The Pentagon’s $10-billion bet gone bad

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.

U.S. early-warning radar system to be installed near Kyoto

TOKYO — Tokyo and Washington plan to install a U.S. early-warning radar system at a coastal base near Kyoto to bolster defenses against the North Korean missile threat, reports said Sunday.

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The X-band radar system will be built in an Air Self-Defense Force base in Kyotango, northwest of Kyoto, on the coast of the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, Kyodo News and Jiji Press agencies reported, citing unnamed sources.

Successful US-Israel radar test launches US missile shield’s operational phase

A successful joint exercise carried out Friday, Feb. 10, demonstrated the interoperability of the US Aegis and Israel’s Arrow 4 ballistic missile defense systems and, most importantly, of their two radars, the US AN/TPY-2 X-band and Israel’s EL/M-2080 Super Green Pine, debkafile’s military sources report.

It was a key milestone in the development of the US missile shield’s Middle East capabilities ahead of a potential war with Iran and the fourth significant preparatory step taken in the last ten days.

On the East Coast of the United States, the large-scale Bold Alligator 2012 exercise is drilling amphibian landings on a fictitious Iranian shore; in the Middle East, an American airlift this week ferried reinforcements to the Persian Gulf over Sinai; the Iranian army is in the middle of a major war game “under war conditions” opposite the Strait of Hormuz; and Israel is putting the finishing touches to its new Depth Command set up for operations behind enemy lines.

Full article: Successful US-Israel radar test launches US missile shield’s operational phase (DEBKAfile)