Tag Archives: Sea-Based X-Band Radar

Aegis Ashore splashes first target

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Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex, Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF). Admit it, it looks like a CG-47 on shore

Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex, Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF). Admit it, it looks like a CG-47 on shore

It seems the best way to kill incoming ballistic missiles maybe, instead of the Army’s vaunted THAAD system, which is a beefed up Patriot, a shore-based version of the Navy’s Aegis. Using Raytheon’s AN/TPY-2 X-Band radar which it classifies as “A Bus-sized Radar That Rolls Like A Truck And Sees Like A Hawk,” a Standard Missile-3 Block IB fired from the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Test Complex at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), Kauai, Hawaii, the system was able to destroy a target representing a medium-range ballistic missile launched from an U.S. Air Force C-17 on 9 December.

“Today’s test demonstrated that the same Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense capability that has been fielded at sea and operational for years, will soon be operational ashore as part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) Phase 2 capability in Romania,” MDA director Vice Adm. James Syring said in a statement.

The Aegis Ashore site in Romania is scheduled to lightoff on Dec. 31, Program Executive Officer for Integrated Warfare Systems Rear Adm. Jon Hill told USNI News last month. The second installation in Poland is scheduled to come online in 2018.

The two sites will share the BMD role with four BMD capable Arleigh Burke guided missile destroyers forward deployed to Rota, Spain.

The SBX Sucks

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ABM_SBX_Moving_lg

The LA Times took a really hard and in-depth look into the super expensive, super innovative Sea-Based X-Band Radar and what they found was not good:

If North Korea launched a sneak attack, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar — SBX for short — would spot the incoming missiles, track them through space and guide U.S. rocket-interceptors to destroy them.

Crucially, the system would be able to distinguish between actual missiles and decoys.

SBX “represents a capability that is unmatched,” the director of the Missile Defense Agency told a Senate subcommittee in 2007.

In reality, the giant floating radar has been a $2.2-billion flop,

The rest here