World's Ultimate Floating Radar

Today's question is, What in the world is this?

Last week, I am sure you heard the Defense Department deployed mobile, ground-based interceptors to Hawaii and ordered a seaborne radar into the waters off Hawaii. I saw this picture above in a related article and had no clue what it was until I did a bit of research.

Let's break it down. At it's core, its a mobile oil-drilling platform that Norway designed and was actually built in Russia. Larger than a football field, it is supposedly stable in high winds and wild sea conditions. In Ingleside, Texas, the Missile Defense Agency pimped this wanna be oil platform to be the world's ultimate radar.

The key to this roving radar platform is the large dome that encloses and protects a 2,000 ton phased-array X band radar antenna, the most sophisticated in the world. The radar was described by the Director of the Missile Defense agency as being able to track an object the size of a baseball over San Francisco from Virginia approximately 2,900 miles away.

Here are some pictures during construction that show how ridiculously big this one antenna is.

The X band frequency uses its short wavelength to track incoming ballistic missiles through space when they are outside the Earth’s atmosphere. The platform will transmit tracking information to a ground based missiles and help coordinate other layers of defense. To support the electrical demands, the platform currently has six, 3.6 megawatt diesel generators.

While it looks like a floating death star, this station has the bling where it counts like the capability to track ballistic missiles and their warheads, discriminate among various objects in flight, and provide data for intercepting targets and their destruction.

"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force" - Darth Vader