A major milestone has been achieved on Monday when it comes to American missile defenses efforts.
A ceremony at the Clear Space Force Base south of Fairbanks celebrated the end of construction and
installation of a new Long Range Discrimination Radar or LRDR, a sophisticated sensor.
The Missile Defense Agency in a press release stated,
“Once fully operational, LRDR will provide unparalleled ability to simultaneously search,
track and discriminate multiple small objects, including all classes of ballistic and,
in later iterations, hypersonic missiles, at very long ranges, under continuous operation”
In this video Defense Updates analyzes how the US has bolstered missile defenses capabilities
with a new radar? Let's get into the details.
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LRDR is a gallium nitride (GaN)-based, solid-state Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA)
early-warning radar that allows for continuous coverage, even when it is undergoing maintenance.
The radar consists of individual solid-state radar blocks that can be combined to scale up
the size of the radar. The multi-purpose GaN device used on the prototype version
of the LRDR is from the Japanese electronics company Fujitsu, according to Lockheed Martin
The advanced radar is installed inside a newly constructed facility that is
almost five stories tall.
A testing and training phase will begin and the sensor is expected to be fully integrated
and operational by 2023. Once testing is finished,
control of the radar will change from the Missile Defense Agency to the U.S. Space Force.
The price tag for the LRDR’s installation is around $1.5 billion.
The LRDR will not replace the network of Long Range Radar stations across Alaska, which since
the Cold War have been in place to monitor for encroaching aircraft and long-distance bombers.
The LRDR is a multi-mission, multi-face sensor having a wide field of view.
Notably, each of the massive arrays measures 60 feet high by 60 feet wide
Advanced gallium nitride technology makes this radar
more sensitive and reliable than currently available radars.
Once operationally deployed, the radar station operating in S-band frequencies will provide
unparalleled ability to simultaneously search and track multiple small objects,
including all classes of ballistic missiles, at very long ranges.
LRDR is powerful enough to identify lethal incoming objects, such as missile warheads,
allowing the U.S military to launch interceptor missiles to take them down.
LRDR features a scalable, open system architecture designed to mitigate
future threats. The radar can be scaled and
extended to counter evolving threats without changing the underline hardware design.
Additionally, the MDA said the long-range radar will also support
space domain awareness by monitoring satellites orbiting the earth, detecting, tracking,
and identifying active or inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, and fragmentation debris.
MDA will integrate the radar into the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system (GMD)
and the Command and Control, Battle Management and Communications (C2BMC) system during 2022
in preparation for formal operational acceptance by the U.S. Air Force in 2023.
Lt. Gen. A.C. Roper with the North American Defense Command, said,
“You have built an extra set of keen eyes that
will paint the picture of any threat coming our way”
After the brief ceremony, military officials held a roundtable with media
calling in from around the country.
Vice Adm. Jon Hill of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency
about the LRDR, said, “The primary driving requirement,
is against the ballistic missile threat. That is what the radar filters are designed to go after.”
Hill added that it is unlikely there would be additional hardware
necessary for the LRDR to be reconfigured for tracking hypersonics in the future.
Lt. Gen. David A. Krumm, who is in charge of Alaskan Command,
the Eleventh Air Force, and Alaska’s NORAD assets,
including the radars that feed information back to bases in the Lower 48, said,
“Alaska gives us a field of view we need to do homeland defense,” indicating that radar
was specifically put in Alaska because of its vantage over the Indo-Pacific
which allows it to detect an ICBM launched from a vast area.
Krumm added the new capabilities are a complement to the existing radar systems.
For the protection of the U.S mainland, GMD or Ground-Based Midcourse Defense has been deployed.
GMD anti-ballistic missile system has been developed with an aim to protect against incoming
missiles by engaging them during the midcourse phase of ballistic trajectory flight in space.
GMD has Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) which carries an Exoatmospheric Kill
Vehicle (EKV) that is designed to collide with the incoming missile to destroy it.
Current sensors include Ground-based radars (GBR), Upgraded early-warning radars,
Forward-based X band radars (FBXB) such as the sea-based X-band platform
and the AN/TPY-2 all developed by Raytheon.
LRDR will strengthen this detection capability
and hence will be a major boost to American missile defense efforts.