U.S. Tests Missile Defense Radars

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency used a U.S. ballistic missile launch this week to test the agency’s missile tracking technology, according to agency chief Lt. Gen. Henry Obering (see GSN, Feb. 8).

The United States fired a Minuteman 3 strategic missile Wednesday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.  A number of sensors monitored the launch and the flight of the missile’s single mock warhead

The sensors included a tracking system on an Aegis destroyer, a transportable X-band radar and an airborne rocket plume sensor, according to a MDA release (U.S. Missile Defense Agency release, Feb. 8).

After some earlier mishaps, the agency successfully completed moving a floating X-band radar to Alaska this week, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Jan. 16).

The radar is intended to track enemy warheads moving through space.

“The main advantage of having one as powerful as this is that it can not only track and identify the warhead you are trying to hit but can distinguish the warhead from any decoys or countermeasures traveling with that warhead,” said agency spokesman Rick Lehner.

The $900 million radar was built atop a converted oil rig and can be deployed anywhere in the ocean, Lehner said.

The agency plans to have the radar track planned U.S. ballistic missile tests later this year and to participate in missile defense exercises, AP reported (Mary Pemberton, Associated Press/Anchorage Daily News, Feb. 9).

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