The Department of Defense announced today a proposal to deploy a planned Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) in Alaska, pending completion of required environmental and safety studies. Current plans call for the radar to begin defensive operations in 2020.
The new LRDR will serve as a midcourse sensor to improve target discrimination capability for our Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) to better address potential countermeasures and increase the capacity of the ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) inventory of interceptors in Alaska and California. The Missile Defense Agency is moving forward with the design and development of the radar and assessing U.S. industry proposals to meet the required technical performance to counter the emerging threat and support future BMDS architecture needs.
Clear Air Force Station, an Air Force Space Command radar station located in central Alaska, has been tentatively identified as the preferred location for the LRDR. A siting decision will be finalized only after the environmental impact analysis process has been completed.
Media point of contact: Rick Lehner, 571-231-8212 or richard.lehner@mda.mil.