Lockheed Martin has demonstrated the ability to increase operational performance, efficiency and reliability of Aegis Ashore by connecting key components of Aegis Ashore and Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) technologies.

According to the company, connecting the two systems enables a low risk 'technology refresh' of the legacy  SPY-1 antenna. It provides a number of improvements, including the ability to detect targets at longer distances and combat larger numbers of targets simultaneously. It also offers additional target engagement opportunities, higher performance in complicated land environments, minimised interference with civilian or military radio emitters and receivers, and increased use of the new SM-3 Block IIA missile.

Aegis Ashore is a land-based ballistic missile defence system.The LRDR is a long range sensor that forms the backbone of the Missile Defense Agency’s layered defence strategy to protect the US from ballistic missile attack. The LRDR will use Lockheed Martin's Solid State Radar (SSR) scalable Gallium Nitride (GaN)-based radar building blocks to provide enhanced target acquisition, tracking and discrimination data to the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The demonstration proved that current and future versions of Aegis can simultaneously command tasking of the SSR and receive target tracks from the radar. The next phase of activity will demonstrate simulated missile engagements with live tracking, which is scheduled for the first half of 2018.

These tests build on previous demonstrations in 2015 and 2016, in which Aegis software variant Baseline 9 tracked live targets using a prototype version of SSR hardware powered by Fujitsu GaN from Japan.