The Space Force wants to field missile tracking satellites in medium Earth orbit starting in 2026.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
The U.S. Space Force is attempting a novel approach to space-based missile warning and tracking to counter adversarial weapon systems that are dimmer, faster and more maneuverable than ballistic missiles.
Russia attacked a Ukrainian rocket factory Nov. 21 with a new conventionally armed, medium-range ballistic missile that President Vladimir Putin identified as a Mach-10-capable weapon named Oreshnik, calling the firing a response to strikes on Russian soil by Western-made missiles.
Space Force and MDA are in “lockstep” over no-fail mission
Missile tracking is to be handled by MEO and LEO layers
China continues to expand its strategic missile forces, developing a range of air-to-air missiles, conventionally armed ICBMs and increased numbers of nuclear warheads. North Korea is also accelerating ICBM production.
As the Space Force approaches its fifth birthday, one of the U.S. military’s longest-running and most critical on-orbit mission areas is undergoing a facelift costing billions of dollars over the next half-decade.
The nation has enjoyed an uninterrupted space-based early warning capability from geostationary orbit (GEO) since the Missile Defense Alarm System spacecraft launched in the 1960s to detect Soviet ICBMs.
The current architecture includes Lockheed Martin-built GEO-based Space-Based Infrared System satellites and payloads in highly elliptical orbit (HEO), legacy Northrop Grumman Defense Support Program satellites and associated ground systems. Those spacecraft were built to monitor bright, predictable and easily tracked missile-based threats. But the landscape has changed as adversaries develop more sophisticated weapons to use against the U.S.
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