SMC Eyes MEO Sats For Missile Tracking breakingdefense.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from breakingdefense.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The new SBIRS satellite, called SBIRS GEO 5, will be "the most advanced missile warning satellite" on orbit, said Lt. Col. Ryan Laughton, SMC's program manager.
CLARIFICATION/UPDATE:
To reflect that the SDA Tracking Layer satellites will be able to directly tip and queue other OPIR satellites in future; and the resumption of the program.
WASHINGTON: The $4.9 billion contract to produce three Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) missile warning satellites seems to fly in the face of loudly touted Air and Space Force efforts to embrace open standards and cut the number of ground stations, receivers and antennas, experts said.
Instead, the new contract awarded to Lockheed Martin includes bespoke ground systems and sensor processing software raising questions in particular about how the data collected eventually will be shared with the Space Development Agency’s ballistic and hypersonic missile tracking sats.