Reducing the vulnerability of U.S. satellites and ensuring military forces are able to operate without mission degradation is a continuous task and one that may gain insights from the U.S. Space Force Space Development Agency’s (SDA) ongoing effort to develop a “resilient missile warning/missile tracking” architecture in low Earth orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth orbit (MEO), a top Pentagon space official said on July 19.
“Resilience is never complete,” John Plumb, the assistant secretary of defense for space policy, told a session of the Aspen Security Forum. “It will be a constant back and forth. Second, we are investing in becoming resilient. We’re picking off certain mission sets. Missile warning/missile track is a thing we talk about a lot, moving from an architecture that has a few, very large, expensive satellites in GEO [geosynchronous] and polar orbits to a proliferated architecture in LEO.”
“That has a couple of advantages,” he said of the proliferated lower orbit, missile tracking architecture. “One–devaluing attack, and two–the refresh rate of satellites that will last three to five years provides the ability to innovate at speed and not have to look out for my requirements 20 years from now but what are my requirements five years from now with a knowledge that I’ll have to refresh that.”
In fiscal 2024, the Space Force is requesting a $1.1 billion increase over last year’s appropriated amount for LEO and MEO missile tracking systems.
The service’s request for the LEO portion of the architecture is nearly $1.3 billion–a $480 million increase over last year, while the Space Force’s ask for the MEO part is $538 million, about $130 million more than last year’s appropriation (Defense Daily, March 16).
The Space Force budget zeroes research and development funding for one of the GEO Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next Gen OPIR) missile warning satellites by Lockheed Martin [LMT], as the Space Force posits that having a band of many, smaller satellites in the lower orbits of LEO and MEO will complicate an adversary’s anti-satellite targeting and improve deterrence against potential Russian and Chinese ballistic and hypersonic missile attacks.
Next Gen OPIR also is to have a Northrop Grumman [NOC] polar segment.
In fiscal 2023, the SDA launch line item under Space Force procurement received more than $746 million, an increase to the budget request of $442 million, including $216 million to accelerate the launch of Resilient Missile Warning and Missile Tracking satellites. In addition, Space Force received a $250 million increase in fiscal 2023 to expand a LEO missile tracking demonstration for U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).
The first launch of SDA Transport and Tracking Layer Tranche 0 satellites slipped from September last year, and SDA announced that first launch on Apr. 2. Technical issues included software, radios, and a shortage of microelectronic components were responsible for the delay, SDA said (Defense Daily, Oct. 5, 2022). Due to the schedule slip, the Tranche 0 satellites were not slated to participate in INDOPACOM’s Northern Edge exercise in Alaska this month. The exercise ends July 21.
At Northern Edge, the LEO Tranche 0 satellites were to demonstrate the detection/tracking of hypersonic glide vehicles; the use of Link 16 to transmit targeting data to a ground shooter; and the fusion of data from various sensors to demonstrate global targeting for the prosecution of hundreds of targets per day in a given region of the globe.
SpaceX and L3Harris [LHX] are the contractors for the Tranche 0 Tracking Layer, while L3Harris and Northrop Grumman are building satellites for the Tranche 1 Tracking Layer.
In January, SDA renamed the proliferated LEO constellation as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA).
Last month, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) said that it has not received details from SDA on how the PWSA “contributions for missile warning will meet stated combatant commander resiliency requirements or be integrated into the overall Integrated Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment (ITWAA) architecture” (Defense Daily, June 21).
The HASC version of the fiscal 2024 defense authorization bill would require the Air Force and U.S. Strategic Command to brief the committee by March 30 next year on on any U.S. missile warning effects posed by PWSA delays, costs of ground infrastructure for PWSA, any PWSA missile warning gaps, and “how the PWSA will be incorporated into the ITWAA architecture to meet STRATCOM requirements.”