Pentagon launches six satellites to boost missile tracking capability

The House Improvement Company and the Missile Protection Company launched six satellites Wednesday designed to reveal the flexibility to trace high-speed missile threats.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried the satellites, 4 of which help the House Improvement Company’s constellation of monitoring spacecraft and two are a part of the Missile Protection Company’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Monitoring House Sensor program, or HBTSS.

The companies, together with the House Power, have been working collectively to develop a extra sturdy community of satellites that may detect and monitor conventional ballistic missiles and maneuvering hypersonic weapons, which might journey at speeds above Mach 5.

The satellites will reside in low Earth orbit, or LEO, about 1,200 miles above the planet’s floor.

“Launching our monitoring satellites into the identical orbit with the MDA HBTSS satellites is a win for each companies,” SDA Director Derek Tournear mentioned in a Feb. 14 assertion. “We’ll be capable of take a look at take a look at targets from the identical orbit on the similar time, in order that we will see how the 2 sensors work collectively.”

The satellites symbolize a portion of a broader House Power plan to strengthen its missile warning and monitoring capabilities towards rising threats from China and Russia. As we speak, these spacecraft principally reside in geosynchronous orbit, or GEO, about 22,000 miles above Earth. Satellites positioned in decrease orbits like LEO can observe massive areas with out requiring the identical degree of complexity from sensors positioned additional away.

The Pentagon expects to spend practically $16 billion on these efforts via fiscal 2028, based on the House Power’s FY24 price range request.

Whereas the MDA and SDA sensors had been developed via separate applications, future tranches of SDA spacecraft will mix the capabilities, incorporating the medium-field-of-view sensor featured on the HBTSS satellites. The HBTSS sensors are designed to trace dimmer targets and ship knowledge to interceptors.

L3Harris constructed all 4 of the SDA satellites, that are a part of the company’s Tranche 0 monitoring layer. The corporate can be on contract to construct missile monitoring satellites for the following two functionality tranches, which can characteristic improved sensor expertise.

MDA additionally tapped L3Harris to construct one in all its HBTSS satellites, choosing Northrop Grumman to develop the second.

For L3Harris, historically a satellite tv for pc payload supplier, the launch represents its foray into main a satellite tv for pc growth program as a primary contractor, based on Kelle Wendling, president of the corporate’s area techniques enterprise.

“It’s been a really attention-grabbing path for us as a payload supplier shifting into that prime function,” Wendling instructed C4ISRNET in an interview.

Having a job in HBTSS in addition to the primary three tranches of SDA’s missile monitoring constellation means the corporate can discover methods to each streamline its manufacturing processes and enhance its sensor design over time, based on Rob Mitrevski, vice chairman and common supervisor of spectral options at L3Harris.

“What that creates for us and our buyer is a capability to be very agile in the best way we handle the evolving risk – to be very predictable when it comes to schedule since you’re utilizing beforehand developed expertise constructing blocks,” Mitrevski mentioned in the identical interview.

That agility is a key characteristic of SDA’s mission to frequently improve its constellations with new capabilities.

The company has launched 27 Tranche 0 satellites since April 2023 — eight for missile monitoring and 19 for knowledge transport and communications. In September, SDA will start launching its Tranche 1 spacecraft, which can ultimately embrace 161 operational satellites.