The U.S. Air Force has authorized the "Space Fence" to be built.
On Sept. 28, 2015, after a series of grueling tests, the Air Force gave their blessings to Lockheed Martin to construct the Space Fence, they announced in a press release.
While not a Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) system like President Ronald Reagan's 1983 "nuclear deterrence strategy" to shoot down incoming enemy missiles, the Space Fence is presumably a space debris surveillance system. The sensor surveillance system will cost $914 million and be situated on the remote Pacific island of Kwajalein, 2,100 miles southwest of Hawaii.
According to Lockheed, the Space Fence's high tech radar array sensor system is designed to keep track of all the objects floating around in Earth's orbit accumulating since Russia first launched its Sputnik satellite nearly sixty years ago October 4, 1957.
The Space Fence S-band radar system array will detect, track, and catalog orbital objects in space over 1.5 million times per day. The system is designed to predict and prevent space-based collisions, Lockheed claimed.Allegedly, it can detect baseball-sized objects 2,000 miles away.
When the massive undertaking is finished, the Air Force will then be able to detect with pinpoint accuracy the millions of objects hovering above the Earth.
"Once complete, Space Fence will deliver revolutionary capability to the U.S. Air Force with a flexible system capable of adapting to future missions requiring new tracking and coverage approaches," Lockheed Missions Systems and Training vice president Steve Bruce said.
After construction and on-site testing, The Space Fence is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2018.