Critical Radar Reaches Major Milestones
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The US Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) program has completed delivery of its first radar panel to Clear, Alaska and placement of the final beam on the radar shelter. LRDR will provide around-the-clock threat acquisition, tracking and discrimination data to enable defense systems to lock on and engage ballistic missile threats.
The program continues to successfully achieve all milestones and work towards delivery to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in 2020 at its Clear, Alaska site. The radar system will serve as a critical sensor within MDA’s layered defense strategy to protect the U.S. homeland from ballistic missile attacks.
On the heels of completing System Technology Readiness Level 7 testing in December 2018, the LRDR program has been steadily ramping up to full-rate manufacturing.
Lockheed Martin invested in this state-of-the-art radar facility to reduce risk to execution of the LRDR program.
The LRDR program successfully manufactured and shipped the system’s first radar panel to Clear Air Force Station in Alaska.
The panel is just one of 20 that will be shipped to Alaska in the coming months as manufacturing and construction of the radar site continue to progress on schedule. The panels will make up the radar’s two antenna faces, both approximately four stories high and wide, according to the company’s announcement.
The installation and integration of the radar system will begin this year followed by the transition to the testing period.
LRDR is a long range radar that will provide precision metric data to improve ballistic defense discrimination and replace existing sensors in the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). LRDR will keep pace with evolving ballistic missile threats and increase the effectiveness of ground based interceptors.
The program is built upon the U.S. government’s long-term investment in S-Band radar, ground-based radar, and systems integration, as evident in various other Lockheed Martin technologies.
