Watchdog expects delays to Space Force's next missile warning satellites

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  May 22, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval

  ‘Major Milestone’ As Allies Join SPACECOM’s War Plan

  "The hesitation to include allies in Olympic Defender was on our end as well," says Secure World Foundation's Brian Weeden. "National security space is sort of the last bastion of America's 'crown jewels'." By THERESA HITCHENSon May 21, 2020 at 5:50 PM WASHINGTON: A number of US allies may now join Space Command in the US military's baseline plan for protecting and defending satellites during war, Operation Olympic Defender, we hear, following in the footsteps of the first country to sign up, the United Kingdom. SPACECOM today announced its leader, Gen. Jay Raymond, has signed the first order under OOD in his capacity as head of the combatant command. OOD is the US military's operational plan for protecting and defending US and allied satellites in conflict. “This is a major milestone for the newly established command,” Raymond said. “As the threats in the space domain continue to evolve, it is important we leverage and synchronize capabilities with our allies not only to understand each other's national perspectives, but to work seamlessly together to optimize our multinational space efforts.” Strategic Command created OOD in 2013 as the foundational plan for how the military will protect and defend US and allied satellites in a conflict. As Breaking D readers know, OOD was updated in 2018 to open up allied participation. “The purpose of OOD is to strengthen allies' abilities to deter hostile acts in space, strengthen deterrence against hostile actors, and reduce the spread of debris orbiting the earth,” the SPACECOM release explains. OOD is only one of a number of operational plans for space war Raymond has been working on since SPACECOM was established as a geographic command with an area of responsibility (AOR) 100 kilometers above sea level and up to infinity. He told reporters yesterday that he last week inked the new “campaign plan” for SPACECOM's day-to-day operations; every Combatant Command has such a campaign plan; this will be SPACECOM's first. “That's our foundational plan, if you will,” Raymond explained, “that drives our day-to-day activities across the command of SPACECOM.” In addition, SPACECOM now has responsibility for developing, updating and enacting when the ball drops specialized contingency plans for space war, mapped to specific adversary countries. Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter back in 2016 set the precedent, naming Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the key strategic challengers to the US military. SPACECOM's announcement today also noted that the United Kingdom was the first ally to publicly acknowledge this past July its participation in OOD. London subsequently sent additional personnel to Combined Space Operations Center (CSpOC) and the 18th Space Control Squadron at Vandenberg AFB to support its decision, SPACECOM added. CSpOC is responsible for command and control of day-to-day space operations and includes allies representation. The 18th Space Control Squadron is responsible for space domain awareness operations. Up to now, many allies were leery of signing up due to the fact that space operations were being commanded by STRATCOM, which also oversees US nuclear war planning. Public opinion in many US allies, such as Germany and Italy, traditionally has been strongly anti-nuclear. It is not by chance that even the UK, which had joined OOD under STRATCOM's control, kept its participation silent until now. “Some of those same concerns were initially raised about having USSTRATCOM be the lead agency for signing SSA data sharing agreements with other countries,” noted Brian Weeden, head of program planning at Secure World Foundation and a former Air Force officer who worked on space situational awareness operations at STRATCOM. “But the hesitation to include allies in Olympic Defender was on our end as well,” Weeden added. “National security space is sort of the last bastion of America's “crown jewels” and there are a lot of people in that community who are very reluctant to open the kimono to our allies, even the allies who we've been deeply collaborating on intelligence sharing for decades.” DoD and expert sources say interest in participation in space war planning has increased not just because of SPACECOM's standup, but also because concerns about Russian and Chinese efforts to build up their military space capabilities. Indeed, NATO in December declared space an operational domain of joint allied action — albeit insisted that this does not mean NATO endorses space weaponization. France last summer adopted an aggressive space strategy, including pursuit of offensive anti-satellite weapons. Japan on May 19 announced its new Space Operations Squadron, under the Japanese Air-Self Defense Force, to monitor and protect Japanese satellites. For example, the number of countries signing SSA agreements with DoD has jumped to 25, with Peru signing a memorandum of understanding with SPACECOM just last week to gain access to data about space objects collected by the military's Space Surveillance Network of radar and optical telescopes, as well as data to help the country's satellites avoid on-orbit collisions. “This agreement will give Peru access to the highest quality satellite tracking data available to assist them with PerúSat-1 and its eventual follow-on and will provide a linkage to the experts at the 18th Space Control Squadron. In addition, the SSA Agreement enables Peru to request seven advanced services available only to agreement holders,” SPACECOM said in a May 12 announcement. Spain, France and Italy — all of which operate military satellites — have expressed interest in participating in OOD, we are told. Besides the UK, the other members of the so-called “Five Eyes” — Australia, Canada and New Zealand — who already shared intelligence with the US are expected to join in. Although Germany has been hesitant to be seen as pro-space weapons, Berlin has a sophisticated military space program and is unlikely to stay outside of operational planning if rival France joins in. Japan too can be expected to sign on, as it has been seeking myriad ways to be more active in partnering with the US military on space protection — including agreeing to host US military payloads on Japanese satellites. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/major-milestone-as-allies-join-spacecoms-war-plan

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  August 20, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Missile Defense Agency director lays out hurdles in path to layered homeland missile defense

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Missile Defense Agency is planning to develop a layered homeland intercontinental ballistic missile defense architecture, but it must clear a range of hurdles to get after an approach that addresses emerging threats and fills a gap while a next-generation interceptor is developed, according to the agency's director. The agency unveiled plans in its fiscal 2021 budget request in February to create a more layered homeland defense system that would include regional missile defense capability already resident with the Navy and Army to bolster homeland defense against ICBMs. The plan would include establishing layers of defensive capability relying on the Aegis Weapon System, particularly the SM-3 Block IIA missiles used in the system, and a possible Aegis Ashore system in Hawaii. The underlay would also include the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. The Army is already operating a THAAD battery in South Korea and Guam. The layered approach would buy time while the Pentagon scrambles to field a new interceptor to replace older ground-based interceptors — after canceling its effort to redesign the kill vehicle for the GBIs — in its Ground-based Midcourse Defense system located primarily at Fort Greely, Alaska. With little detail conveyed in MDA's budget request for a layered homeland missile defense plan, Congress is pressuring the agency to come up with a strategy and approach to putting the architecture in place in both the House and Senate passed FY21 defense authorization bills. Much is riding on the success of an upcoming test of the SM-3 Block IIA missile, Vice Adm. Jon Hill said during a Heritage Foundation virtual event on Aug. 18. The missile has seen several test failures in the recent past. “We're going to really stress the SM-3 Block IIA outside its design space,” Hill said. “It was designed for medium and intermediate range. Now we're going against long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles. The analysis says we'll be successful, but nothing is real to any of us until we actually get the empirical data from being out in the flight range.” The test will involve several time zones on several different ranges and the same ICBM target used in the most recent GMD test, Hill said. And while the test is still on track to happen by the end of the year, Hill said, challenges in coordination and travel due to the coronavirus pandemic could possibly have an impact on schedule. When the pandemic hit, “we were ready and postured to go to the Pacific to execute” Flight Test Maritime-44, Hill said, “so we did get the target on station. So the target's out there in the Pacific and it's ready to roll.” Following FTM-44, the agency would like to execute another test against a very complex ICBM target unlike the “simple” one being used in the upcoming test. That target will have “a lot of separation debris and that has a lot of countermeasures,” Hill said. “We want to make sure that the system in total, from the space assets to the radar to the engage-on-remote capability that passes that information to the ship, that ship can actually sift through all that and say, ‘That's the [reentry vehicle] and that's the where the missile's going to go,‘” he added. Success in the upcoming test doesn't mean the agency's work is done, Hill said. Upgrades will be required based on threats, combat system certifications will need to be conducted and work with the Navy to determine where Aegis ships would deploy will have to occur. The agency will also have to determine how quickly it can ramp up its production line for SM-3 Block IIA missiles. Then “if we succeed with Aegis, then we'll go right down the path with THAAD,” Hill said. The second big challenge, after ensuring all the parts work to provide layered coverage, is developing engagement coordination between the different layers, according to Hill. “Let's just say that step one is a ship off the coast as a complement to GMD. Those systems today talk already, but they're not talking in terms of being layered defenders,” Hill said. “So if GMD, for example, decides he's going to wait this first shot out and let the ship take it, we have to have the communication network to go do that. We have to have the technical architecture with the Command and Control Battle Management system, but in that context of layered defense and engagement coordination.” Aegis ships are already able to do engagement coordination among each other and the work the Pentagon is doing to get THAAD and the Patriot air-and-missile defense system to coordinate are “extensible to that problem,” Hill said, “but we still need to do that kind of engineering and that sort of architecture work.” And while a layered missile defense architecture for the homeland is an intricate one, “you don't have to solve the whole problem” at once, Rebecca Heinrichs, a missile defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said during the Heritage Foundation event. But she cautioned that she did foresee challenges in establishing such an architecture on the political front rather than on the technical side. “Congress always wants to vet these kinds of things, so even though it is Congress that wanted the SM-3 Block IIA test, whenever you start talking about which district it is going to be in, where it's going to go and that kind of thing, that is a political challenge that takes a lot of debate and conversation.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/2020/08/18/missile-defense-agency-director-lays-out-hurdles-in-path-to-layered-homeland-missile-defense/

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  December 24, 2023 | International, Aerospace

  Boeing's first Dreamliner delivery to China since 2019 arrives