According to a US official, Iran has destroyed a key $300 million radar system crucial to directing US missile defense batteries in the Gulf that risks further straining the region's ability to counter future attacks, reports Bloomberg News.
Satellite photos show that an RTX Corp. AN/TPY-2 radar and support equipment - used by US THAAD missile defense systems - was destroyed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan in the opening days of the war, CNN reported earlier, citing commercial satellite imagery. The destruction of the equipment was later confirmed by a US official.
Data gathered by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank show two reported Iranian strikes in Jordan: one on Feb. 28 and one on March 3. Both were reported to have been intercepted.
"If successful, an Iranian strike on a THAAD radar would mark one of Iran's most successful attacks so far," said Ryan Brobst, deputy director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. However, he added that "the US military and its partners have other radars that can continue to provide air and missile defense coverage, mitigating the loss of any single radar."
US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, units are meant to destroy ballistic missiles at the edges of the atmosphere, enabling them to engage more difficult threats than shorter-range Patriot batteries. With this AN/TPY-2 radar out of commission, missile interception duties will fall onto the Patriot systems, for which PAC-3 missiles are already in short supply.
The US has eight THAAD systems globally, including in South Korea and Guam. The batteries cost about $1 billion each, with the radar comprising about $300 million of that, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"These are scarce strategic resources and its loss is a huge blow," said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Army's current "eight-battery force is still below the force structure requirements of nine set back in 2012, so there aren't exactly any spare TPY-2 lying around," he said.
A THAAD battery consists of 90 soldiers, six truck mounted launchers and forty-eight interceptors - 8 per launcher - one TPY-2 radar, as well as a tactical fire control and communication unit. Each interceptor missile, manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp., costs about $13 million.
"If you want integrated air and missile defenses, this is just one of the things you'd put in the theater," said William Alberque, a Europe-based senior fellow at the Pacific Forum research institute.
Earlier in the war, an AN/FPS-132 radar in Qatar - a fixed installation unlike the mobile THAAD system - was damaged during an Iranian attack, according to research from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.
That system is an early warning radar, designed to spot threats at extreme distances but without the precision needed to launch weapons at them.
Air and missile defense systems in the Gulf region have been stressed and, at times, overwhelmed by Iranian retaliatory attacks of drones and ballistic missiles. It has prompted fears that stockpiles of advanced interceptors such as THAAD and PAC-3 will soon run dangerously low.
On Friday, defense contractors, including Lockheed and RTX met at the White House as the Pentagon pushes to speed weapons production.
Bd-Pratidin English/ AM
