PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. — U.S. Northern Command will soon have a new tool to use in its mission to defend the American homeland. The Sea-based X-band Radar recently traveled to Alaska and is floating in the northern Pacific Ocean, near the Aleutian Island of Adak.
The SBX is designed to track and discriminate small objects in space, which makes it especially effective for missile defense.
USNORTHCOM uses the ground-based midcourse defense system to defend the homeland against long-range ballistic missiles. The SBX not only detects incoming objects, but the data it provides helps guide interceptor missiles – under the command and control of USNORTHCOM – more precisely to their targets.
While the country's current radar system is good, said Army Col. Hugh Bell, chief of USNORTHCOM's ballistic missile defense division, the new SBX radar is even better.
"The radars that we have out there now do an outstanding job of searching for and finding the objects that are coming at the United States," Bell said. "What they struggle with a little bit is on telling us which piece of metal that's coming through the sky. The Sea-based X-band radar is such high-quality data, it will be able to tell us which one of those pieces of metal coming at the United States is the right one."
USNORTHCOM collects and analyzes data from the SBX and other sensors to provide situational awareness to the USNORTHCOM commander and also to senior Department of Defense leadership. That information helps leaders at the highest levels determine if and when to engage a threat target.
The SBX will undergo further testing before it becomes operationally available to USNORTHCOM.
"There's a flight test coming up at the end of this month and another one probably in the April-May time frame where it will be used in the system," Bell said. "It will generate the data that the fire-control computer needs in order to make an engagement."
The SBX radar is mounted on a platform that was originally designed to support oil-drilling equipment. The platform itself is supported by two pontoons, each one the size of a submarine.
The structure is "absolutely huge," Bell said.
"In total height, it's 282 feet, which is about 30 stories," he said. "When it's traveling, it actually floats up on the pontoons and can go fairly quickly. When the weather gets bad or it's in a mission, using the radar, and they want it to be as steady as possible, it actually goes down in the water quite a ways. That gives it stability so the waves are just washing over it and there's almost no motion on the ship at all."
The Sea-based X-band Radar conducted sea trials and radar calibration and supported missile defense tests off the coast of Hawaii before arriving at its current location in Alaska in February.