A new, elevated sensor architecture is required to detect, identify, and track a spectrum of maneuvering missile threats with sufficient quality to support missile defense fire control. These threats combine high speeds, unpredictable, non-ballistic trajectories, and large raid sizes to stress legacy defense designs. SpaceX has already place over 5000 Starlink satellites into orbit. Placing hundreds to thousands of military defense satellites will be one their next jobs.
▪ The future of missile defense and missile defeat will be contingent on the development, characteristics, and fielding timeline of this architecture. One cannot defend against what one cannot see.
▪ There is no such thing as a perfect sensor architecture design. Designing an elevated sensor architecture is rather an exercise in tradeoffs. Given this multiplicity of trades, architecture design is as much an art as a science. The application of this art to specific designs reflects
various institutional and policy assumptions.
▪ Unpacking these tradeoffs and assumptions—making them explicit—can help policymakers, budgeteers, and system architects, and better inform the public discussion related to missile tracking and missile defense. Doing so is the purpose of this report. This report does not advocate a particular architecture, but instead elaborates these tradeoffs, identifies principles to inform future architectures, and highlights temptations to avoid.
▪ No single orbit or domain represents an optimal approach for missile defense sensing. Low (LEO), medium (MEO), geosynchronous (GEO), and highly elliptical orbits (HEO) each contribute varied advantages for coverage, schedule, cost, and resilience.
▪ Proliferating space sensors in LEO is one way to improve resilience, assuming large numbers and low-cost replacement. It is not the only way. Reliance on a single orbital regime, or on any single approach to resilience, invites disruption. LEO constellations can be degraded by area- or domain-wide effects, including electronic attack, nuclear or radiological means, and the intentional generation of debris.
▪ The Department of Defense’s recently updated plan to deploy a mixed-orbit missile tracking constellation is thus a welcome step for enhancing resilience. Sensor architectures should complicate adversary targeting by leveraging the unique benefits and drawbacks of multiple orbits and domains.
▪ The deployment phasing of a sensor architecture is as critical as its final delivery date. Choices over orbital configurations not only affect final sensor coverage but how coverage develops over time. Sensor constellations optimized purely for coverage efficiencies do not necessarily generate persistent coverage until most elements are deployed. For nearer-term coverage, especially for the lower latitudes relevant to the Indo-Pacific and other theaters, policymakers should be attentive to the pacing of sensor fielding, not only the final product—graceful deployment as well as graceful degradation.
▪ While a space-based sensor architecture is necessary for global missile tracking coverage, a suborbital underlay of airborne sensors could improve point or regional coverage, hedge against schedule or capability gaps of orbiting sensors, and enhance overall system-level survivability. Airborne sensors offer unique detection modalities and could support persistent, localized coverage unbounded by the predictability and rigidity of orbital mechanics.
▪ Sensor fusion is a major and underappreciated source of schedule risk. Delays in developing sensor fusion software and infrastructure contributed significantly to past space program cost and schedule overruns. Further steps are needed to prioritize command and control and fusion algorithm development for larger satellite constellations and multiple sensor types.
▪ Fire control-quality tracking must be a fundamental requirement for the emergent elevated sensing architecture. The technical requirements for fire control tracks are relative measures, contingent on the performance of other elements in the missile defense kill chain. Less stringent track data requirements would require interceptors with costlier, more capable seekers or more ability to maneuver to compensate for positional uncertainties. Conversely, more accurate sensor data would both improve the performance of existing systems and ease design requirements for future interceptors.
▪ Infrared sensor performance is a function of the target’s signature and the sensor’s resolution, sensitivity, and field of view. Both wide- and medium-field-of-view sensors share promise for fire control-quality tracking. In recent years, Congress has prudently scrutinized and sustained efforts to deploy fire control sensors, including the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS), which is slated to transfer from the Missile Defense Agency to the Space Force around 2026. Whatever the sensor configuration and type, it is imperative that fire control efforts cross the valley of death and deploy at scale.
▪ Many of the technologies and programs to realize an elevated sensor architecture are in place, but a disciplined acquisition and systems engineering authority will be needed to align its many components. Policymakers must exert oversight to ensure schedule discipline, orbital and systems diversity, and continued attention to missile defense fire control requirements.
▪ Acquiring this new elevated sensor architecture will be an exercise in avoiding certain temptations. These include temptations to optimize global coverage efficiencies at the expense of schedule and resilience, to consolidate assets into a single orbital regime, and to abdicate fire control requirements.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Looking at the graphic, the area to be defended is quite small. Stratospheric balloon sensors, say 30,000 m (90-100.000 ft) might be cheaper, quicker to deploy and less susceptible to point source (launching facility) sabotage or failure. This is of course distributed over economically and strategically vulnerable targets.
The difficulty resides in the networking, computing, and command structure.
We haven’t seen much from Brian about the F35 program for a while, but the complexity and system development has been an issue. The SpaceX technology appears useful for the orbital components, but note my previous concern that there are only a few launch sites.
Missile defence like that is something I’d like to see in the hands of relatively democratic, accountable nations rather than the hands of neo-Maoist Marxists and neo-Soviet Putinistas. While rich democracies are better at keeping ahead on such things, the sleazy second comers are often able to cobble something together at the last moment to be annoying.
Speaking of which, I recently heard a statistic about how the wealth produced and accumulated by Chinese outside of China greatly eclipses the amount produced inside China despite the lower numbers of expatriates compared to Chinese still under CCP rule. I wonder what the numbers for Russians inside vs outside the Russian Federation show.
yep, that is why I want the western democracies to militarize the orbitals first and keep others from doing so.
With the ultimate in high ground we can:
intercept ICBM’s & end the threat of M.A.D. from china, russia etc. as well as any nation
looking to develop nuclear ICBM’s. (what’s the point of a nuke if you can’t get it close to the enemy?)
Detect and intercept hypersonics, cruise and other long range missiles/aircraft.
Eliminate costly & provocative forward military bases needed for long range strikes.
Force inspections of satellites sent to orbit & end foreign espionage & GPS satellites.
Bypass foreign internet firewalls, (good luck jamming the upcoming laser uplinks!)
& probably more.
Bypassing M.A.D is not possible; most of the cold war was spent trying to “win” by making a bigger nuclear stockpile so each country could destroy the other more (as if once we had bigger rockets, the threat of soviet attack would go away). Other countries, especially nondemocratic, belligerent ones, hate the idea of being pushed around by US military superiority, and see it as an existential goal to have the same level capabilities as us. As we’ve seen over and over in the past, building stronger and badder weapons doesn’t encourage the enemy to submit; it just encourages them to build bigger and badder weapons themselves.
No wonder why the cycle of wars continues with Snake Oil Baron and Bob reasoning its a good idea to back wounded dogs into the corner. Speaking about “relatively democratic accountable nations” as if that were true. The most popular president is history was superseded by the only un-elected one all about 10 years after JKF was assassinated. Are these “relatively democratic and accountable nations” the ones that keep Assange locked up? Anybody who doesn’t fear further consolidation of government power is a fool. I want to watch it all go down. Learn to swim.
Merry Christmas.
In general, yes, the best defense is attack. I am from Russia myself, but in principle I have no loyalty to anyone. If I were your government, I would concentrate not only on defensive capabilities, but on offensive ones, too. The same SpaceXs, in combination with new missile defense systems, will provide for several years the ability to launch a nuclear strike without a response (although then it will disappear again).
When the next time an advantage is achieved, such that you can destroy the enemy, but the enemy cannot answer you or will answer weakly, I would take advantage of it if I were you. That is, he would launch a preventive strike on all countries hostile to you. I would bomb their capitals, factories, laboratories, industrial centers, military bases using nuclear weapons. Afterwards, he would force him to sign an agreement on the refusal of space exploration, the use of nuclear energy, developments in the field of AI and biotechnology. He “asked” the rest of the countries to sign the same thing. Of course, there would be a lot of outcry about military aggression and the death of a couple of million or tens of millions of people, but the reality is that the winners are not judged. The rest of the countries would measure up to strength and accept new rules of the game in which only the United States and its allies have the right to develop and use technologies.
Yikes. Thank goodness people like you weren’t in charge during the cold war (although there were plenty in the public who shared your opinion).
And what did they achieve? Those people who were in your power? The world is again on the verge of a global war, you are despised for weakness and cowardice, millions of better people from countries like Iran and Russia are forced to run like cockroaches around the world, you have a sea of enemies, the result is uncertain. If only they would let me manage your resources, I would put an end to all threats once and for all. One world, no terrorists (after the death of their sponsors), no rogue countries, common rules. The biggest problem is what to spend taxes on. Are a couple of tens of millions of enemies’ lives and a couple of millions of our own lives worth more than such a world?