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Lockheed Martin and the US Missile Defense Agency have successfully completed the transition to the Long Range Discrimination Radar at Clear Space Force Station in Clear, Alaska.
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Lockheed Martin’s Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) provides the ability to simultaneously search and track multiple small objects, including all classes of ballistic missiles, at very long ranges, under continuous operation.
The successful completion of DD250 final acceptance is the final major milestone ahead of the formal handover of the capability to the Missile Defense Agency in preparation for an Operational Capability Baseline (OCB) decision and final transition to the Warfighter.
As part of this transition, the station in remote Alaska has started Space Domain Awareness data collection for the United States Space Force.
Chandra Marshall, vice-president of Radar and Sensor Systems at Lockheed Martin, said, “This milestone represents years of dedication to the MDA’s mission to protect our homeland.”
This discrimination capability will allow the LRDR to identify lethal objects, such as enemy warheads, and differentiate them from non-lethal decoys.
The LRDR, along with other elements of the Missile Defense System, will preserve the homeland defence interceptor inventory by conserving the number of ground-based interceptors required for threat engagement.
“LRDR is a cutting-edge asset providing the benefits of both low-frequency and high-frequency radars for an innovative approach to search, track, and discriminate targets," Marshall added.
Lockheed Martin’s LRDR leverages development in S-band frequencies and features an in-built, scalable, open systems architecture designed to be scaled and extended to counter evolving threats without changing the hardware design. This allows the LRDR to be integrated into the Missile Defense System through the command and control, battle management and communications element.
In addition to missile defence, the radar system supports space domain awareness by monitoring satellites orbiting the Earth, detecting, tracking, and identifying active or inactive satellites, spent rocket bodies, and debris.
