CEA Technologies

CEA Technologies designs and builds active phased array radars in Canberra, and since 2023 the Australian Government has owned most of it. Two retired Royal Australian Navy officers started the company in 1983 to create a design and support centre for Australian Defence Force systems. The Commonwealth took a 72 per cent stake in October 2023 for A$365 million and completed the move to government business enterprise status in January 2025, leaving CEA trading at arm's length as a for-profit company. Around 600 people work there, roughly a third of them engineers, across Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, Newcastle and Brisbane, plus a wholly owned subsidiary in Hanover, Maryland.

The sea domain is where the company made its name. CEAFAR, an S-band active phased array multifunction radar, delivers volume search, surface search, target classification and fire control support from fixed faces rather than a rotating antenna, and it pairs with CEAMOUNT, an X-band active phased array illuminator. Both went onto the Anzac-class frigates under the anti-ship missile defence upgrade, and the successor CEAFAR2 is going to sea on the Hunter-class future frigates. That maritime lineage feeds the land domain directly. CEATAC, the tactical fire control radar carried on a modified Hawkei protected mobility vehicle, is derived from CEAFAR2 and uses four fixed faces for 360 degree coverage, each face handling medium-range surveillance, IFF and fire control. CEAOPS, a development of the ground based multi-mission radar, mounts on an HX77 truck or sits in a fixed installation and adds long-range multiband surveillance. Both feed the Army short range ground-based air defence capability under LAND 19 Phase 7B, the Australian version of NASAMS.

Air domain work covers the range radar for the Woomera Range Remediation Project under AIR 3024 Phase 1, the Advanced Growler electronic attack program under AIR 5349 Phase 6, and the joint air battle management system being assembled under AIR 6500 Phase 1. Electronic warfare systems sit alongside the radar lines as a declared capability in their own right. Behind the products the company runs its own advanced manufacturing operation, claiming Australian industry content above 80 per cent on its arrays and keeping the intellectual property Australian owned and controlled. Through life support is the other half of the business, because a radar sold to a navy needs decades of spares, upgrades and repair. Training and solutions delivery rounds things out, putting operator and maintainer courses next to the hardware. Few companies anywhere have taken a locally developed radar architecture from a frigate program into land air defence and range instrumentation without licensing someone else's design. Older entries in the record include integrated communications for the Armidale-class patrol boats and vessel traffic service systems for civil ports. The customer base has widened a long way since then.