Space

U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA)
Reagan Test Site / Kwajalein Missile Range

The U.S.Army's premier Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site at Kwajalein, supporting Deep Space Operations is an integral part of the Pacific Range. The more than 100 islands of the atoll form the world's largest lagoon. This feature, coupled with its isolated location and specialized state-of-the-art data-gathering devices, makes the range uniquely qualified for effective live testing of missiles of all ranges. Kwajalein is operated by a government/contractor team of approximately 2,800 that includes military personnel, government civilians, technical support contractors, and scientists from MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Radar, optical, and telemetry sensors are operated at the U.S. Army 's Reagan Test Site (RTS) to support missile testing, space surveillance operations and science experiments for DoD, DOE, and NASA. The Reagan Test Site is located at the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA), part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Instrumentation throughout the atoll collect metric,signature,and science data to characterize missile re-entry systems as well as maintain the U.S. Strategic Command catalog of artificial satellites.

RTS provides a major role in research, development, T&E; for America 's defense and space programs As the cornerstone of the Pacific Range, the value of RTS is based on its location, instrumentation, test support facilities, and flexible test scenarios. Located in the Pacific near the equator, makes RTS ideal for full performance testing of BMD systems with minimal safety and environmental constraints RTS has the most sophisticated radar and optical sensors unmatched anywhere in the world. Reagan Test Site continues to be a vital national asset and a critical part of the Pacific Range.

Formerly known as the Kwajalein Missile Range (KMR), RTS is operated by the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA) under the U.S. Army Space & Strategic Defense Command (USASSDC). With over 40 years of ballistic missile testing experience, KMR has unsurpassed capabilities to support the developmental and operational testing of Theater Missile Defense (TMD) and National Missile Defense (NMD) systems. Located at Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the KMR assets comprise highly sophisticated radars, optical sensors, telemetry stations and other instrumentation. KMR's remote location and low average population density help make it ideally suited for ballistic missile and interceptor testing. The surrounding vast expanse of ocean with little land mass ease the Range safety and environmental impact problems associated with debris. When debris recovery is desired, intercepts over the lagoon are possible.

KMR offers a wide variety of sensors suited to support intercept missions. Seven radars and seven geographically diverse tracking optical mounts can provide on multiple targets, the measurements necessary for highly accurate intercept trajectory reconstruction. Fully calibrated signature and metric data can be collected at seven different radar frequencies as well as in the visible and mid-wave infrared spectrums. Precise hit-point and miss-distance determination requires both high frame rate cameras and high PRF radars. For end-game analysis several "frames" recording both the target and interceptor kill vehicle simultaneously are captured by design at most radar frequencies and some optical sites. Because separation measurements can then be made within a frame of data, system metric biases are eliminated, and accuracy is enhanced.

Seven accurate, high performance optical mounts at KMR support a wide variety of telescope (focal lengths up to 6m) and camera combinations (frame rates to 1000 fps) that can be configured to accommodate a range of test scenarios. Two MWIR telescopes have been added, and more are planned, due to their suitability for TBM test support. Data taken on recent missile tests demonstrates superior performance over the visible band systems.

Four highly sensitive, instrumentation radars, known as the KREMS radars, are ideally suited for supporting missile defense testing. During such tests, a number of objects are likely to be in the field of view due to the presence of extraneous deployment materials, break-up debris, or countermeasures. The ALTAIR (VHF and UHF) and TRADEX radars are the primary long range acquisition sensors that with their large beams provide initial complex sorting. Both have multi-target trackers, which are expected to play a key role in target characterization. TRADEX operates at L-band for target motion and attitude determination, and S-band, which is best suited for debris characterization, kill assessment. ALCOR is a C-band beacon and skin-tracking radar with a .5m range resolution capability and wide narrowband sampling windows for multi-target sampling. MMW operates at Ka-band (35 GHz) and W-band (95 GHz) and will soon be capable of simultaneously tracking both interceptor and kill vehicle to the instant of collision. To support improved hit-point determination, the MMW radar bandwidth has been increased to 2 GHz, which yields a range resolution of approximately 14 cm with higher accuracy possible using bandwidth extrapolation and phase-derived-range techniques.

KMR has extensive instrumentation to monitor and record data from instrumented targets. Fifty-six telemetry receivers, a Translated Global Positioning Range System, and four beacon tracking radars provide accurate metrics for instrumented vehicles.

The Kwajalein Mission Control Center (KMCC) provides consolidated operational and sensor control for all KMR sensors by means of an intra-atoll fiber optic communications network. In real-time KMCC receives state vector and signature data from KMR sensors and in turn provides pointing and target identification information back to the sensors.