The Raytheon-built Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) has successfully completed its Navy critical design review (CDR) ahead of more hardware development efforts later this summer, company officials told USNI News this week.

According to the company, the AMDR — now designated AN/SPY-6(v) — passed or exceeded technical performance measures in tests allowing the company to proceed to the next phases of the design and building effort of the radar.

“We have achieved or exceeded all of those technical performance measures,” Tad Dickenson Raytheon’s program manager for AMDR told USNI News this week.

“The basic report card is that we have more than 20 technical performance measures which are anything from simple things — like size weight and power — to more complex things — like jammer suppression or single pulse sensitivity.”

The company had completed the preliminary design review (PDR) for the radar last year.

The AMDR will be the new active electronically scanned array (AESA)S-band radar onboard the Arleigh Burke Flight III guided missile destroyers (DDG-51). The first of the ships will start construction in Fiscal Year 2016 as part of a ten ship multi-year procurement deal the service inked in 2013.

Raytheon is also building a radar suite controller and the Navy will use the Northrop Grumman AN/SPQ-9B (nicknamed: spook 9 Bee) as the X-band radar for the Flight IIIs for now.

The radar promise to provide a 30-times boost in sensitivity over the current Lockheed Martin AV/SPY-1D radars found on current Burkes, the Navy has said.

Raytheon is currently working on an engineering development model ahead of a full radar delivery in May of 2017 to meet the construction schedule of the new Flight IIIs.