For the Golden Dome missile defense system, getting data about ballistic or hypersonic missile launches from sensors to the fusion engine which provides 3D tracking and finally to the interceptors that will target and destroy it is an extraordinarily complex problem. Industry experts in a March 23 SATShow Week panel on missile defense said it wasn\u2019t one that could be solved with technology alone. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s as much a technical challenge as it is a political or maybe bureaucratic challenge,\u201d said Devin Elder, senior director for Communications and Networking Strategy and Business Development for Northrop Grumman Strategic Space Systems<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s agencies that have sensors which can provide data that would be very useful for the missile defense mission, but they\u2019re designed for a completely different purpose,\u201d he said, adding that it is not a standardization or interoperability issue.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s sensor data out there from sensors that were built by agencies [other than the] Space Force, and oftentimes it\u2019s very hard to get that data into the fusion engine. There are the usual bureaucratic stovepipes,\u201d he said, describing a series of organizational stumbling blocks including classification levels and data assurance issues, and the different legal authorities under which military and intelligence agencies operate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not a technology problem that we\u2019re facing right now,\u201d agreed Paul Wloszek, vice president and general manager of Spectrum Solutions at L3Harris Technologies<\/strong>. \u201cIntegration is probably the largest challenge that we are seeing because of the multiple phenomenologies that we\u2019re bringing to the sensing domain,\u201d including optical telescopes, radar signatures and the infrared spectrum \u2014 both in space and on the ground. <\/p>\n The challenge for the data fusion engine, he said, is turning those multiple two-dimensional images into a single three-dimensional track of a missile. \u201cTo take all that information and output an answer in \u2026 seconds, because of the speed at which these decisions have to be made, we all have to be speaking the same language. Standards [are] a critical part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Even within a single domain like infrared, Wloszek added, \u201cWe\u2019ve seen some differences in interpretation of standards that we\u2019ve had to work through over the last couple of years.\u201d<\/p>\n Another issue impacting data fusion and integration is product quality concerns from the agencies that owned the data, said Elder, explaining that organizations oftentimes didn\u2019t want to share raw data, but only \u201cfinal [analytical] products that they [can] fully stand behind.\u201d Whereas a missile defense system couldn\u2019t wait for the data to be crunched, he said, \u201cYou need the data as fast as you can get it.\u201d<\/p>\n In part that is because of the evolution of the threat, added Wloszek. \u201cIn the 1960s \u2026 we could estimate where an [inter-continental ballistic missile, or] ICBM would go based on ballistic physics,\u201d he said. Today, \u201cthe threat environment has changed dramatically. \u2026 The threat that we\u2019re living with right now is a highly maneuverable hypersonic missile, which at the low end, is traveling [at] 16,000 miles per hour.\u201d<\/p>\n That necessitates a different approach to the sensors needed, explained Robin Dickey, director of Policy and Government Affairs for Slingshot Aerospace<\/strong>. What could once be accomplished by a single infrared sensor in orbit, now required a hybrid, multi-domain, multi-orbit, multi-phenomenology architecture, capable of not just detecting a threat, but following it. <\/p>\n \u201cTo actually maintain a track once you\u2019ve identified an object \u2026 there\u2019s no \u2018one sensor type to rule them all,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cLooking up [from the ground], you\u2019re going to see very different aspects of an object than you would looking down [from space]. The background is different. The object itself could look different. And so having both of those directions is very important when you\u2019re trying to look at increasingly complex missile threats.\u201d<\/p>\n She also noted that space-based capabilities needed to be guarded against enemy attack. \u201cAll of these different phenomenologies are really important \u2026 and so I would say, when you\u2019re thinking about a combined, integrated missile defense, every aspect of the environment \u2014 in space, on Earth, weather on Earth, space weather threats \u2014 they all have to be considered if you\u2019re actually going to be able to conduct the mission in real time, especially if the adversary knows you have this capability and wants to get involved and mess with it.\u201d<\/p>\n There were unexpected synergies between missile defense and weather detection, added Wloszek. \u201cWeather is a real-time mission, just like missile defense is a real-time mission, and both use the infrared part of the spectrum to provide decision making,\u201d he explained. In fact, he went on, the on-orbit demonstrator L3Harris had built to show its missile defense capabilities was a multi-mission satellite that had been able to track Hurricane Helene. \u201cWe used that to open a discussion about the 99% of the time that this missile defense capability is not providing missile defense services. How else can it help and kind of defray the taxpayer\u2019s investment.\u201d<\/p>\n Moderator Clayton Swope of the Center for Strategic and International Studies<\/strong> added that, given the huge amount of data required, bandwidth, latency and the speed of human decision-making will all be constraints. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re pushing data processing towards the tactical edge. The timelines that missile defense works on, you have to eventually get to a point where it is human out of the loop. We\u2019re not quite there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the Golden Dome missile defense system, getting data about ballistic or hypersonic missile launches from sensors to the fusion engine which provides 3D tracking and finally to the interceptors that will target and destroy it is an extraordinarily complex problem. 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