Sea-Based X-Band Radar: Another Multi Billion Dollar Pentagon Boondoggle
April 5th, 2015Via: Los Angeles Times:
Leaders of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency were effusive about the new technology.
It was the most powerful radar of its kind in the world, they told Congress. So powerful it could detect a baseball over San Francisco from the other side of the country.
If North Korea launched a sneak attack, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar — SBX for short — would spot the incoming missiles, track them through space and guide U.S. rocket-interceptors to destroy them.
Crucially, the system would be able to distinguish between actual missiles and decoys.
SBX “represents a capability that is unmatched,” the director of the Missile Defense Agency told a Senate subcommittee in 2007.
In reality, the giant floating radar has been a $2.2-billion flop, a Los Angeles Times investigation found.
Although it can powerfully magnify distant objects, its field of vision is so narrow that it would be of little use against what experts consider the likeliest attack: a stream of missiles interspersed with decoys.
I want to believe, I want to believe. The SBX-1 is one of those cases where, dammit, it just looks too cool for it to wind up being so useless. Have you ever seen a pic of this thing? Its an imposing looking object to come sailing over the horizon, I’ll give it that. And how much you wanna bet its nuclear powered? I would hazard a guess that this things real purpose is not merely detection of targets but frying them with gigawatt radar pulses. Electronic warfare. Great cryptome “eyeball” series on the SBX-1 here.