Floating Military Radar a $2.2 Billion ‘Flop,’ LA Times Reports
Newspaper’s study of Pentagon spending points at the waste in Sea-Based X-Band Radar, ‘mothballed at Pearl Harbor.’
Ever see that thing in Pearl Harbor that looks like a giant floating golf ball?
It’s technically a Sea-Based X-Band Radar designed to find missiles far away and send rockets to blow them up before they hit American soil.
But a Los Angeles Times study calls the military project a “$2.2 billion flop.”
“Although it can powerfully magnify distant objects, its field of vision is so narrow that it would be of little use against what experts consider the likeliest attack: a stream of missiles interspersed with decoys,” the newspaper reported Sunday.
A fisherman watches as the heavy lift vessel MV Blue Marlin enters Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, with the Sea Based X-Band Radar (SBX) aboard after completing a 15,000-mile journey from Corpus Christi, Texas.
Marion Doss/U.S. Navy
“SBX was supposed to be operational by 2005. Instead, it spends most of the year mothballed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii,” the story says.
“The project not only wasted taxpayer money but left a hole in the nation’s defenses. The money spent on it could have gone toward land-based radars with a greater capability to track long-range missiles, according to experts who have studied the issue.”
Read the full report here.
Sea-Based X-Band Radar at Pearl Harbor.
Rafael Matsunaga/Flickr
