company), the worldwide market for military EW systems was $10.8 billion in 2023, growing to $19.4 billion by 2028 (a CAGR of 12.5%). Again, AI algorithms are driving the growth in this segment. They enable cognitive electronic warfare (CEW) where the machine can find, identify, fix, track, and counter enemy electronic signals faster than human operators.
The Air Force is adding five new EA-37B Compass Call electronic attack aircraft to their fleet in 2025. They are adding the new AN/ASQ-239 EW system to the F-35. They are putting the new EPAWSS (Eagle Passive Active Warning Survivability System) in the F-15 fighter. They are adding the IVEWS system (Integrated Viper Electronic Warfare System) on the F-16 fighter with the AN/ALQ-254(V)1 unit.
The Navy is adding the new AN/SLQ-32 EW systems on their surface ships under the SEWIP program (Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program). They are adding the new AN/ALQ-214 EW systems to their F/A-18 fighter planes under their ADVEW program. The Marines are adding EW pods on their Reaper drones under their RDESS/SOAR program (Reaper Defense Electronic Support System/Scaleable Open Architecture Reconnaissance). The Army is adding their MFEW (Multifunction Electronic Warfare) pods on their MQ-1C Grey Eagle drones (a version of the Predator drone). They have five or six programs underway, to put new EW systems on all their tanks, ground combat vehicles, helicopters, and a soldier-carried backpack version of an EW system. There are many new EW programs ongoing, across all the services and their platforms.
Up next is the worldwide market for military communications systems (COMM). According to Fortune Business Insights (a market research company), the worldwide market for military communications systems was $33.12 billion in 2023, growing to $60.4 billion by 2032 (a CAGR of 7.2%). This report also counts antennas, cables, and the box they were shipped in, so you have to sort that out. With all platforms across all the services being connected together in a “kill web,” I think the COMM market will actually grow faster in the future. The biggest sub-section seems to be satellite links.
The best way to look at this segment is to start with the Pentagon’s CJADC-2 program (Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control) and their GIDE (Global Information Dominance Experiment) exercises, to connect all military platforms together across all the services. Under that, look at the Army’s IBCS (Integrated Battle Command System) program and their Project Convergence exercises, where they connect all their platforms together. Then, look at the Air Force’s ABMS (Advanced Battle Management System) and how they have been hooking their platforms together. Then, look at the Navy’s CEC program (Cooperative Engagement Capability) and how they have been networking their ships and aircraft.
COMM is a very complex segment, so cramming a bunch of programs and system nomenclatures in this article would require a warning, that reading it may induce brain damage. Let me give you some examples. The F-22 fighter plane could not share radar images and targeting data with the new F-35. The F-22 uses the older IFDL (Intra-Flight Data Link) protocol and data format while the newer F-35 uses the MADL (Multifunction Advance Data Link) protocol and data structures. So, another aircraft has to fly nearby, with a black box that translates IDFL and MADL messages back and forth between the F-22 and the F-35. Now, consider an F-22 sending radar images and targeting data to an Army missile unit on the ground, or to a Navy ship offshore.
That says a lot of black-box translators are being built, to interface older COMM systems to the newer COMM systems across the services. You may want to look into SDR (software defined radio). That’s digital radio technologies that can jump around on frequencies, change waveforms, and elude enemy jamming. Hopefully, the Pentagon has these COMM problems figured out under CJADC-2.
Look at a picture of the initial Marine Corps ACV-C (Amphibious Combat Vehicle-Command and Control). This is a mobile command center for commanders on the ground in battle. It looks like a roaming antenna field: eleven antennas are sprouting up from the body of the vehicle. The commander needs to talk to his adjacent units on the ground, to other unit commanders in the theater, to overhead drones and aircraft, to satellites, to GPS, to ships off shore. The first versions of this vehicle contained 11 radios inside (I think they have that down to seven radios if you look at pictures of the latest ACV-C version with seven antennas sticking up). Now, you understand why I am hesitant to wade very far into this COMM swamp.
So, let me make a few observations here. It looks like the biggest markets for military electronics are in radar and EW. Comparatively, sonar is a low volume market. And, the COMM market is a mystery. Second, I think using satellites to relay messages and data across different platforms will eliminate a lot of older radios and black-box translators scattered around. And third, I think all these segments are perfect applications for advanced AI algorithms, to solve a lot of technical problems noted here. That means all these systems will need high-performance AI processors, I/O cards, and backplanes in the future. My last observation seems to fit well with the Pentagon’s MOSA (modular open systems architecture) initiative and The Sensor Open Systems Architecture – SOSA – Technical Standard.
I had two goals in writing this essay:
- To give you a cursory understanding of the radar, sonar, EW, and COMM markets, and
- To break my personal record for the most military acronyms used in a single article (31).
I think I accomplished both objectives here. I didn’t go too deep into what our allies in Europe and the Pacific are doing, but you can assume that they are also developing or buying new systems (to build their defenses against Russia and China, respectively). If you want to dig deeper into this topic, you are in for a reading marathon that could go on for weeks.
Next time, we’ll tie-up some loose ends and look at the markets for military satellites and helicopters. That will complete our study of military platforms. From there, we will look at the military budgets and programs in the top countries in the world. After that, we can close-out this series and bring all this information together with a detailed three-dimensional tree-diagram, some multi-level cross-connected spreadsheets, and a few matrix-analysis charts. At that point, everything will become perfectly clear to you.
