November 29, 2006 :: The Wall Street Journal :: News
Jonathan Karp in The Wall Street Journal recently profiled the Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX), an advanced radar system mounted on a semi-submersible oil-drilling rig that is able to track, discriminate, and assess incoming ballistic missiles. “Shrouded in a 10-story-high dome,” Karp writes, “the SBX radar sits atop the semi-submersible oil rig like a giant golf ball on a tee. The Teflon-coated, Kevlar-like fabric of the inflated dome is designed to withstand winds up to 150 miles an hour. Inside, the radar soars toward the roof, its octagonal face covering 4,100 square feet.” The SBX, built by Raytheon, contains 45,000 electronic modules that transmit and receive data, he notes. It can send multiple beams in different directions, changing their aim in fractions of a second, which allows the radar to track several objects at once and compensate for the rig’s movement in ocean swells.
Karp describes the program’s many high-tech breakthroughs. He notes that the SBX can “track a baseball hurtling through space at 15,000 miles an hour,” produce detailed images of incoming warheads, and “distinguish a decoy from the real McCoy.” The system is also highly mobile and can be deployed close to perceived threats, thus gaining precious time for U.S. interceptors to destroy incoming missiles. At the same time, Karp also describes a series of “technical snafus” surrounding the semi-submersible oil-drilling rig carrying the radar. In March 2006, a leaky valve caused water to flood into the SBX’s pontoon, forcing the rig to return to Pearl Harbor for repairs. In June, an electrical fault tripped circuit breakers, stranding the SBX in port for two more weeks of repairs. If all had gone according to plan, the SBX would be already deployed off the Aleutian Islands in Alaska ready to defend against threats from North Korea. Instead, the system remains in Hawaii, 2,000 km and many months away from its final destination, he writes.
The radar, however, was performing well enough that the Pentagon used the SBX to monitor North Korea’s missile launch in July 2006. The Pentagon then delayed the system’s preparations for Alaska again so that the radar could participate in the September 1 ground-based interceptor test, the most important U.S. test to date. During this test, a target missile was fired from Alaska was destroyed by an interceptor missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Floating off the California coast, SBX successfully tracked both missiles and their warheads as they collided. Brigadier General Patrick O’Reilly, who now oversees the ground-based missile-defense program, referred to the test as a “watershed event,” because it demonstrated that SBX could do its job once integrated into the missile shield’s command structure. (Article)
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