Space-based missile warning continues expansion

October 5, 2015

Air Force Space Command:

As the SBIRS program continues to advance, new mission opportunities are underway, including support civil agencies, in order to enhance their respective missions such as U.S. Forest Services with early forest fire detection.

The next advancement in space-based missile warning will be complete with the SBIRS Block 10 upgrade. This effort will consolidate all SBIRS operations, including DSP and SBIRS geosynchronous satellites and highly elliptical orbit sensor constellations, into one facility.  The Block 10 program encompasses upgrades at multiple SBIRS sites and consists of major software revisions, additional computer processing hardware at the MCS, and numerous additional hardware components at each relay ground station to include fully leveraging new SBIRS scanner and starer sensor capabilities. Block 10 is scheduled to achieve operations acceptance by August 2016. The evolution of the SBIRS program also continues with the anticipated launch of GEO-4 in 2016 and GEO-3 in late 2017, as well as development of the GEO-5/GEO-6 satellites and HEO-3/HEO-4 sensors…

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