Under the aegis of the US Military Sealift Command, the white, mostly unmarked vessel is manned by 18 civilian contractors, does not appear to have any formal weapons systems, and boasts very little evidence of its presence overseas.
The US military has a vessel that little is written or said of, and whose activities it seems anxious to downplay, writes The National Interest magazine.
An outwardly inconspicuous 224-foot vessel with 2,800 ton displacement, the USNS Invincible is technically under the aegis of a branch of the US navy – the Military Sealift Command, responsible for providing sealift and ocean transportation for all US military services.
Indeed, Invincible, launched in 1986, and with no official homeport in the US, is little more than a white-painted hull maintained by 18 civilian contractors, writes David Axe, defense editor of The National Interest.
However, classed by Military Sealift Command as a “missile range instrumentation ship”, tasked with monitoring “missile launches” and collecting data, there is much more to it than meets the eye.
On board the vessel boasts the US Air Force's sophisticated, dual X- and S-band radar called Gray Star.
A striking feature of the Air Force's arsenal, Gray Star BMD radar assets are tasked with space tracking, ballistic missile tracking, and other long-range defense instrumentation missions, capable of operating from impressive standoff distances.
Unusually, the Air Force's radar operates on a shipborne…
