Direct proof of use
Raytheon says it originally built the KuRFS radar with the U.S. Army to defend against rocket, artillery, and mortar attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its 2024 LIDS history gives the dated milestone more narrowly: in 2012, Raytheon and the Army made KuRFS as a sense-and-warn radar to detect and track rocket, artillery, and mortar attacks in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The sourced Afghanistan claim is therefore a fielded force-protection and warning role, not a documented strike role. The public sources used here identify U.S. Army partnership and the Afghanistan theater, but they do not name a specific Afghan base, incident, unit, or number of radars.
Sources: KuRFS: Ku-band Radio Frequency Sensor, Meet the US Army's LIDS: A sure shot against drones
Timeline
The clearest date in the public record is 2012, when Raytheon describes KuRFS entering the sense-and-warn mission with the U.S. Army for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Raytheon later says KuRFS was enhanced for counter-UAS work in 2016 and deployed for short-range air defense in 2017, changes that grew from the same radar's precision tracking and threat-discrimination capabilities.
By 2020, Raytheon reported that KuRFS and its Ku720 mobile version had exceeded 1.5 million operational battlefield hours. That milestone supports the radar family's sustained deployed-service background, while the Afghanistan-specific claim remains the 2012 sense-and-warn mission.
Sources: Meet the US Army's LIDS: A sure shot against drones
Narrative
In Afghanistan, the KuRFS record belongs to the counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar protection problem around U.S. and coalition positions. Raytheon describes the sensor as a 360-degree Ku-band AESA radar that persistently detects, identifies, and tracks airborne threats ranging from rockets, artillery, and mortars to drones.
The Afghanistan use described in the available sources is a defensive sensing function. KuRFS provided detection and tracking for warning and later became part of a broader air-defense and counter-UAS path, including LIDS with Coyote effectors. The sources do not support treating KuRFS itself as a munition or as an independently lethal system in Afghanistan.
Sources: KuRFS: Ku-band Radio Frequency Sensor, Meet the US Army's LIDS: A sure shot against drones
