LRDR, lauded for its primary mission of missile defense, serves a secondary mission for space domain awareness. In recent months, the radar successfully passed several space domain awareness events,  confirming the radar’s warfighter capability for space domain awareness. These events are intended to provide early use to Space Force/SPACECOM, prior to completion of transition phase from MDA to Space Force which is planned for later this year. These events provide information for how the radar behaves during a stressing resident space object (RSO) environment and provides information for future capability upgrades.  

The multi-mission software defined polarization-diverse radar provides better tracking and discrimination of threats in contested environments. Further, LRDR technology was leveraged and scaled for Lockheed Martin’s SPY-7 land and maritime radar product line, which includes the Japan Aegis System Equipped Vessel (ASEV), Canadian Surface Combatant and Spain F-110 Frigate. The SPY-7 product line has already successfully integrated with Aegis as part of program execution milestones and recently demonstrated the first live track with the ASEV AN/SPY-7(V)1 radar. A transportable version will be deployed in Guam.

Space Fence provides crucial support of military and commercial space operations and will provide long-term benefits for the United States and its allies. Building Space Fence in the remote Marshall Islands was a great engineering accomplishment and a huge advancement in radar technology to enable dramatically increased orbital debris awareness, critical to protecting national security assets in a complex 21^st Century Security threat environment.

Space Fence is now actively tracking satellites and discovering objects as small as a marble in low earth orbit, making it a key contributor to U.S. Space Force’s Space Domain Awareness. Armed with more accurate and timely information about debris, satellite operators can make better informed decisions about how to expend precious resources to maneuver and avoid collisions. Before Space Fence came online, system operators were faced with less accurate debris estimates in addition to large quantities of untracked debris.

Lockheed Martin’s iSpace™ software provides command and control and battle management capabilities for customers in all arenas - defense, international, commercial, and civil  - that operate in the space domain. These Lockheed Martin-developed systems provide the ability to detect far more debris than previous technologies could, and with greater accuracy, providing timely and actionable information to protect key assets in orbit.