Space Force Has High Hopes for New Missile Warning Satellites.

• Author: Harper, Jon
• Position: SPACE

The Space Force is pursuing a new generation of satellites and associated ground systems to better detect enemy missiles and provide greater resiliency against counter-space weapons. The Biden administration is boosting funding for the project as the military tries to stay ahead of the evolving threat.

The Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared platform will replace the legacy Space-Based Infrared System, or SBIRS. Infrared sensors are an important tool for intelligence-gathering because they can detect heat emanating from enemy missiles and alert other assets.

Officials are using middle-tier acquisition authorities and rapid prototyping to shave time off of the program. The Space Force aims to launch the first Next-Gen OPIR satellite in 2025, and have all five Block 0 satellites in orbit by 2030.

The new space architecture "will provide improved missile warning, missile defense, battlespace awareness and technical intelligence collection," according to Pentagon budget documents.

President Joe Biden's fiscal year 2022 budget request called for $2.45 billion for the program, about $132 million more than the Trump administration had planned to spend that year.

Officials have been tight-lipped about the detection capabilities that the new system will possess because much of the information is classified.

"What I will say is that... there are shorter burn missiles, there's advanced fuel, there's a larger range of heat signatures--and we know that that requires more capable sensors," Col. Dan Walter, senior materiel leader for Next-Gen OPIR at the Space and Missile Systems Center, said in an interview. "We are improving the capability above and beyond what SBIRS has right now to be able to detect a broader range of the missile arsenals that are out there."

The new system will also be more survivable against emerging threats, officials say.

Counter-space weapons that could be employed by adversaries against U.S. spacecraft include direct-ascent antisatellite missiles, co-orbital ASAT weapons, directed energy systems, electronic jamming or cyber attacks, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies' "Space Threat Assessment 2021" report.

Walter said: "We have taken a look across multiple threat vectors when it comes to counter-space capabilities that can hold our assets at harm and prevent us from performing our mission, either temporarily or permanently, and are deliberately designing the capability to be able to counter...