Space News:
As the U.S. military works on developing its next-generation missile defense systems, more of the resources need to be focused in space, experts said Dec. 14.
“It’s so important that we make this broader shift from a terrestrial-based system to a system that primarily plays from space in the next couple of years,” said Richard Matlock, program executive for advanced technology at the Missile Defense Agency.
The military has long relied on the Space-Based Infrared System, or SBIRS, as a warning against launches of ballistic missiles. But Matlock argued that the U.S. needs to supplement it with a more layered capability in orbit with many different satellites and systems that could not only detect, but track and target a missile through every part of its flight.
“The architectures consisted largely of terrestrial sensors deployed on land, deployed on our ships, and interceptors also deployed in silos, in trucks, and in ships,” he said. “As we examine the impact of the evolving, more maneuverable, more complex threat on this, we begin to see gaps emerging in the future to our system, which is primarily based on our lack of persistent global sensor coverage.”
Those gaps could be addressed by developing a “globally persistent space-based sensor array” that would include radar and electro-optical sensors, Matlock said, at an event hosted by the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA).
Better technology in orbit would also allow missile defense to expand to more stages of an attack. Currently, most of the United States’ defense efforts are focused on the middle of a missile’s flight, possibly when a reentry vehicle carrying a warhead is approaching its target. But the MDA wants to being focusing on disrupting enemy attacks during the boost phase, sometimes just seconds after a missile is launched.
Matlock said the MDA is hoping to bolster its Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) which is designed to provide the very tracking and targeting capabilities the agency is seeking. At first, the system could be used to extend the range of ground-interceptors, guiding them beyond the sight of radar. But further down the road, a space-based interceptor could be possible.
Missile defense is starting to face new challenges too. Russia and China – as well as the U.S. – have invested various efforts in developing hypersonic missiles that would travel faster than Mach 5 and be very difficult to track and destroy given current means.
“Right now we’re examining a number of architectures that would allow us to tackle that challenge,” Matlock said. “In the near term, we’ll be exploring what sensors we need in order to track those more effectively.… We’re exploring, and will be exploring with industry and others in a broader way, what a complete architecture might be and what systems we have today which might be able to address that threat with some modifications, as well as bringing in some of these newer technologies.”
Directed energy weapons such as lasers could give the military the capability to combat both hypersonic missiles and to target launches during the boost phase.
“My primary focus right now is in directed energy research,” Matlock said. “Our goal eventually is to integrate a high-powered, solid-state laser on a long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle operating in the stratosphere where the atmospheric disturbance of the aircraft and the laser is significantly reduced.”
Sometime before the end of the current fiscal year, the MDA is looking to award contracts to two or more major defense companies for integrating and flight testing an airborne laser demonstration by 2021.
Maj. Gen. Roger Teague, director of space programs for the U.S. Air Force acquisition office, echoed Matlock’s comments, saying that “space-based sensing absolutely underlines everything that we try to do to make sure we have eyes on the target.”
“It starts in space, our ability to detect those missile threats that might be posed against the U.S. or our allies,” he said.
