April 12, 2005 :: News
“Emerging threats round the world indicate the need for developing a space-based layer” of defensive systems, said Missile Defense Agency Director Lieutenant General Henry Obering yesterday at the 3rd Annual Missile Defense Conference in Washington, reports Defense News. The MDA, Obering said, would like to “maintain options for a space-based test bed” to begin experiments by fiscal year 2007. “There is a lot of attraction to space-based interceptors.”
Obering noted, however, the ideological opposition which such tests will likely provoke: the subject is fraught with “a lot of emotionalism and religious argument” associated with weaponizing space.”
The Aerospace Daily & Defense Report reported on April 12 that the MDA currently plans to award one-year concept design contracts to two to four industry teams in FY 2008, and that in FY 2009, one or more teams would be picked for a development and test phase that would extend to FY 2015 and include several space-based intercept tests, with a decision on whether to build a constellation of some 50 to 100 satellites possibly taking place 2014-2015. The MDA is not even seeking money for the project, however, until FY 2008, with some $45 million.
Speaking also of the Space Tracking Surveillance System (STSS) satellite system, Obering expressed, “I believe this is critical, by the way, to the future of the missile defense program…I believe we have to get to space as it relates to our sensing capability because we don’t know where the threat is going to be emerging from so we have to be able to provide global coverage and this is the only way to do it really, is from space.”
MDA is also reportedly planning to begin the Near Field InfraRed Experiment (NFIRE) in FY2007, an experimental satellite that would collect data on ballistic missile plumes. (Article)
» More stories on: Space-Based Systems
» Missile system details for: Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE), Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS)
