MDA pursuing mobile radar to detect and track hypersonic missiles, other advanced threats
The Missile Defense Agency issued a presolicitation Monday for a new highly mobile, rapidly deployable sensor system that could help the U.S. military detect and track hypersonic missiles and other advanced airborne threats.
The Forward-Based Mode (FBM) Radar Next initiative is being spearheaded by MDA’s Mobile Land-Based Sensors Project Office, which aims to prototype the technology.
Notably, officials want to create a system that can be quickly transitioned into mass production amid growing threats in the air domain. For the prototyping effort, MDA plans to use other transaction authority, which is intended to help the military move faster in contracting.
“It is critical that the prototype demonstrates a viable pathway to rapid, high-volume production at an affordable unit cost. This ensures the capability to quickly scale production and cost-effectively replace radar units in highly active forward-deployed environments,” the presolicitation stated.
“All interested parties are advised that only the participant(s) who successfully complete the prototype project awarded under this solicitation will be eligible for a potential sole-source award of the follow-on production effort,” officials noted.
The initiative comes as Iran has reportedly targeted U.S. air-and-missile defense radars in the Middle East amid the ongoing conflict in the region, Russia is using hypersonic and ballistic missiles to bombard Ukraine, and China is building up its arsenals in the Pacific.
“As adversarial missile capabilities become increasingly sophisticated, the need for agile, survivable, and highly precise forward-based sensors has never been greater. Current static or semi-mobile radars are vulnerable to counterattacks and lack the rapid relocation capabilities necessary for modern distributed operations. FBM Radar Next will close this gap by providing a system that can be quickly transported, set up, and operated in austere forward locations while maintaining interoperability with existing Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) networks,” per the presolicitation.
MDA officials want the technology to bolster the military’s integrated missile defense architecture against “complex, high-speed, and maneuverable threats” including ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles, according to the document.
The new mobile radar must be transportable via C-17 military airlift and tactical ground vehicles, enable rapid setup and teardown, support remote operation, and provide high-sensitivity detection, persistent tracking and precise discrimination of advanced threats in “high-clutter and contested electromagnetic environments,” officials wrote.
Other technical objectives and requirements include flexible aperture configuration and open systems architecture, as well as physical, thermal and electromagnetic signatures that are engineered to enhance survivability.
The agency envisions a multi-step evaluation effort that begins with the weeding out of “speculative” or immature technologies offered by companies before they enter the formal prototyping phases.
“To protect government investment and maintain schedule momentum, only vendors with demonstrated hardware maturity will be permitted to enter the prototyping pipeline,” per the presolicitation.
Phases of the prototyping cycle outlined in the document include concept development; technology and manufacturing readiness and “extensibility”; subscale prototype and modeling and simulation; and full-scale prototype development and demonstration. The expected duration of each cycle was listed as TBD.
For downselects, vendors’ solutions are expected to be judged based on their technical merit, operational feasibility, schedule viability, producibility, affordability and “cost realism.”
Officials did not disclose when the formal solicitation for the effort is expected to be released.
