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The Sentinel provides integrated battlefield management for tactical forward air defense.
The AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel is the air surveillance and target acquisition/tracking sensor for division and corps weapons under the Army's Forward Area Air Defense (FAAD) system. This three-dimensional phased-array system operates in the X-band to automatically detect, track, identify, classify, and report airborne threats including helicopters, high-speed attack aircraft, cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles. It detects and tracks threat aircraft at several times the distance of short-range weapons. Sentinel's early warning capabilities protect personnel and equipment by allowing engagement of threats at maximum distances.
Sentinel is accurate, quick reacting, and acquires targets far enough from friendly troops to provide sufficient reaction time for their air defense weapons to engage the targets at optimum range. The system includes an integrated identification friend or foe (IFF) capability that helps prevent fratricide.
The Sentinel configuration allows weapons, radars, and command posts to operate from widely separated battlefield positions. Sentinel command posts activate weapon control orders and provide target weapon pairing. Sentinel provides alerting and cueing of aircraft, helicopter, unmanned aerial vehicle, and cruise missile targets to a variety of weapons including surface-launched Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM), Stinger, antiaircraft guns, and very short range missiles (VSHORAD-class).
The MPQ-64 Sentinel system is
provided to the Turkish Land Forces for their
low-level air defense program. Other
international customers receive the system
through the HAWK-AMRAAM programs which use the
radar to cue batteries of either HAWK or
ground-launched AIM-120 (AMRAAM).