Northrop Grumman’s [NOC] on Jan. 11 heralded last September’s signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) by the Australia, United Kingdom, U.S. (AUKUS) alliance on the company’s Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC).
The MoU is “to host and operate DARC as a collaboration to expand beyond what individual nations could achieve alone in one of the most critical domains for future security,” Northrop Grumman said.
The DARC system of three ground-based sensors is to track objects in geosynchronous orbit to help detect threats to U.S. and allied satellites–a tracking that is to fill “critical gaps in the ground-based element of the space domain awareness architecture enterprise,” the company said.
In May, Northrop Grumman said that it had completed
the Critical Design Review and a software demonstration for the U.S. Space Force’s DARC (Defense Daily, May 30).
Pillar 1 of AUKUS is to aid Australia getting nuclear-powered attack submarines in the coming decades, The DARC collaboration is part of AUKUS Pillar 2, which is to spur cooperation in developing artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, cybersecurity and space systems.
In 2022, the Space Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $341 million contract to build the first DARC radar to field in the Indo-Pacific by 2025 (Defense Daily, Feb. 23, 2022). The company said at the time that it would also field two more DARC radars in undisclosed locations.
The first DARC radar site is to field in Western Australia in 2026. Last month, a joint statement on AUKUS’ Pillar 2 by the defense heads of the three nations said that DARC will field in all three by the end of the decade (Defense Daily, Dec. 4, 2023).