COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. \u2014 U.S. Space Force leaders say the missile warning and tracking architecture supported in the service\u2019s fiscal 2023 budget request is a \u201cbridging strategy\u201d \u2014 a way to maintain existing programs in a critical mission area as new capabilities are developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service laid out that strategy in late March<\/a>, requesting $3.4 billion \u2014 about $1 billion more than Congress appropriated in fiscal 2022 \u2014 to keep the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared System satellites and ground segment on track. The request also proposed another $1.2 billion to continue developing systems to track hypersonic missiles from low and medium Earth orbits and ensure the associated ground capabilities are aligned with the satellite work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking with reporters earlier this month during the Space Symposium, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Chief of Space Operations Gen. John Raymond said the plan is designed to give the service the stability of the traditional OPIR capabilities as well as the flexibility to launch and test new systems as part of a more diverse architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like the architectures that we have today that are one-off, handmade wooden shoes that are expensive and not easy to defend and last a really long time,\u201d Raymond said. \u201cI think it\u2019d be fair to say that we don\u2019t have the luxury of going out to the world and saying we\u2019re going to turn off all of these capabilities and we\u2019ll come back in a few years with a bunch of new capabilities. You have to have a bridging strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kendall added that as the threat matures and the Space Force rethinks its tactical response to those threats, \u201cI think we\u2019ll have to make some changes in the future.\u201d But for now, he said, the service needs funding to modernize today\u2019s systems and experiment for the future all at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Col. Brian Denaro, program executive officer for space sensing at Space Systems Command, told C4ISRNET in an interview that approach is needed to ensure there are no capability gaps during the transition to a more resilient architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs we work through that over the next year, year plus, we\u2019re going to continue to evaluate our way forward,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, what is funded in the budget is what we think is the smartest way and the most risk-informed way to making sure that we guarantee that capability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The near-term parts of that \u201cway forward\u201d were established last fall through the Space Force\u2019s Space Warfighting Analysis Center<\/a>, which brought together SSC, the Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency to hash out a future architecture. The service briefed it to industry in November and, according to Denaro, immediately started working with the requirements community \u201cin earnest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Space Force\u2019s program integration council \u2014 which includes officials from SSC, the National Reconnaissance Office, MDA, the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office and the Space RCO \u2013 then reviewed those requirements and recommended the architecture to the space acquisition council earlier this year. As part of that recommendation, Denaro said, SSC recommended the creation of a combined program office to execute the requirements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The council approved the new program office, which includes SSC, SDA and MDA. Denaro said the group has already held its first summit and is now in the process of developing a memorandum of agreement that will \u201ccodify and solidify the arrangement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re looking to do is really deeply integrate these teams so there\u2019s no daylight between us,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that will involve exchanging personnel to make sure that we have SDA people embedded in our organization and vice versa at SDA and with MDA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Denaro said organizational integration is particularly important for the ground segment. The Space Force is currently developing the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution system<\/a>, FORGE, to provide command-and-control and mission processing for Next-Gen OPIR satellites, but the plan is for the system to be provide a centralized function for the entire architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat\u2019s going to require some very tight ground integration to enable us to make sure we meet those timelines,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the reason for really working closely with SDA and MDA, and that\u2019s what drove us to this organizational construct to build a combined program office because of the timelines that we know are necessary. All of this new data coming in has to be correlated and has to be distributed in a very fast timeline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Raytheon was awarded a $197 million contract in early 2020 to develop FORGE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the LEO leg of the architecture, which falls largely in the purview of the Space Development Agency, the next year involves gearing up for its first tracking layer launch, which is slated for 2023. That Tranche 0 mission includes eight wide-field-of-view satellites \u2014 four built by L3Harris and four by SpaceX.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n SDA plans to award contracts for its Tranche 1 tracking layer in June, which will include at least 28 satellites expected to launch in 2025. The agency\u2019s plan is to launch new capability every two years, repopulating the constellation with new technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also part of the LEO architecture is the Missile Defense Agency\u2019s Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor<\/a> program, which will consist of more sensitive medium-field-of-view sensors that can create targeting data for a missile intercept. L3Harris and Northrop Grumman are on contract to develop prototypes for HBTSS and both companies completed critical design reviews for their satellites last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n HBTSS satellites are slated for launch in 2023, and Northrop Grumman recently told C4ISRNET it will be ready to ship its satellite in the first quarter of that calendar year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SSC is leading the efforts in MEO, which right now are closely linked with the outcome of an ongoing Missile Track Custody Prototype program<\/a>. The Space Force in 2021 chose Raytheon and Millennium Space Systems to design digital models of infrared sensors to help the service determine their effectiveness in detecting and tracking missiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Denaro said SSC is in the process of finishing its strategy for the MEO constellation and hopes to have that completed by the end of this year. Right now, the thought is to model its MEO delivery cadence on SDA\u2019s LEO plan \u2014 launching \u201cepochs\u201d instead of \u201ctranches\u201d at a regular pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to learn from each iteration and then we\u2019ll re-evaluate, \u2018How is the architecture working? Are we getting the performance we expected? How is that working relative to the other layers,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Denaro said he expects Raytheon and Millennium to complete their critical design reviews for the digital prototypes next year, noting the service hasn\u2019t determined whether it will field designs from more than one vendor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In GEO and Polar orbits, SSC will retain oversight of the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Program<\/a>, which includes three Lockheed-Martin built GEO satellites and two Northrop-built polar satellites. Lockheed\u2019s first GEO satellite will launch in 2025 and Northrop\u2019s first polar satellite in 2027, though company officials have said that date could be accelerated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those first five satellites make up Block 0 of the Next-Gen OPIR program, the successor to the current Space-Based Infrared System. Prior to the SWAC\u2019s force design work last year, the Space Force had planned to build out the architecture as part of a second development block. Asked if the service was planning for future phases of the program, Denaro said, \u201cI can\u2019t speak to any blocks beyond Block 0 at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re continuing to build out Next-Gen OPIR Block 0, and we\u2019ll continue to field that on the timeline that\u2019s required to get that on orbit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat is a fundamental element of missile warning for this entire architecture, and it is that unblinking eye that will provide missile warning 24\/7 all across the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The service is also planning to launch a wide-field-of-view demonstration satellite<\/a> to GEO, which was originally intended to inform the future Next-Gen OPIR architecture. The WFOV Testbed satellite was built by Millennium and its advanced missile warning staring sensor was developed by L3Harris. The satellite was expected to launch this spring but has been delayed<\/a>. The Space Force has not said why the mission is on hold, but Denaro said the service is eager to have the satellite on orbit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ll get to not just explore with the new technology and the new focal plane, but also some new algorithms and processes for evaluating the data, deciphering the data,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that will allow us to not just look at missile warning, but also missile tracking sort of capabilities and evaluate how that can be applied to proliferated LEO and MEO.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Service officials say the strategy allows them to maintain the current capability while exploring options for a more resilient missile warning and tracking architecture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":31916,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"10":{"categories":["space","military-space-report","newsletters","home","daily-news-roundup"],"primary_category":"space"}}},"categories":[7,106,29,32,37],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3260],"class_list":["post-10866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-battlefield-tech","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-newsletters","category-space"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"3ORXO4RTTBDFXOMNHJ2ZUTGXTM","arc_canonical_url":"\/battlefield-tech\/space\/2022\/04\/19\/space-force-budget-presents-a-bridge-strategy-for-missile-warning-tracking-architecture\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n