Pentagon wants mora missile defense capabilities in space.

• Author: Harper, Jon

* The Missile Defense Agency is aiming to create a more robust network of space-based sensors and communications technologies to help protect the United States from ballistic missile attacks. But questions remain as to whether there will be enough funding in the near term to turn those ambitions into reality.

North Korea's fervent efforts to advance its long-range missile and nuclear weapons capabilities have created a sense of urgency in Washington, D.C.

"In the not too distant future... North Korea is going to be able to test and have the capability to fire an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile that can hit the lower 48 of the United States," said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, a member of the Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which oversees the Missile Defense Agency.

"The classified estimates might be a little scarier than some of you imagine," he said at a recent missile defense conference hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "We need to develop an integrated layer of space-based missile defense sensors, and we need to start now."

These technologies would benefit not only homeland defense, but also regional missile defense systems such as Patriot, Aegis and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, he noted.

Rear Adm. Jon Hill, deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency, said the only way to ensure persistent "birth-to-death tracking" of enemy missiles is to have sophisticated sensors in space.

Ground-based radars are "inherently limited by the curvature of the Earth and physics," he said at a separate conference on space issues hosted by CSIS. "Being able to look down and see the whole trajectory is pretty critical."

Space-based assets can play an important role not just in intelligence and early warning, but also persistent flight tracking to enable successful intercepts by ground-based systems, he said.

Since 2009, the Missile Defense Agency has been operating an experimental Space Tracking and Surveillance System, or STSS. It consists of two satellites orbiting at 840 miles above the Earth. The system is equipped with sensors capable of detecting visible and infrared light. It can identify missiles in their boost phase and track reentry vehicles, according to a MDA fact sheet.

The technology has completed a series of on-orbit tests, and demonstrated "full calibrated performance" of the satellites, their crosslink systems, and the acquisition-and-track sensor payloads. It was able to provide tracking data to the ballistic missile defense system in near real-time, the fact sheet said.

Nevertheless, there are no plans to expand the system.

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