Ballistic missile defense radar won by Lockheed Martin
OtherOctober 27, 2015
MOORESTOWN, New Jersey. Lockheed Martin on a Missile Defense Agency (MDA) contract to develop, build, and test the Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR), which is planned to support a layered ballistic missile defense strategy for protecting the U.S. homeland from ballistic missile attacks.
The nine-year contract, with options, will have the potential contract value of about $784 million. Work on the contract will be primarily performed in New Jersey, Alaska, Alabama, Florida, and New York.
LRDR is a high-powered S-Band radar that integrates solid-state gallium nitride (GaN) components and will be capable of discriminating threats at extreme distances. It is a component of the MDA’s Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) that will provide acquisition, tracking, and discrimination data to allow separate defense systems to lock on and engage ballistic missile threats.
“The U.S. has a limited number of ground-based interceptors to detect threats, yet the number of potential missile threats - and countermeasures used to hide those threats - is growing,” says Carl Bannar, vice president of Lockheed Martin’s Integrated Warfare Systems and Sensors business. Lockheed Martin's solution pairs "innovative radar discrimination capability" with ballistic missile defense algorithms, he adds.
When built, LRDR will have of a solid-state, active electronically-scanned antenna, and the room to house and operate this radar antenna. Lockheed Martin’s proposed LRDR system will be built on an a timeline that will enable it to be ready for operational testing in Clear Air Force Station, Alaska by 2020.
Lockheed Martin's partners on the LRDR program include deciBel research in Huntsville, Alabama, Amec Foster Wheeler in Alpharetta, Georgia, ASRC Federal in Barrow, Arkansas, IERUS Technologies in Huntsville, Alabama, PENTA Research in Huntsville, Alabama, and Davidson Technologies in Huntsville, Alabama.
For more information, visit www.lockheedmartin.com/lrdr.
