Wales to host deep-space radar under AUKUS

Wales will house one of the three DARC radar stations being built under AUKUS. Northrop Grumman is supporting the development of DARC. Pictured is a technical demonstrator of the system in New Mexico. (Crown Copyright)

Wales has been selected to host a new ground-based Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) under the trilateral AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the UK, and the US.

According to a UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) announcement on 7 August, the radar will be located at Cawdor Barracks in Pembrokeshire, Wales, which was set to close in 2028 but will now be redeveloped for this purpose.

A UK MoD official previously informed Janes at SAE Group's Military Space Situational Awareness conference in April 2024 that Wales was the intended UK site for DARC.

DARC – a component of the AUKUS partnership – aims to establish a network of three ground-based radar stations in Australia, the UK, and US to monitor, track, and identify objects in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) up to 36,000 km from Earth.

The US is leading the effort, with a USD341 million contract awarded to Northrop Grumman by US Space Force's Space Systems Command in 2022 to deliver the capability. Australia and the UK later joined the programme under AUKUS. The first radar site is being built in Australia at the Defence Precinct Harold E Holt on the North West Cape and is projected to be operational in 2026.

All three radar sites are scheduled to be operational by the end of the decade,” Major Tanya Downsworth, a spokesperson for the US Space Force told Janes in December 2023.