Defense Industry Daily June 15, 2009
Air Force Awards First Phase of Next Generation Space Fence
The Air Force awarded firm-fixed-price contracts totaling $90 million for Phase A of Space Fence development to Lockheed Martin Corp. in Moorestown, NJ; Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. in Linthicum, MS; and Raytheon Co. in Sudbury, MA. Under the contracts, each worth $30 million, the companies will provide Space Fence system design review, plans trades analysis and data, systems engineering planning; architecture planning; prototyping, modeling and simulation systems trades and analyses; risk management life cycle cost estimate and technical data. Hill Air Force Base in Utah manages the contract (FA8213-09-C-0051).
DID has more on the Space Fence program, including the scope of the program and ultimate price tag…
Space Fence will be a multi-phase project that is expected to be worth $3.5 billion, according to Air Force spokeswoman Monica Morales quoted by Inside the Air Force.
According to Globalsecurity.org, the Space Fence program will provide a radar system operating in the S-band frequency range to replace the Air Force Space Surveillance System (AFSSS) VHF “Fence” radar that currently performs detection of orbiting space objects. The Space Fence will have a modern, net-centric architecture that is capable of detecting much smaller objects in low/medium Earth orbit (LEO/MEO). The system will operate with greater accuracy and timeliness to meet warfighter requirements for space situational awareness.
The current AFSSS is also known as a “fence” because several transmitters and receivers create a narrow, continent-wide planar energy field in space. There are current 9 AFSSS sites located on a path across the southern United States from Georgia to California along the 33rd parallel, consisting of 3 transmitter and 6 receiver sites. Energy emitted from the transmitter sites forms a fixed position, very narrow, fan shaped beam in the north-south direction extending across the continental United States in the east-west direction. One or more of the receiver sites receives energy reflected from objects penetrating the beam.
The new Space Fence system would reduce the number of sites to 2 to 3, according to John Morse, Space Fence Program Manager, Lockheed Martin MS2 Radar Systems:
“The new Space Fence will be located in geographicallly dispersed areas to give us better coverage in the Southern Hemisphere in particular. It will also enhance the space situational awareness by being able to see smaller objects….Space Fence will be a system of systems that consists of 2 to 3 large S-band radars and those radars will join other sensors in the space surveillance network and provide space situational awareness to the Air Force….The scope of the Space Fence contract includes sensors, mission processing, data processing, facilities, and communications, the whole system requirement….In order to use the space domain, we need to have accurate space situational awareness….We need to know where things are so we can use space when and how we need to use it. So the military application can be summed as giving the Air Force enhanced space situational awareness.”
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