Arthur McMiler
LeoLabs will build this year the first units of the mobile S-band radar called Scout, which the company announced during the recent Space Symposium.
According to LeoLabs CEO and Wash100 Award winner Tony Frazier, four to five Scouts will be built following keen interest from the Department of Defense, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported Tuesday. He added that the company has already secured a commitment for testing the new radar in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command region.
Frazier went on to note that Scout can be transported using trucks or cargo ships. The radar can even be used at sea, rendering it suitable for tracking China.
New Indo-Pacific Radar from LeoLabs
According to the Air & Space Forces Magazine report, interest on ground-based radars has been growing, as the U.S. Space Force is pursuing improved space domain awareness, or SDA, as one of its top priorities. Toward the effort on addressing SDA blind spots, USSF innovation arm SpaceWERX granted a $60 million Strategic Funding Increase to LeoLabs in March to build a new radar in the Indo-Pacific.
Frazier told Air & Space Forces Magazine that LeoLabs will install in a yet-to-be-determined Indo-Pacific site an ultra-high frequency system from the company’s next-generation radar technology. The company will consult USSF on the selection and will accelerate the radar project to have the system running by January 2027.
Eye on Chinese Missile Launches
In his keynote speech during the Space Symposium, Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of the U.S. Space Command and also a Wash100 awardee, said the new radar, called Seeker, will minimize SDA gaps and improve U.S. forces’ capability on detecting and tracking Chinese missile launches.
“It’s a direct radiating array, meaning that it emits a cone of energy that allows us to be able to detect new things in space,” Frazier elaborated regarding the Seeker radar. Within a five-month period, LeoLabs has built a Seeker system in Arizona through a previous Small Business Innovation Research contract from AFWERX.
