Aviation Week April 08, 2007
DSP Satellites See Aggressive New Chinese Missile Testing
By Craig Covault
China is beginning an unprecedented surge in the flight test of new ballistic missiles at the same time that the U.S. is starting a lengthy transition of missile-warning satellite systems, critical for providing intelligence on this test activity.
The current Defense Support Program (DSP) missile-warning spacecraft and new Space-Based Infrared System (Sbirs) spacecraft, just starting to be launched, have a primary job of attack warnings.
But the powerful infrared telescopes on the DSPs are especially providing vital intelligence on new Chinese, as well as Iranian, missiles and tactics. DSP development is managed by the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) at Los Angeles AFB, Calif.
Several U.S. Air Force/ Northrop Grumman DSPs are operational in geosynchronous orbit and the final $400-million DSP spacecraft will be launched this summer (see cover and photo on p. 49).
The Air Force and Northrop Grumman granted this Aviation Week & Space Technology editor an unprecedented close-up of this key military spacecraft as it undergoes final launch preparations on a missile-warning and intelligence-gathering mission expected to last until 2022.
One can only wonder at the sweeping global military and political changes this 2.5-ton spacecraft will encounter in that period. Judging by what the DSP's powerful infrared telescopes and their dedicated operational teams have witnessed during 37 years of past operations, the differences will be legion.
But with an eye on the future, this final DSP is also carrying a special payload designed specifically to detect even extremely small nuclear tests that might be done in space, the kind that could be attempted covertly by Iran or North Korea. The new payload was mandated by a secret late-1993 White House/ National Security Council directive.
The 33-ft.-tall DSPs are equipped with long infrared telescopes and Los Alamos and Sandia nuclear detectors.
The DSP saga spans decades and was born out of potential conflict with the Soviets in the 1960s. The program has been blessed with diverse characters and cursed by seemingly insurmountable problems. But DSPs have prevailed over the long haul and, more than any other military space system, have been immersed in both war and peace.
DSPs helped prevent conflict during the Cold War because the Soviet Union could not launch a surprise attack with DSPs on the watch.
And DSPs have monitored the plumes of rocket-fire in every war around the world since the early 1970s. They have detected virtually all medium- or long-range ballistic missiles fired during those conflicts including the intensive missile bombardments of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Then they went on to provide attack-warning data on dozens of missiles fired by Iraq at U.S. and allied forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
All during this period they have supplied intelligence on thousands of foreign missile tests and space launches and super critical information on Russian and Chinese ballistic missile submarine operations.
Many of their orbital parking locations are in fact optimized for the earliest warning of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) attacks from the Arctic or other key ocean patrol areas. DSPs even report and characterize the static firing of missile propulsion systems during ground testing.
And since at least 1989 when advanced DSPs began to be launched, they have also watched for the afterburner plumes of hostile aircraft, possibly headed to attack U.S. aircraft carriers. So the spacecraft provide a degree of limited aircraft attack warning in certain theaters. If, for example, Iranian jet fighters were to take off on afterburner to begin high-speed attacks toward U.S. or British ships in the Persian Gulf, DSPs monitoring that area have the capability to observe and immediately report this from their positions 22,300 mi. in space.
But now the accelerating activity in China, coupled with testing by Iran, pose a challenge to U.S. missile-warning operations as the transition begins between the two systems--the aging DSP and the new Sbirs (AW&ST Nov. 20, 2006, p. 22). Russia continues to be watched intensively.
"China's missile testing is surpassing anything since the Soviet Union's missile buildup of the 1960s," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. "It's as if China was in near war-time production of missiles . . . in what amounts to the largest missile production and test rate since the Cold War."
While recent media focus has been on Iranian missiles, "there is much more going on inside the Chinese missile programs than is generally known to the public," according to another analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. China's January anti-satellite weapons test was only the most spectacular manifestation of this new strategic push by China, he says.
Sbirs, like DSP, will also be vital for gathering intelligence on missile development and test in addition to providing a more accurate warning capability, especially for tactical ballistic missiles.
DSPs do not take images but rather acquire infrared data in different wavelengths that is then converted to warning or intelligence information. Sbirs spacecraft will have much more capability to "see" tactical and long-range ballistic missiles.
The DSP system, however, will remain the primary warning constellation till 2012-13 when Sbirs becomes operational, says USAF Lt. Col. Todd Walkowicz, deputy commander of the Sbirs Space Group at SMC.
Individual spacecraft like DSP-23 (left) and DSP-22, launched in 2004, will likely remain in warning and intelligence service till 2017-22, given the long lifetime trends of current spacecraft, says Peggy Paul, Northrop Grumman DSP program manager.
"What the Air Force has been telling the contractors, and what we have been very much responding to, is that this DSP-23 spacecraft is essential for the transition to Sbirs," Paul says.
And with new Chinese flight-test activity to monitor, the DSP program has major initiatives underway to extract more intelligence- and warning-related information out of the infrared data stream from each of the spacecraft, says USAF Lt. Col. Joe Coniligio, DSP program director at SMC.
This is helping the system meet the challenges posed by China, Iran and North Korea, says Edward Tagliaferri, who joined the DSP program in 1970 and is its senior technical consultant.
The DSPs are increasingly observing China demonstrate new missile tactics and strategy, in addition to the frequent tests that are being detected, both military and civilian managers tell AW&ST.
"The Chinese and Iranians [each] have very vigorous test programs and the number of [ballistic missile launch] events we are seeing with DSP are increasing," says Tagliaferri. "And it's not just new missiles, but also new tactics and all kinds of new capabilities."
China is testing ballistic missiles as often as once a week, Pike notes. DSP managers say the exact numbers are classified, but that the activity in China and Iran is frequent and growing.
U.S. intelligence agencies say that by 2010, China's strategic nuclear forces will likely comprise a combination of four enhanced ICBM systems including the impressive new solid-fueled, road-mobile DF-31 ICBMs (see photo, p. 48).
Its strategic nuclear force will also include the new submarine-launched ballistic missiles fired from their new Type 094 ballistic missile submarines, now undergoing tests at sea. DSP spacecraft have been monitoring the trial of all these systems. The spacecraft and other intelligence data also indicate that China will deploy several new conventional and nuclear armed variants of these MRBMs and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) for "regional contingencies"--meaning Taiwan and Japan. Conventionally armed IRBMs or ICBMs raise new strategic issues and threats.
The DSP program has been able to keep up with the demands for new intelligence-warning data from these tests in China and Iran by maintaining a "vibrant prototyping capability," which basically milks the most out of each spacecraft infrared detector array, says Coniligio.
Although the specifics are classified "we are still gleaning capabilities out of this older system today that it was never intended to perform," he says. "Even though DSP is a legacy system, it is a phenomenal system. And we are still finding new ways to exploit the capabilities it offers."
The key is continuous innovative analysis of infrared missile plume and other signatures from the DSPs' 6,000-detector mercury cadmium telluride medium-infrared telescope that rotates at 6 rpm. to "polish the Earth" with offset telescope angles (see p. 52).
A portion of the high-resolution detectors are optimized for "above-the-horizon" rocket plume signatures against the blackness of space, as well as other detectors, to obtain data against water, terrain and cloud backgrounds. A dual color/second wave-band capability in the 4.3-micron bands helps protect DSPs from laser jamming. It also enables the DSPs to monitor more modern missile low-exhaust plume intensity. The spacecraft have impact-detection sensors, robust computer hardening and system autonomy along with multiple ground link capability.
More than 20 nations are now ballistic missile-capable. Total non-U.S. ballistic missile flight tests are growing by about 10% to approximately 100 flight tests per year, according to Army Brig. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly, deputy director of the Missile Defense Agency. "Ballistic missiles pose a growing, potentially catastrophic threat" to the U.S. and its allies, he told a Marshall Institute forum in Washington (AW&ST Mar. 5, p. 24).
In addition to its infrared telescope and side-mounted (red-capped) endo- and exoatmospheric nuclear blast detectors, this final DSP-23 is equipped with a special Space Atmospheric Burst Reporting System (Sabrs) package to prove out hardware that is to be added at a later date to the Sbirs GEO-3 spacecraft.
The Sabrs device (note the yellow box on cover and p. 50 photos) has five miniature nuclear detection sensors that will be used on Sbirs to replace the heavier detectors carried on all DSPs. The system is also specifically designed to detect any space or high atmospheric tests conduced by "particularly low-performance entry-level weapons in problematic regions," according to Los Alamos information on the system. That means the ability to detect any covert tests in space or on the ground---the type of small crude nuclear weapons such as those that could be fielded by North Korea or Iran. Sabrs can measure neutrons, gamma rays and X-rays to accomplish its mission,
The 53-lb. payload is being carried in the instrument compartment bay that years ago was set aside for a laser crosslink, subsequently canceled after a costly and unsuccessful McDonnell Douglas development.
The critical need for U.S. DSP capabilities into the next decade mandated development of a proactive and creative sustainment phase, says Alexis Livanos, corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman Space Technology.
To support this sustainment, Northrop Grumman developed the Telemetry and Orbital Test Station (TOTS) facility for the spacecraft bus at the main plant in Redondo Beach, Calif., and at the Satellite Payload Orbital Test Station (SPOTS) facility at Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems, Azusa, Calif., for management of the IR system. The DSP was originally developed and integrated by TRW and the telescope was developed Aerojet.
The TOTS and SPOTS stations receive DSP housekeeping and mission data and efficiently monitor, maintain and, most recently, command the satellites from these sites, Livanos says.
Constant monitoring enables the engineering team to gauge the specific character of each spacecraft to precisely manage its system for longer life, critical for DSP to bridge the transition to Sbirs, Paul says. "For example, fuel management techniques, power subsystem management and IR sensor temperature management enabled us to add 6-8 years to each satellite's operational life," Livanos notes.
Spacecraft with a 3-5-year design life have been providing missile-warning and intelligence data for 10-15 years because of these measures, Paul says.
The standard DSP constellation calls for four spacecraft positioned around the Earth with one in-orbit spare that can be quickly substituted if necessary. This extraordinary life-extension capability enables there now to be about 8-10 functional DSPs, although the exact number is classified. Multiple spacecraft enable two or more to be targeted over the same areas for more frequent coordinated scanning, providing stereo and other unique missile plume signature data.
In 37 years there has only been one complete failure of a DSP spacecraft, on Flight 5 the mid-1970s, due to a hydrazine propellant line rupture. But DSP-19 in 1999 took a wild ride on a malfunctioning Titan-launched Inertial Upper Stage that left that satellite stranded in a highly elliptical transfer orbit instead of operational geostationary orbit.
It has been an example about "how to turn lemons into lemonade," Paul says. The DSP-19 telescope has been used for unique observations as it climbs high and low over the Earth passing twice daily through the Van Allen Belts. The high radiation dose is providing excellent data on radiation effects on already robust military spacecraft systems.
DSP-23 was to have been launched from Cape Canaveral early this month on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy. But the flight is being delayed until midsummer so that cracks in the Pad 37 launch table, caused by a liquid oxygen leak in pad plumbing, can be repaired. The massive Boeing launcher was not at fault and not damaged in the late February incident (AW&ST Mar. 19/26, p. 42). DSPs have been launched on four versions of the Titan, the space shuttle and now the Delta IV Heavy. The engineering for integration of this final DSP spacecraft with the Heavy has been underway for several years.
The DSP-23 early orbit testing (EOT) phase will also mark another first for the program, says USAF Lt. Col. Anthony D. Cruciani, Jr., chief of DSP operations and sustainment.
Once the DSP-23 separates from the Delta IV-H upper stage its EOT team will take over the mission. The early phase consists of commanding the satellite through a 30-day initialization, characterization and checkout period prior to its transition to 14th Air Force to join the operational DSP constellation.
Due to the September 2006 closure of the legacy DSP EOT site at Schriever AFB, Colo., the initial checkout and activation of a DSP will be performed for the first time from the Sbirs Mission Control Station at Buckley AFB in Aurora, Colo., Cruciani says.
"The DSP-23 EOT team comprises individuals handpicked from the 2nd Space Warning Sqdn., Sbirs System Wing from SMC, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Sandia National Labs and Los Alamos National Labs," he says. The team spent the past year developing a concept of operations, installing EOT-specific equipment, and training. An independent readiness team charted by Air Force Space Command assessed the DSP-23 EOT team and concept of operations as "ready to go," he says.
The added long life of the DSPs is especially critical to the transition to the Sbirs program, which has experienced significant slips.
The first Highly Elliptical Orbit Sbirs spacecraft is turning in stellar test results from orbit, imaging U.S. and other launch activity. It went into orbit last fall from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., on a Delta IV Medium with a National Reconnaissance Office data relay spacecraft.
The launch date for HEO-2 remains classified, but will be within the next few months, probably with a similar host payload.
The first GEO geosynchronous orbit Sbirs spacecraft is set for launch around October 2008 and is progressing well in testing, says USAF's Walkowicz.
The activation of Sbirs increment II is planned for December 2012 and that is when the new spacecraft would take a dominant missile-warning role over the DSPs.
"We are going to have a pretty significant 4-5-year period here where we have a mixed constellation in a transitional period before we go to full Sbirs Increment II certification," Tagliaferri says. "DSP is considered a full part of Sbirs portfolio for the transition to the new system."
That indicates a busy time ahead for DSP as it enters its fourth decade of service, nearly 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but with the additional complication of China and Iran in ascendancy, and a strategically important Chinese missile test pace raising the stakes.
Jeffrey Richelson in his book America's Space Sentinels about the DSP program, notes that: "While DSP and its successors may be legacies of the Cold War--they are not relics."
© Copyright 2007, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
