Military Watch:

Footage Confirms World’s Most Expensive Air Defence Radar Destroyed in Iranian Strike

Middle East , Missile and Space

Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff

April-10th-2026

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AN/FPS-132 Radar and Iranian Missile Strike

Footage released by Qatari state media has for the first time shown the destruction on the ground of the AN/FPS-132 Block 5 Upgraded Early Warning Radar near Umm Dahal in Qatar, showing substantial internal damage after Iranian attacks on February 28. The radar is one of the most important and capable ground-based radar systems in the U.S. global missile warning architecture, although its extreme cost prevents widespread deployments, meaning the radar in Qatar is the only one of its kind outside the U.S. mainland. The system has a detection range of over 5,000 kilometres, and can provide an early warning of missile attacks within minutes of launch.

Damaged AN/FPS-132 Radar in Qatar

The AN/FPS-132 is the most costly early warning radar in the world, and is one of multiple high value radar systems destroyed in Iranian attacks, with three AN/TPY-2 X-band mobile radar system from the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system, each valued at an estimated $700 million to $1.1 billion, having also been struck in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. The destruction of these key radar systems within hours of the U.S. and Israel launching an assault on Iran on February 28 paved the way for a much higher success rate when Iran launched ballistic missile attacks against the U.S. and its strategic partners’ targets across the Middle East. By late March Iranian missiles striking targets in Israel were assessed by Israeli sources to have an 80 percent success rate, as missile defences increasingly faltered in large part due to the destruction of anti-missile radars. 

AN/TPY-2 Radar From THAAD System Destroyed in Engagements with Iranian Forces

The AN/FPS-132 uses thousands of solid-state transmit/receive modules, and provides continuous surveillance, rather than intermittent scans. Each radar costs an estimated $1.1 billion, with U.S. sources assessing that it will take five to eight years to replace the one destroyed in Qatar. The radar became operational in 2013, and was deployed with the specific purpose of countering the Iranian and Syrian ballistic missile arsenals. Reporting by U.S. sources has widely indicated the destruction of the AN/FPS-132 seriously degraded missile-warning capabilities in the region because such radars are rare and hard to replace.