The Pierre Auger Research and Development Array -- Goals and Status

The Pierre Auger Collaboration operates a detector for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays near Malarg\"ue, Argentina. It consists of a surface detector array of more than 1600 surface detectors covering an area of roughly 3000 km$^2$ and a fluorescence detector consisting of 24 telescopes in four buildings. The Research and Development Array (RDA) is currently being set up south of Lamar, CO to test possible upgrades to the Southern site, to evaluate the performance of the surface detectors in the environment of Eastern Colorado, and to provide a test bed for other related detector development. We present an overview of these goals and describe the current status of the RDA.