Raytheon’s latest SPY-6 radar contract is worth $3.2 billion. One electrical engineer in Morocco just open-sourced a phased array radar you can build from Gerber files on GitHub.
The cost ladder in radar is absurd. A Thales Ground Master 400 runs $30 million per unit. Morocco’s own air force bought eight Raytheon Sentinel radars for $67 million. The Navy’s SPY-6 engineering development contract alone was $386 million before a single production unit shipped. Commercial phased array systems for civilian use start around $250,000.
The AERIS-10 does electronic beam steering at 10.5 GHz, pulse compression, Doppler processing, and multi-target tracking on a real-time map. The 20km version uses a 32x16 slotted waveguide array with GaN amplifiers, 16 ADTR1107 front-end chips, a custom frequency synthesizer, and an FPGA handling all signal processing. GPS and IMU for accurate target coordinates when the platform moves. This is a real radar system, not a science fair demo.
The bill of materials for the extended version probably lands somewhere between $5,000 and $15,000 depending on component sourcing. Call it a 95% cost reduction from the cheapest commercial alternative. Everything is MIT licensed. Schematics, PCB layouts, FPGA code, Python GUI, all of it.
The defense procurement complex charges what it charges because the technology was classified, the supply chains were locked, and the buyer had no alternative. Open source collapses all three of those barriers simultaneously. A university lab, a drone startup, or a national defense ministry in a country that can’t afford Raytheon pricing now has a starting point that would have required a cleared facility and a nine-figure budget five years ago.
The creator is asking for beta testers, RF engineers, and FPGA developers. The project hit 20K views on X in 13 hours. That ratio of technical depth to viral speed tells you how much pent-up demand exists for radar technology outside the defense contractor paywall.
chiefofautism@chiefofautismsomeone built an OPENSOURCE MILITARY RADAR that tracks multiple targets up to 20km away its called AERIS-10, full github repo schematics, PCB layouts, FPGA code, python GUI, everything under MIT license commercial phased array radar starts at $250,000. military surplus is $10,000-50,000 but its decades old analog junk with no electronic beam steering this does electronic beam steering at 10.5GHz, pulse compression, doppler processing, multi-target tracking on a real time map two versions: 3km range with patch antenna array, 20km range with 32x16 slotted waveguide array and GaN AMPLIFIERS custom frequency synthesizer, 16 front-end chips, FPGA doing all signal processing, GPS and IMU for ACCURATE target coordinates when the platform moves all gerber files included so you can order the PCBs and build it yourself one person built what defense contractors charge a quarter MILLION for and open sourced it