After delay, Missile Defense Agency plans to conduct critical test for new long-range radar next year

WASHINGTON — A long-delayed but critical assessment of a new Missile Defense Agency radar has been rescheduled to next year, according to the agency’s director.

MDA chief Air Force Lt. Gen. Heath Collins said in a Defense News webinar that the test, dubbed Flight Test Other-26 (FTX-26) will be “executed” in 2025, after the agency disclosed a “target anomaly” that canceled last year’s planned test of the Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR). MDA previously planned to conduct the test in fiscal 2022, according to a May 2023 watchdog report [PDF].  

Built by Lockheed Martin, LRDR was initially fielded at Clear Space Force Station near central Alaska in late 2021, though the radar has not yet been operationally accepted by its end user, the US Space Force. The LRDR is seen as a crucial piece of a layered defense of the American homeland that will support the ballistic missile interceptors belonging to the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, which are largely tailored to knocking down missile threats launched by Iran and North Korea. 

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The key test event, FTX-26, will assess the LRDR’s performance against a live ballistic missile threat. MDA has already conducted a test with another target that was “not as complicated,” Collins said, stating that the LRDR “worked very well” in that event. Still, the FTX-26 test is crucial, since it “will inform the operational decision to add [LRDR] into the operational baseline for ballistic missile defense of the homeland,” he said.

An MDA spokesperson previously told Breaking Defense that the LRDR should be operationally accepted by the Space Force in the second quarter of fiscal 2025. In addition to supporting missile defense, LRDR will also track objects in space, providing a capability known as space domain awareness. 

Collins also said in the webinar that alongside planned test events for MDA’s new Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites that launched earlier this year, his agency has been able to collect additional data “every time they fly over Ukraine or Israel.” The HBTSS satellites will provide tracking capabilities for hypersonic and ballistic missile threats as the Pentagon races to head off hypersonic threats posed by Russia and China.

Looking ahead, Collins said that another key objective for MDA is fielding a discriminating space sensor, which can help distinguish between decoys and other measures that can essentially “hide” an in-bound threat. Collins added that MDA plans to “probably” launch the sensor in the 2029 timeframe. Defense News first reported the rescheduled FTX-26 test as well as the space sensor comments.