WASHINGTON, March 31: The United States is readying an ultra-sophisticated radar system to float slowly around the world to Alaska, where it will play a key role in a multibillion-dollar project to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. The 2,000-ton Sea-Based X-Band Radar is to be hoisted aboard a platform as large as two football fields this week or next, depending on wind and weather in Corpus Christi, Texas, where it has been under initial sea trials.

The radar is designed to track and distinguish long-range ballistic missiles from decoys that could be used in an attack on the United States.

After being assembled and tested extensively in the Gulf of Mexico, the entire structure will set sail on a five- to seven-month trip around Cape Horn at the tip of Latin America and into the Pacific bound for Alaska’s Aleutian islands.

“It will likely leave for its long journey some time between June and August,” said Richard Lehner of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, which is developing a multilayered shield against warheads that could carry chemical, germ or nuclear weapons.

The rig, capable of making seven knots under its own power, should putter in to its primary base at Adak Island, in the Aleutians, by the end of the year, Lehner said. Details of its route and its escorts are not being disclosed publicly for security reasons, he said.

The platform’s on-board propulsion system makes it possible to operate it in oceans around the world, the Missile Defense Agency said in a statement last week. It said the Sea-Based X-Band Radar platform vessel had arrived in Corpus Christi on March 17 from a shipyard in Brownsville, Texas.

Boeing Co is the prime contractor for the so-called Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, and Raytheon Co manufacturers the high-powered X-Band radar, which can use 69,632 multi-sectional circuits to transmit, receive and amplify signals, according to Raytheon.

Once the radar is mounted on the platform, a modified oil drilling rig, the setup will tower 86 metres from its keel to the top of the radar dome and displace nearly 50,000 tons while under way and fully crewed.

The main deck measures 70 metres by 120 metres, too wide to pass through the Panama Canal, Lehner said.—Reuters