Downrange
Written by / Compiled by KMI Media Group staff
The U.S. Navy has started the process to find a 21st-century successor to the Trident strategic missile submarine.
“We’re just at the opening phases right now, going through the proper systems engineering that will advance that particular design approach,” former Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter said at a news conference shortly before his departure from office. Tridents are nuclear-powered, Ohio-class submarines. At 560 feet long and 42 feet wide, Tridents are the largest submarines in the U.S. Navy’s inventory. The first Trident ballistic-missile submarine, the USS Ohio, was commissioned in 1981. “A wide variety of options” are being considered for the Trident’s replacement, Winter said. However, the Navy secretary expressed his belief that the Trident system would be replaced by another underseagoing platform. “I do fully expect that it is going to be a submarine,” Winter said of the Trident’s successor.
Source: U.S. Navy
ABL Milestones Outlined
The Airborne Laser program has an ambitious schedule for the remainder of 2009.
The remaining airborne tests will use the entire integrated weapon system.
As this issue was going to press, the ABL aircraft completed its functional check flight. Previous to this event, Mike Rinn, vice president and program director, Airborne Laser Program, Boeing, said during a media availability attended by MSMF, “As the coming weeks play out this spring, we intend to fire the laser up for the first time— high power in the airplane—and we will also begin engaging missiles with the low-power system and the atmosphere compensation system in the next several months.” Rinn continued, “We are also on track for shoot down later this year and things are looking pretty good that we will achieve that. This is a ‘final graduation’ test for ABL.”
SBIRS Preliminary Design Review Completed for GEO Units
Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center’s Space Based Infrared Systems Wing and Lockheed Martin held a successful preliminary design review, at the Lockheed Martin’s Space Systems Company for the 3rd and 4th geosynchronous satellites planned under the SBIRS follow-on production.
“This represents an important step in transitioning the SBIRS program from development to production. With this review complete, we are ready to dig into the details on the 3rd and 4th GEO spacecraft’s design in preparation for production,” Colonel John Mueller, vice commander, Space Based Infrared Systems Wing said in a statement provided to MSMF.
A review for the Highly Elliptical Orbit payloads 3 and 4 was held mid-February at Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems. The review confirmed that the detailed design for GEOs 3 and 4 has addressed all obsolescence part issues from GEOs 1 and 2. The successful completion of this review allows the contractors to begin detailed design work on GEO-3, with a goal of holding the critical design review in the fall of 2010. The production of GEOs 3 and 4 will complete the baseline SBIRS GEO constellation.
The SBIRS program consists of two HEO payloads currently on orbit and performing beyond specification. A launch of the first GEO satellite is planned in 2010.
Land-based SM-3 Update
Encouraged by interest from Capitol Hill and Department of Defense missile defense community senior leadership, Raytheon, the prime contractor for the sea-based SM-3 exoatmospheric missile, continues to develop a land-based counterpart to the successful sea-based interceptor.
The evolving Raytheon program integrates its proven SM-3 interceptor with its AN/TPY-2, the THAAD system’s radar. “We always saw the benefit of bringing together the THAAD radar with the SM-3 interceptor,” Dean Gehr, deputy director, advanced missile defense, Raytheon, told MSMF.
The company’s strategy for a land-based SM-3 option relies on affordable, cost-effective technologies that optimize MDA’s earlier investments. In one instance, Raytheon, as the sub-contractor to Lockheed Martin for THAAD, uses the framework for four of the five modules it successfully developed for THAAD’s command and control, battle management and communications architecture. By using an operational sea-based interceptor, a best-of-breed fire control system and other attributes, the company has eliminated critical research and development costs. “The big ticket R&D efforts have been done—the missile, the radar and the fire control,” Mike Booen, vice president, advanced missile defense and directed energy weapons, Raytheon, added.
If DoD funds an SM-3 land-based option, the company envisions a parallel path of development based, in part, on the fielding of the sea-based model to gain further efficiencies. “The SM-3 IAs are available today.
The -1B, when it comes on line in 2011, would most likely be the first round to go in, and then when block IIA finishes development in 2015, you could use that and get more capability,” said Gehr.
John Patterson: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Nano Satellite Progress Reported
The Boeing demonstration picosatellite CubeSat TestBed 1 (CSTB1) surpassed 10,000 Earth orbits since its launch in 2007.
Boeing Advanced Network and Space Systems, developer of CSTB1, is exploring new ways to reduce the size, weight and power of satellite technologies needed for operational NanoSats—spacecraft weighing less than 22 pounds (10 kg). Picosatellites such as CSTB1 weigh less than 2.2 pounds (1 kg).
Robert Villanueva: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Advanced Warning Sensor Test Completed
Raytheon has completed performance testing of its Third Generation Infrared System (3GIRS) infrared missile warning sensor that monitors an entire hemisphere from a single telescope.
The first-of-its-kind staring sensor, encompassing Raytheon’s large-format focal-plane arrays, will be able to detect and track dimmer objects than sensors in current operation can, according to a company statement.
The sensor is the central feature of the 3GIRS, sponsored by the Air Force Space and Missiles Systems Center and managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate.
Formerly known as the Risk Reduction Alternative Infrared Satellite System, the program aims to demonstrate that wide-field-of-view sensors can maintain persistent full-earth surveillance for missile warning in a relatively small, low-risk and easily manufactured payload.
The sensor represents a major technology advance in comparison with the sensors of the Defense Support Program and the Space-Based Infrared System High. Both rely on scanning mechanisms to perform full-earth surveillance of missiles and other infrared targets. The Raytheon sensor does not require scanning.
John Barksdale, Raytheon spokesperson, told MSMF, “there are definitely cost and schedule savings that can be passed on to the customer with the Raytheon design. There’s an ease of manufacturing, ease of test, ease of flight control and sensor control software—all of which reduce the amount of time required to build the Raytheon 3GIRS sensor.”
John Barksdale:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it