In the first test of its kind, the Navy’s “next generation” ship-based air and missile defense radar, known as the SPY-6, successfully tracked a short-range ballistic missile target launched from Kauai last month, Naval Sea Systems Command said.

The new radar will significantly enhance a ship’s ability to detect air and surface targets as well as ever-proliferating ballistic missile and cruise missile threats, maker Raytheon Co. said.

The AN/SPY-6(V), designed to counter larger and complex raids, can see a target half the size at twice the distance of today’s ship-based radar, the SPY-1D, Raytheon said. Four “faces” of the radar will be built into the deckhouse of new Arleigh Burke Flight III destroyers to provide 360-degree threat protection.

“This radar will revolutionize the future of the U.S. Navy and is bringing a capability our nation needs today,” Navy Capt. Seiko Okano, major program manager for above-water sensors, said in a release.

During a flight test named Vigilant Hunter, the SPY-6 radar searched for, detected and maintained a track on a short-range ballistic missile target launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai on March 15, Naval Sea Systems Command revealed late last week.

It was the first in a series of ballistic missile defense flight tests planned for the SPY-6, also known as the Air and Missile Defense Radar, the Navy said.

The new radar is scalable and can be built up like Legos with individual 2-by-2-by-2-foot self-contained radar building blocks called radar modular assemblies, according to Raytheon.

“These individual radar RMAs can stack together to form any size array to fit the mission requirements of any ship, making AMDR the Navy’s first truly scalable radar,” the company said.

Raytheon said the SPY-6 is on track for new Flight III destroyers being built, but the scalability allows for back-fit on existing Arleigh Burke destroyers and installation on aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships, littoral combat ships and the three-ship, DDG-1000 class of destroyers.

Each face of the SPY-6 is 14 by 14 feet — roughly the same size as today’s SPY-1D radar — but it will be more than 30 times more sensitive, Raytheon said. The company said the radar leverages more than 10 years of technology development, requires 70 percent fewer unique parts and uses high-powered gallium nitride semiconductors that result in “significantly lower total ownership cost.”

The SPY radar in Navy nomenclature indicates S for surface craft, P for radar and Y for multifunctional.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in August that the Flight III destroyer design and construction “will be complex — primarily due to changes needed to incorporate SPY-6 radar onto the ship.”

The Navy plans to spend more than $50 billion to design and procure 22 Flight III ships, the GAO said. Among those changes, the stern has to be widened to increase buoyancy, the hull has to be strengthened and the ships will have to have bigger generators and chiller plants.

Testing of SPY-6 with the Aegis combat system is expected in late 2020 with initial operating capability in 2023, the GAO reported.