On Tuesday, 4 November 2025, a ceremonial signing of two Letters of Subcontract between PIT-Radwar and Raytheon took place at the PIT-Radwar facility in Kobyłka, near Warsaw, Poland.
Photos: PIT-Radwar
The first contract, covering the production and delivery of four IFF antennas for the Patriot system, is a continuation of the agreement with Romania, which provides for the sale of an additional Patriot battery together with an Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system.
Earlier, on 28 April of this year, the U.S. Department of State approved the potential sale to Romania of another MIM-104F Patriot PAC-3+ air and missile defense system package, valued at up to 280 million USD.
The second contract, which commercializes the offset under Phase II of the Wisła program, provides for PIT-Radwar to produce and deliver 36 antennas for 12 new LTAMDS (Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor) radars.
The agreements were signed by Marek Borejko, President of the Management Board of PIT-Radwar; Ryan Lehman, Poland Programs Director at Raytheon; and Paulina Epler, a member of the Management Board of Raytheon Poland.
The hall where the signing ceremony was held will be the production site for the IFF antennas for LTAMDS radars.
The event was also attended by, among others: Deputy Head of the Armament Agency Col. Robert Frommholz; Deputy Director of the Armaments Policy Department of the Ministry of National Defense Cdr. Arkadiusz Kalinowski, Ph.D.; First Vice President of the Polish Armaments Group, Arkadiusz Bąk; and Mike Mills, Executive Director for LTAMDS/GhostEye programs at Raytheon.
A Letter of Intent (LOI) covering the development and production of the radar, command-and-control system, and missile technologies between the Polish and American companies was signed on 14 October 2014 (at that time still under the name Bumar Elektronika). The scope of cooperation included, among other things, equipping the radar and designing subsystems – including electronic components and software – as well as equipping and developing software for the Patriot Engagement Control Station (ECS). Earlier, in the spring of 2014, an LOI had been signed concerning the design and modernization of the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) antenna. The IFF interrogator is one of 5,000 components of the AN/MPQ-65 radar antenna.
In 2016, PIT-Radwar completed research and development work on Identification Friend or Foe systems, enabling Raytheon to order the start of serial production in November of the same year. Deliveries of the first batch took place between May and December 2017. In January 2018, Raytheon began integrating them into upgraded Patriot systems for a foreign user, and on 29 April 2019 it announced that the order had been completed. The company then carried out deliveries for the Polish Armed Forces under the Wisła program (PIT-Radwar for Patriot).
The AN/MPQ-65 is a C-band phased-array radar with an instrumental range of 100 km. It enables the detection, identification, acquisition, and tracking of aerodynamic targets — such as cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and aircraft (up to 100 simultaneously) — and the guidance of PAC-3 interceptors against them via the AN/MSQ-104 command station. The radar reached initial operational capability in 2003 and replaced the older AN/MPQ-53 units.
LTAMDS is a three-faced fixed radar providing full 360-degree coverage and using Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) antennas based on gallium nitride (GaN) technology. These features allow it to provide significantly more effective protection against a wide range of threats — from manned and unmanned aircraft to cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles. It is the successor to the sector-scanning AN/MPQ-65 fire-control radars used in Patriot batteries. Compared with the AN/MPQ-65 radar, the new antenna is 2,130 mm longer and 280 mm narrower. It does not require side stabilizers, which reduces its footprint in the cargo hold of a C-17A Globemaster III.
