{"id":529282,"date":"2026-06-11T04:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T04:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/529282\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T04:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T04:48:14","slug":"leolabs-new-mobile-space-watch-radar-to-participate-in-valiant-shield-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/529282\/","title":{"rendered":"LeoLab’s new, mobile space-watch radar to participate in Valiant Shield exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2015 Space monitoring firm LeoLabs<\/a> today announced that its newest space tracking <\/a>radar is now operational, with a first unit set to participate in the US military\u2019s multi-service, multinational Valiant Shield exercise in the Pacific.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first fielded instance Scout-S system, Scout Hawaii, became operational in June 2026,\u201d a LeoLabs spokesperson told Breaking Defense. \u201cScout Hawaii will participate in experimentation activities during U.S. Indo-Pacific Command\u2019s Valiant Shield<\/a> 2026 exercise and is supporting LeoLabs\u2019 broader efforts to evaluate transportable, 3D search sensing capabilities for the broader Scout family in operationally relevant environments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valiant Shield is a biennial US joint force exercise in the Indo-Pacific theater that since 2024 has included regional allies. This year\u2019s exercise will be held June 22-July 1 in, and in the waters around, Hawaii, Guam and Japan. <\/p>\n

While the company is not disclosing the details of the contract, the spokesperson said that the new, \u201ctransportable\u201d radar was developed via a \u201ccombination of private investment\u201d and US Space Force support, including via a Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) award announced in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Scout-S fits into a \u201cstandard 20-foot ISO [International Standards Organization] container,\u201d so as to be easily deployable by land, air or sea. The new radar also uses \u201c3D scanning, direct radiating array (DRA) technology, and a modular S-band electronic design\u201d to improve monitoring of space objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) and very low Earth orbit (VLEO), a company release says.<\/p>\n

The new tech package allows the radar system to \u201csignificantly extend observation durations from seconds to several minutes during a single orbital pass,\u201d the spokesperson said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe longer observation windows and search capabilities delivered by Scout-S allow operators to maintain custody of an object for a greater portion of its orbit, improving their ability to detect maneuvers, characterize behavior, observe proximity operations, identify payload deployments, and distinguish routine activity from potentially threatening actions,\u201d the spokesperson explained.<\/p>\n

Further, the Scout-S design allows a network to be rapidly proliferated, enabling users to close gaps in coverage currently provided by fixed-site radars, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The upshot is that the Scout-S helps provide ongoing tracking of an individual space object rather than just periodic snapshots, according to the LeoLabs release. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe acceleration of adversarial activity in space is challenging U.S. and Allied Space Superiority. Tracking objects periodically to predict orbits is no longer enough. What matters now is the ability to maintain persistent custody of maneuverable payloads so our customers can respond to emerging threats,\u201d said LeoLabs CEO Tony Frazier in the release.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said that the Scout-S unit in Hawaii will remain operational after the conclusion of Valiant Shield for \u201cexperimentation\u201d and \u201creal-world testing\u201d of future radar capabilities. <\/p>\n

It also already is contributing data to LeoLab\u2019s space monitoring network. According to the release, the Scout-S has provided \u201cpersistent tracking\u201d of Chinese intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites \u201cincluding Yaogan military reconnaissance satellites,\u201d as well as \u201cChina\u2019s Spaceplane,\u201d in LEO. It also has shown its VLEO chops by tracking an object at 230 kilometers (143 miles) in altitude, the release added. <\/p>\n

The LeoLabs spokesperson said that the company is \u201con track to manufacture a second Scout article by early 2027 and will ramp up production mid to late 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2015 Space monitoring firm LeoLabs today announced that its newest space tracking radar is now operational, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[18,19,25666,17,96354,35556,133,451,228228,113447,8508,228229,228230],"class_list":["post-529282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-indo-pacific","tag-ireland","tag-leolabs","tag-radar","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-domain-awareness-sda","tag-space-tracking","tag-space-force","tag-us-indo-pacific-command","tag-valiant-shield-2026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116729669800716217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}