Twenty miles north of the coral-ringed Kure Atoll, floating in the vast North Pacific Ocean more than 1,500 miles from Honolulu, the SBX radar station is a sight to behold. This one-of-a-kind, stadium-sized, seagoing, self-propelled radar station weighs 50,000 tons, requires 1.9 million gallons of gas to run, can withstand thirty-foot-tall waves, is larger than a football field, rises twenty-six stories out of the ocean, requires eighty-six crew members to carry out its mission, and claims to be the most sophisticated phased-array, electro-mechanically steered X-band radar system in the world.
