C4iSR: Joint & Common Equipment
US reportedly deployed Sea-based X-band Radar off North Korea
Julian Ryall, London - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
02 November 2016
The US Sea-Based X-band Radar (SBX), one of the world's largest and most sophisticated phased-array X-band radar units, was deployed to the waters off North Korea in late September, Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean military official as saying on 1 November.
"The [SBX] Radar was sent to an undisclosed location off the Korean Peninsula for a one-month deployment after departing Hawaii in late September," the official told Yonhap. "It sailed back to its home port in late October," he added.
Although no details of the SBX's mission off the Korean Peninsula have yet to be made public, the radar is designed to detect and track long-range ballistic missiles and rockets.
If the SBX was able to collect data from North Korea's recent launches of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs), this information could be used to assess the performance and range of the missiles.
A spokesperson for the United States Forces-Korea Public Affairs Office declined to confirm the media report to IHS Jane's , citing "operational and security reasons".
As part of the United States' Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, the SBX takes the form of an X-band ballistic missile-tracking and discrimination radar that is installed aboard a fifth-generation, semi-submersible, self-propelled, oceangoing platform, according to IHS Jane's C4ISR & Mission Systems: Maritime .
Displacing about 50,000 tons, the SBX platform is understood to be 73 m wide, 119 m long, and measures 85 m from its keel to the top of the radar's protective radome.
Alongside the SBX radar, the platform's main deck provides accommodation for a crew of 85; work and storage spaces; power generation (comprising six 3.6 MW generators as originally fielded); bridge; control rooms; and the space and infrastructure needed to support the SBX radar antenna, command, control, and communications suites, and an in-flight interceptor communication system data terminal that hands off target-tracking and discrimination data to GMD interceptor missiles.
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