Ground based radar-prototype (GBR-P) antenna

The GBR-P is a multifunction X-band phased array prototype radar being developed by Raytheon Systems Company, Sudbury, Mass. The GBR-P is being built at the US Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA), Marshall Islands. As the primary ground based sensor in the National Missile Defense system, a deployed operational radar will perform surveillance, acquisition, track, discrimination and fire control support, and gather information to support kill assessment (KA). To support precommit, the radar will plan and schedule the sensor resources to search in response to cueing-handover, acquire, track, classify/identify, and estimate object trajectory parameters. The radar will pass to the engagement planner all objects it classifies as threat targets and other potential targets. The engagement planner (BM/C3) will use the data to develop a weapon tasking plan for the ground based interceptor (GBI) and for the planning of sensor tasking required for postcommit. In postcommit, the radar schedules its sensor resources to continue tracking the target to provide both in-flight target update (IFTU) and radar target object map (TOM) data to the GBI via the BM/C3, and collects data to assess the intercept for hard kill of the target. This paper describes the antenna that has been designed, built, installed, and tested at USAKA.