A new radar installation in the Pacific will let US forces look over the horizon
Story by Kelsey D. Atherton • Yesterday 6:00 PM
So far, the Department of Defense is being fairly tight-lipped about the project in Palau. Here's what we know.
On December 28, the Department of Defense announced the award of an $118 million contract to build a special kind of radar installation in the Republic of Palau. Palau is a nation in the Pacific, about 800 miles southwest of Guam and about 1,000 miles southeast of Manila. It will, by 2026, be host to the Tactical Mobile Over-the-Horizon Radar, a new sensor about which the military is being fairly tight-lipped.
The late December announcement mentions only the concrete foundations that will support the installation. A February 2018 budget document notes that the Tactical Mobile Over-the-Horizon Radar, or TACMOR, “will support air domain awareness and maritime domain awareness requirements over the Western Pacific region. The project will demonstrate a sub-scaled over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) that is one quarter the size of traditional [Over The Horizon] systems.”
The installation, as outlined, will have two sites. One will be along a northern isthmus of Babeldaob, the largest island in Palau. The other will be on Angaur, an island about 60 miles south. These two sites will need to have communications between them, suggesting that the complex could be one linked sensor array. Site schematics show the Babeldaob location as a transmit site, with Angaur as a receiver site.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/a-new-radar-installation-in-the-pacific-will-let-us-forces-look-over-the-horizon/ar-AA161w1w?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=3552574d14764d2f820a717fa6b7dd22
