The U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA’s) Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) program completed its preliminary design review in March, clearing the way for the radar effort to enter its detailed design phase, prime contractor Lockheed Martin [LMT] announced April 20.
The review, which took place March 21 and 22, will be followed by a critical design review in September and a final design review in November, said Chandra Marshall, Lockheed Martin’s LRDR program director.
Full-rate production is slated to begin in spring 2018. The shelter that will house the radar antenna is expected to have its own design review in May.
To reduce risk in the program, Lockheed has built a smaller, prototype version of the LRDR and plans to begin testing it this summer at its new Solid State Radar Integration Site in Moorestown, N.J., Marshall told reporters. The new facility will also allow Lockheed Martin to test 90 percent of the program requirements in New Jersey before delivering the LRDR to Clear Air Force Station in Alaska in 2019.
MDA awarded Lockheed Martin a nine-year, $784 million contract in October 2015 to develop, build and test the LRDR. The S-Band radar is slated to become operational in 2020 to improve the ability of long-range, ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California to distinguish ballistic missile warheads from countermeasures, such as decoys.
“We’re on an extremely aggressive schedule,” Marshall said. “We have been hitting all of our milestones since contract award.”
The radar will be able to discriminate threats “at extreme distances,” Lockheed Martin said. To keep pace with rapidly changing threats, it will have an open, non-proprietary architecture so it can be upgraded easily with algorithms from small businesses, laboratories and government, the company added.
While the existing, mobile Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX) has been touted for its powerful discrimination capabilities, MDA has said that the LRDR will give SBX “more geographic deployment flexibility.”