Since it deployed six years ago, the Missile Defense Agency’s most powerful mobile radar has traveled across the Pacific, conducting flight tests and keeping an eye out for any ballistic missiles targeted at the United States. But while it’s been to Seattle and Pearl Harbor, it’s never made it to its homeport of Adak, where a $26-million mooring for the radar lies unused. With the release of Missile Defense Agency’s funding requests, it’s looking even more unlikely that the radar will ever use that facility.

According to Rick Lehner, the public affairs director with the agency, the sea-based X-band radar could see less use after it completes a number of flight checks this fall. Even though it looks like a giant golf ball perched on top of an oil rig, the radar is one of the agency’s most sensitive pieces of equipment. It spends at least 200 days at sea annually, and costs $150 million to operate. Lehner says that the agency would save money by using its smaller, more mobile X-band units. That doesn’t mean that the radar will be fully retired.

“People did have the impression that we were mothballing it, or canceling it, or dropping the SBX altogether. That’s not the case,” says Lehner. “Mainly, it’s just going to stay in one place for a longer period of time, but we’ll still have it available if we need it for defensive operations, and also for future flight tests.”

But even though the radar won’t be out to sea as much, there are still no plans to take it to Adak.

“It never has yet because of its heavy mission role in the Pacific, but you never know,” says Lehner.

The maintenance of the $900-million radar in Adak was expected to help the village’s economy, which took a hit after the Navy pulled out of its military base there in 1997.

Right now, the radar is currently in operation in the South Pacific.