Darwin McDaniel
Lockheed Martin aims to deliver a long-range discrimination radar for installation at Clear Air Force Station in Alaska by 2020 under a contract with the Missile Defense Agency, Defense News reported Sunday.
The LRDR system is currently under development at a company facility in Moorestown, N.J., and designed to operate with ground-based interceptors built to counter ballistic missile threats.
MDA awarded the company a potential $784M contract in 2015 to help the agency build, test and deploy the radar.
A scaled version of the system tracked a satellite with its integrated hardware and software during a test that occurred in October.
“One of the unique things about this radar is the high availability,†Chandra Marshall, the LRDR program director at Lockheed, told Defense News.
“Unlike some radars in the field today, you can actually maintain the radar while it’s operating. You don’t have to interrupt the mission to maintain it,” Marshall added.
Lockheed also competes with Northrop Grumman and Raytheon for a potential $4.1B contract to build another homeland defense radar in Hawaii.
