The National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT) will be the first phased array radar facility available on a full-time basis to the radar meteorological research community. Funded by the Office of Naval Research and based on a SPY-1A phased array antenna provided by the Navy, the testbed provides the capability to perform rapid update scans over a designated coverage volume. Because the antenna is mounted on a movable pedestal, any azimuth sector can be selected for rapid scanning. The NWRT is being developed under the joint efforts of the Office of Naval Research, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the FAA's William J Hughes Technical Center, the University of Oklahoma, Basic Commerce and Industries, and Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Use of a phased array radar for weather sensing is also expected to provide numerous benefits to the radar meteorological research community at-large. These include increased warning time of hazardous weather events such as tornadoes, wind shears and floods because of the rapid scan capability of phased arrays. Also improved rainfall estimates will result from lower elevation scans enabled by improved ground clutter cancellation performance due to the beam pointing stability of a phased array. Research is underway to enable the transition of this technology from the military sector into civil and commercial applications, including recent advances in affordability of phased arrays.