JLENS: Co-ordinating Cruise Missile Defense – And More

JLENS Concept

Experiences in Operation Iraqi Freedom demonstrated that even conventional cruise missiles with limited reach could have disruptive tactical effects, in the hands of a determined enemy. Meanwhile, the proliferation of cruise missiles and associated components, combined with a falling technology curve for biological, chemical, or even nuclear agents, is creating longer-term hazards on a whole new scale. Intelligence agencies and analysts believe that the threat of U.S. cities coming under cruise missile attack from ships off the coast is real, and evolving.

Aerial sensors are the best defense against low-flying cruise missiles, because they offer far better detection and tracking range than ground-based systems. The bad news is that keeping planes in the air all the time is very expensive, and so are the aircraft themselves. As cruise missile defense becomes a more prominent political issue, the primary challenge becomes the development of a reliable, affordable, long-flying, look-down platform. One that can detect, track and identify incoming missiles, then support over-the-horizon engagements in a timely manner. The Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor (JLENS) certainly looked like that system, but the Pentagon has decided to end it.

Timely Defenders: Keeping Patriots in Shape

Patriot system

The USA’s MIM-104 Phased Array Tracking Radar Intercept On Target (PATRIOT) anti-air missile system offers an advanced backbone for medium-range air defense, and short-range ballistic missile defense, to America and its allies. This article covers domestic and foreign purchase requests and contracts for Patriot systems. It also compiles information about the engineering service contracts that upgrade these systems, ensure that they continue to work, and integrate them with wider command and defense systems.

The Patriot missile franchise’s future appears assured. At present, 12 nations have chosen it as a key component of their air and missile defense systems: the USA, Germany, Greece, Japan, Israel, Kuwait, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan and the UAE. Poland, Qatar, and Turkey have all indicated varying levels of interest, and some existing customers are looking to upgrade their systems.

Gulf States Requesting ABM-Capable Systems

Patriot PAC-2

It’s becoming clear that Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, have stepped up their defense spending in recent years. Uncertainty creates perceptions of risk, and perceptions of risk lead to responses aimed at reducing that risk. That’s why arms spending is an incomplete but very concrete way of tracking a state’s real assessment of threats and priorities. Iraq is no longer a missile/WMD threat, but Iran’s ballistic missiles are another matter. They may be based on North Korean designs that lack accuracy, but the prospect of nuclear payloads is producing reactions.

Gulf states recognize that even a lucky conventional missile could wreak havoc if it hit key oil-related infrastructure, or damaged the larger and more nebulous target of business confidence. The spread of nuclear weapons would change the calculus completely. A 2007 US National Intelligence Assessment [redacted NIE summary, PDF] believed that Iran’s nuclear program had stopped, but others, including the United Nations and Israel, were more skeptical. By 2010, that skepticism had spread to US intelligence, which repudiated an assessment that seems set to join the infamous 1962 NIE of no Soviet missiles in Cuba [1].

The Gulf states’ response to these developments covers a range of equipment, but anti-ballistic missile capabilities appear to be rising to the top of the priority list.

ICBM Missiles: Reduce, Reuse, RSLP

Minotaur I

Arms control treaties and other deactivations have left the USA with over 1,400 ballistic missile rocket motors in storage. The USAF’s Rocket Systems Launch Program looks at ways to reuse them for missile defense testing or spacecraft launches, examines the use of ballistic missile technology for a Conventional Strike Missile (CSM), and studies related technologies. RSLP has supported various technology development efforts for guidance and navigation systems; advanced reentry physics; avionics; Missile Technology Demonstration (MTD); Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) and Ballistic Missile Range Safety Technology (BMRST).

In December 2012, US Space & Missile Command’s Space Development and Test Wing issued 3 indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price RSLP contracts, with up to $900 million in task orders to be competed among the winners:

BMD Tests, and More: Maintaining the USA’s Pacific Missile Range

MRBM target launch

The Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) is the world’s largest instrumented testing and training missile range, located on the far Hawaiian islands of Kaua’i and Ni’hau. The Barking Sands shore facility used to belong to Kekaha Sugar Company. It became Mana Airport during World War 2, and was renamed Bonham Air Force Base in 1954. The Navy has owned it since 1964, and is currently using PMRF to launch ballistic missile targets for the naval AEGIS BMD/ SM-3 missile combination, and the Army’s THAAD missile system. It will have an Aegis Ashore complex that will be used for testing purposes, but could also serve operationally, and has also been a deployment site for THAAD in response to threatening North Korean tests that posed a risk to Hawaii.

PMRF’s size and scope make it a valuable resource beyond the US Navy, and that role will grow as global interest in naval ballistic missile defense grows. Contracts include:

DSP Satellites: Supporting America’s Early-Warning System

DSP-16 Deploys

Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites have been monitoring the skies as America’s early-warning system for ballistic missile launches since their first launch in 1970. The current Satellite Early Warning System (SEWS) consists of 5 DSP satellites; 3 provide frontline operational service, with 2 available as backups should problems emerge with the primary satellites.

The program’s lifetime has seen the launch of 23 DSP satellites, and improvements to DSP via 5 upgrade sets have allowed those satellites to exceed their design lifespan. The USAF’s fact sheet lists the satellites’ unit cost at $400 million, though they do not mention what fiscal year baseline that figure is linked to. While the DSP satellites successfully detected Iraqi SCUD launches during Operation Desert Storm, testimony before Congress has noted that there are some classes of missiles the DSP constellation has trouble with. The USAF’s way over-budget SBIRS program was created to address that, but the DSP constellation will be up for a long time. This entry will be updated to cover new developments, contracts, and more.

ARCTEC Renewed for Alaska Radar Maintenance

The Alaska Radar System’s 17 remote radar sites (primarily AN/FPS-117 SEEK IGLOO and AN/FPS-124 SEEK FROST radars), serve aviation needs, and also act as the North Warning System for the USA. Upgrades are underway to keep FPS-117s running until 2025.

Keeping them running is a job for ARCTEC, who has also handled contracts related to the USA’s more advanced BMEWS and PAVE PAWS early warning radars, one of which is located at Clear Air Force Station, AK. This article covers ARS maintenance contract orders from the contract’s beginning in 2004 to its final period.

PAVE PAWS Radar Upgrades: Clear AFS Goes from Warning to BMD Targeting

Clear Air Force Station:
EWR is upper right

In fall 2012 The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and U.S. Air Force award Raytheon a $125.3 million contract to modernize and upgrade the US Air Force’s early warning radar (EWR) system at Clear AFS, AK. The existing phased array radar face will remain, but new electronics and back-end software will improve performance. The difference is not a small one – with the upgrades, the upgraded EWR (UEWR) can start providing targeting data to interceptor systems.

The US military is slowly stitching together its missile defense program…

BAE Supporting BMEWS Ballistic Missile Warning Radars to 2018

Fylingdales SSPARS

In September 2012, BAE Systems Technology Solution and Services, Rockville, MD received a 6-year, $49.2 million contract modification to manage, operate, maintain and logistically support the Solid State Phased Array Radar Systems (SSPARS). This array is also known as BMEWS, the ballistic missile early warning system of large radar installations developed during the Cold War. The radars themselves are about 11 stories tall, and excel at searching large volumes of sky that extend into space. Each has several transmitter faces, in order to provide wide coverage. BAE has a history of handling these support contracts, alongside firms like ARCTEC. This maintenance and support contract is expected to be complete by Sept 30/18. The 21st Space Wing at Peterson Air Force Base, CO, who provides missile warning and space control to NORAD and U.S. Strategic Command, manages this contract (FA2517-06-C-8001, PO 0312).

Work would be performed at Cape Cod Air Force Station, MA; Beale Air Force Base, CA

• ; Thule Air Base, Greenland*; Clear Air Force Station, AK, and Royal Air Force Fylingdales, United Kingdom*. Installations with an asterisk have received UEWR upgrades, which also allow them to be used as low-grade targeting radars for ballistic missile defenses. Alaska’s Clear AFS is next. See also BAE’s November 2012 release.

C2BMC: Putting the ‘System’ in Ballistic Missile Defense

Monitors went black
Sell everything!

C2BMC puts the “system” in the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) System. At least that’s how the US Missile Defense Agency describes the Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) element. Basically, C2BMC synchronizes individual missile defense systems, sensors, and operators, which is essential to the layered missile defense approach the agency is working to develop. Since no one system is foolproof, layered system is designed to destroy enemy ballistic missiles by tracking and engaging them in all phases of flight, from boost, mid-course, and terminal phases of ballistic missiles. Tying all that together is a real challenge, since these systems weren’t all designed from the outset to operate together.

Some elements of the USA’s current missile warning and defense architecture include DSP and SBIRS satellites, Aegis BMD ships, Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), Patriot anti-air missile defense, and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, along with flexible dual-use elements like the Patriot PAC-3, other sensors that might be plugged into the network, and other elements that will be developed in future:

• What C2BMC Does
  
• Contracts and Key Events [updated]
  
• Additional Readings