Abstract. The recently constructed Wuhan Atmospheric Radio Exploration (WARE) radar is the first mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere (MST) radar in the mainland of China, located at Chongyang, Hubei Province (114°8'8'' E, 29°31'58'' N, ∼ 23° geomagnetic latitude). WARE radar has a capability of probing the structure and dynamics of the atmosphere at the altitudes from 3 to 100 km (excluding 25–60 km). With fine temporal and spatial resolution, WARE radar provides an outstanding opportunity for the first time to extensively and intensively investigate various atmospheric phenomena at the regions of mid-latitude China. In this paper, we present the main configuration and technical specifications of WARE radar system. For the first time, we also report some initial results obtained by the WARE radar: (1) wind field observations from 69 to 85 km and from 3.2 to 16.9 km together with their comparisons with the rawinsonde results, (2) tropopause heights determined by radar echo power and comparisons between radar tropopause and rawinsonde tropopause, (3) atmospheric gravity waves in the troposphere with the wave length and propagation direction analyzed using the hodograph method, (4) aspect sensitivity of echo power at six specified heights in the troposphere and stratosphere, and (5) diurnal and semi-diurnal tides at the tropospheric and low stratospheric heights analyzed by the Lomb–Scargle periodogram method.