ANDOVER, MD—Defense contractor Raytheon Co. on Monday launched a new manufacturing facility here that's meant to support the production of cutting-edge radar technology for the U.S. Navy. With 50-foot-high ceilings and a 40-ton bridge crane built into the roof, the building is specially designed for the testing and assembly of the SPY-6 line of radar arrays.

BizJournal.com reports that the 30,000-square-foot facility cost $72 million to develop and took just over a year to build. Sarah Jennette, an operations program manager who oversaw the project, says that an "extremely aggressive timeline" was necessary to keep up with the development schedule of the SPY-6. Components of the radar system were already being built, but Raytheon did not have a building big enough to fit the fully assembled array.