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Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $585.2 million order for the Homeland Defense Radar based in Hawaii for ballistic missile defense. The contract, announced Tuesday by the Department of Defense, calls for design, development, and delivery of the HDR-H radar to be installed in the island of Oahu, Hawaii, with the exact location still to be determined.
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Environmental regulations will need to be determined due to the sensitive nature of the island's ecology. The Missile Defense Agency's requirement is for one advanced radar to be located in Hawaii, with another to be placed in a as yet undisclosed location.
The radars will be meant to track and help with interception of possible North Korean and Chinese ballistic missiles using Ground Based Interceptors.
Lockheed plans to "leverage the development of our Long Range Discrimination Radar to provide the lowest risk and best value HDR-H solution to MDA, which includes open, scalable architecture for future growth," Chandra Marshall, program director for Lockheed Martin's Missile Defense Radars market segment, said in a press release.
The LRDR, currently under construction in Clear, Alaska, is expected to reach full-rate production in 2019 with delivery to MDA planned for 2020.
The MDA is responsible for the defense of U.S. territory and its allies from ballistic missile threats.
It coordinates a network of land-based and ship-based missile interceptors along with radars and satellites to detect and destroy enemy ballistic missiles.
Interceptors include the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense mobile BMD interceptor deployed by the Army and the Standard Missile-3 series of surface-to-air missiles in use by the Navy.
The MDA is also in the process of developing future platforms such as laser-armed unmanned aerial vehicles to intercept missiles during their launch phase when they are at their most vulnerable.
