These Are The Wild Radar Ships That Make Missile Defense Possible
Tyler Rogoway
Filed to: ballistic missile defense
These Are The Wild Radar Ships That Make Missile Defense Possible
America's complex and costly ballistic missile defense programs regularly make the news, and although land based interceptor launch sites or AEGIS equipped Navy ships get the spotlight, few know of the small fleet of highly specialized sensor ships that have made this controversial technology possible.
Whether the focus of a test is shorter ranged theater ballistic missiles or long-range intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple reentry vehicles (MRVs), or even one of our own, we cannot properly learn how to counter or improve them without incredibly accurate and detailed telemetry data. Since ballistic missile tests occur over vast expanses of ocean, fixed-based radars are not ideal for the tracking job. This is where the DoD's pocket fleet of highly customized tracking, test and ballistic missile defense (BMD) support ships comes in to play, some of which have shadowy front-line duties as well.
The newest and most powerful missile tracking ship is the USNS Howard O. Lorenzen. This 534-foot long bright white beast packs a pair of state-of-the-art "Cobra King" active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars that are each the size of a three story building and weigh half a million pounds each.
The Howard O. Lorenzen and her Cobra King radars were developed to replace their extremely successful but dated forerunner duo, the USNS Observation Island and her Cobra Judy phased array radar system. The Cobra King represents a vast improvement in resolution, agility and power handling, and it is said to be more easily upgradable over time, which will hopefully give the Howard O. Lorenzen a long service life like the Observation Island had.
These Are The Wild Radar Ships That Make Missile Defense Possible
The Cobra King system included two AESA radar arrays, one in the S band and one X band, that are both controlled via a common operations control station. The S Band array is used for scanning large volumes of sky for objects and for tracking missiles in flight, while the X band array is used for zeroing in on small hard to detect objects like reentry vehicles, missile interceptors, or even tiny satellites. The X band AESA array is especially important as it can help differentiate warheads from decoys, and this data can be used to build software for less capable systems to do the same. In many ways, Cobra King works in a similar fashion to the Navy's soon to be deployed Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), which also has two separate radar arrays, one for X band and one for S band, for volume search and precise tracking. The AMDR will first be deployed on Nuclear Carrier the USS Ford.
Sea Based X Band Radar (SBX-1)
These Are The Wild Radar Ships That Make Missile Defense Possible
The giant SBX-1 is one intimidating contraption. She is built around the frame of a self propelled, semi-submersible drilling platform that can re-position itself anywhere in a hemisphere if need be. Ironically, the self propelled platform that houses the the SBX-1 radar was originally built in Russia before being bought by Boeing and refitted in the US for its current use.
These Are The Wild Radar Ships That Make Missile Defense Possible
Inside of its massive white inflatable dome is a four-million-pound X band phased array radar system. This massive piece of radiating technology was designed to provide incredibly detailed tracking of enemy intercontinental ballistic missiles and mid-course updates for ground-based interceptor systems.
The radar is so powerful and features such a high degree of resolution, that it can differentiate between decoys and warheads during a missile's mid-course separation phase of flight better than any other radar system out there. The information from it is data-linked to command and control stations where a decision will be made to commit interceptors to the missile if its trajectory is deemed a threat. It can then provide highly precise telemetry of those threatening objects to missile interceptors as they ascend toward their target. The system also provides kill assessment data after an intercept has occurred.
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