What Makes the U.S. Navy’s Powerful SPY-6 Radar Matters The radar comes with different blocks so the size can be adjusted for each different class of warship. Attacking enemy cruise missiles, fighter jets, helicopters and ballistic missiles all present substantial threats to Navy surface ships, especially when multiple attacks happen at the same time. By and large, defending against incoming ballistic missiles and incoming air and cruise missiles required separate defensive systems—until now. A new family of SPY-6 radar systems are now being quickly expanded by the U.S. Navy to incorporate a much wider swath of the fleet. The strongest, longest-range and most sensitive variant of the SPY-6, the v1, has been built into the Navy’s first of its-kind DDG 51 Flight III next-generation destroyer. That warship is the future USS Jack H. Lucas and, according to a report from Naval Sea Systems Command, two of four Air and Missile Defense Radars (AMDR) arrays have now been installed in the deckhouse of the Jack H. Lucas. (Note that the AMDR’s are the same radar as the AN/SPY-6).