Raytheon, an RTX (NYSE: RTX) business, successfully demonstrated the company’s Next Generation Short Range Interceptor (NGSRI), designed to replace Raytheon’s Stinger® surface-to-air missile for the U.S. Army. Multiple guided missiles were launched using the company’s soldier-portable Command Launch Assembly (CLA) during the demonstration. Each shot showed the NGSRI system’s ability to detect, track and intercept Army-simulated aerial threats with direct hits and target destruction. The system’s advanced performance is driven by the CLA and missile seeker’s precision optics, paired with an innovative highly loaded grain solid rocket motor manufactured by Northrop Grumman. Together, these technologies significantly extend NGSRI’s engagement range beyond current systems.
“Raytheon’s NGSRI saw farther and locked faster, demonstrating superior target acquisition, longer range and greater lethality than Stinger – which is already the world’s most in-demand and shoulder-fired air defense system,” said Tom Laliberty, president of Land and Air Defense Systems at Raytheon. “Our NGSRI solution builds on Stinger’s historic global success by being easier to build and field, resulting in a more capable, affordable and rapidly producible weapon.”
Over the past year, Raytheon has conducted several company-funded tests to prove and enhance NGSRI, along with two incremental demonstrations under contract with the Army. NGSRI is a U.S. Army program to develop a short-range missile that will eventually replace the Stinger system. The missile will be able to be fired from a vehicle or shoulder-mounted launcher. As the manufacturer of the Stinger missile and launchers, Raytheon is working to ensure full interoperability of NGSRI with both new and existing mounted platforms. Raytheon’s NGSRI design leverages more than 60 years of air defense experience to deliver the world’s most advanced shoulder-launched air defense missile for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. The company’s use of modular system design and automated manufacturing enables faster development and production.
Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons, military, and commercial electronics. Raytheon was founded in 1922 and it merged in 2020 with United Technologies Corporation to form Raytheon Technologies, which changed its name to RTX Corporation in July 2023. Raytheon was established in 1922, reincorporated in 1928, and adopted the Raytheon Company name in 1959. More than 90% of Raytheon’s revenues were obtained from military contracts and by 2012, it was the fifth-largest military contractor in the world. It was the world’s largest producer of guided missiles, and was involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft. Raytheon has moved its headquarters among various Massachusetts locations: Cambridge from 1922 to 1928; Newton until 1941; Waltham until 1961; Lexington until 2003; and then Waltham again through the present day.
