Advanced Warning System [AWS]
Advanced satellites were being studied in various years under the AWS (Advanced Warning System), BSTS (Boost Surveillance and Tracking System) and FEWS (Follow-On Early Warning System) programs, but these projects did not get to the stage of full-scale development due to the high cost and risk connected with the introduction of new technologies. Some military planners believe that an Advanced Warning System must be developed, despite its high cost, to replace DSPs, especially if futuristic defensive weapons are to use the satellites to trigger an intercept. The argument over Advanced Warning Satellites versus upgraded DSPs raged for years.
Research under the AWS program was conducted on order of the U.S. Air Force during 1979-1984. The possibility was studied for the first time of tracking the operation of several ballistic missile stages with the help of matrix photodetectors with tunable optical filters simultaneously in several frequency bands of the optical spectrum. Data were to be transmitted directly to theater consumers after onboard processing. As an additional task, it was planned to accomplish the detection and tracking of airborne targets in the medium-wave region of the IR spectrum.
In 1974, the Air Force initiated the Missile Surveillance Technology Program to develop the technology for future missile surveillance requirements. The leading candidate to replace the existing missile surveillance system involved a revolutionary type of technology being developed under the Mosaic Sensor Program. The Mosaic Sensor Program, a project within the Missile Surveillance Technology Program, was established to develop and demonstrate the specific technologies required for a followon system. The Congress cancelled the Mosaic Sensor Program in 1979 and replaced it with the AWS Program.
The Multispectral Measurements Program (MSMP) and the Balloon Altitude Mosaic Measurements (BAMM) were commissioned by the Air Force Space Division (AFSD) in the late seventies to generate data in support of the Advanced Warning System (AWS), a development activity to replace the space-based surveillance satellites of the Defense Support Program (DSP). These programs were carried out by the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory with planning by The Aerospace Corporation.
The motivation of MSMP was the need for characterizing the exhaust plumes of the thrusters aboard post-boost vehicles, a primary target for the infrared sensors of the proposed AWS system. To that end, the experiments consisted of a series of Aries rocket launches from White Sands Missile Range in which dual payloads were carried aloft and separately deployed at altitudes above 100 km. One module contained an ensemble of sensors spanning the spectrum from the vacuum ultraviolet to the long wave infrared, all slaved to an rf tracker locked onto a beacon on the target module. The target was a small pressure-fed liquid-propellant rocket engine, a modified Atlas vernier, programmed for a series of maneuvers in the vicinity of the instrument module. As part of this program, diagnostic measurements of the target engine exhaust were made at Rocketdyne, and shock tube experiments on excitation processes were carried out by staff members of Calspan.
The Balloon Altitude Mosaic Measurements Program (BAMM) was designed to make temporal, spatial, and spectral measurements of earth backgrounds in the infrared. The measurements obtained from BAMM supported another SAMSO development, the Mosaic Sensor Program. The measurements were made from a stabilized balloon-borne platform at 100,000 ft. altitude. Scenes to be viewed were background sources such as cirrus clouds, high altitude lakes and snowfields, ocean effects (glitter, land/sea interface), and temporal buildup of cumulus clouds. Emphasis were on obtaining these measurements at low sun-scattering angles. The instruments consisted of a 2.7-micron radiometer, a 2.5-5.5-micron interferometer, and a TV camera for real-time viewing and pointing. Payloads were prepared for and used in three successful data-gathering balloon flights for the Balloon Altitude Mosaic Measurements program. All were significantly different, and each worked as planned. A radiometer and a TV camera were carried on Flight 1, and an interferometer was added for Flights 2 and 3. Recovery was by ground impact for the first two flights, but the third was snatched from the air by helicopter.
A 1979 Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council (ARC) reviewed the AWS concept. The function of the DSARC, meeting under the Secretary of Defense, was to weigh the alternatives for addressing the missile surveillance function and decide whether the available technological development (as developed under the Mosaic Sensor Program) was sufficiently mature to enter the demonstration and validation phase of the acquisition process. The DSARC was also to decide whether to upgrade the technology used on the existing system, or whether to develop an operational, advanced technology (mosaic sensor) system.
The DSARC met on December 20, 1979, and decided to upgrade the existing system with additional survivability improvements, explaining that the advanced technology was not sufficiently mature to make it operational at that time. The DSARCs upported a congressional decision to terminate the Mosaic Sensor Program, but recommended that the Air Force and DANPA establish a joint technology development program (AWS) to develop relevant infrared technologies to support a scheduled DSARC review m the mid-1980's for a follow-on missile surveillance system.
The Air Force and DARPA established an AWS Joint program that was approved by the Air Force in September 1980, and formally approved by the An Force and DARPA in June 1981 Subsequent to this approval, Air Force Space Divlslon was appointed the lead agency to conduct a critical technology effort on mosaic arrays. While early An Force AWS technology work was conducted under its missile surveillance program office, Space Division separated the AWS program from the missile surveillance program offrce m May 1981 and established an AWS office under the Deputy for Technology Directorate of Advanced Space Development.
By the end of fiscal year 1981, Space Dlvlslon had identified AWS funding requirements totaling $43.5 million for fiscal year 1982 and $58.2 mulion for fiscal year 1983, but the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) had approved only $12.4 mllhon for fiscal year 1982 and $11.5 million for fiscal year 1983. To absorb these budget reductions, the program office reduced the technology effort. As a result, the ground demonstration originally planned for fiscal year 1984 would be unlikely to occur before fiscal year 1986.
The AWS program continued to experience funding instability. Fiscal year 1983 technology and system funding were curtailed, which delayed technological development. The Air Force budget projection in the Program Objectives Memorandum submitted in the spring of 1982 had eliminated funding for the program element for fiscal year 1984 and subsequent years.
In a Program Decision Memorandum (reply to the Air Staffs Program Objectives Memorandum), OSD said that the projected budget for AWS research and development would be $20 8 million in fiscal year 1983, $49 million in fiscal year 1984, $80 million in fiscal year 1986, $96 million in fiscal year 1986, and $15 million in fiscal year 1987. If the system successfully passed a DSARC II in 1986 or 1986, the development phase of the program would end in fiscal year 1987 and the production phase would begin. Production funds of $126 million in fiscal year 1987 and $260 million in fiscal year 1988 were budgeted. Upon reaching the production phase, the program would cease to be a technology program and would be managed by a systems program office.
The Air Force Scientific Advisory Board ad hoc committee to assess approaches to space-based missile warning systems met in February 1983. The committee's report stressed survivability options and concluded that current "state of the production art does not support a fiscal year 1986 start on a starring mosaic array sensor system requiring several million detector elements." The The AWS emphasis on performance enhancement was being dealt a severe setback on the basis of affordability, the state of the technology, and lack of user interest on one hand, and a change of national strategic pohcy emphaslzmg survivability on the other. After issuance of the Sclentific Advisory Board report m April 1983, a re-direction of the program took place at Space Division A draft Program Management Directive, dated April 29, 1983, directed the start of "system studies to define alternate concepts for an advanced missile warning system with particular emphasis on survivability."
A change of emphasis in national policy shifted the direction of the AWS. On March 23, 1983, President Reagan delivered a speech m which he called for a "long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles." Subsequently, the Defensive Technology Study Team and the Future Strategic Strategy Study Team were established to assess the technical and policy issues of a ballistic missile defense system. In January 1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative Research Program was established.
Advanced Warning System [AWS] Reborn [briefly]
After work began under the SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) Program, the AWS was reoriented in 1984 for creating the BSTS system. The elimination of the anti-missile mission requirement for Booster Surveillance and Tracking System (BSTS) in SDI led to a decision in 1990 to transfer budget authority for this program back to the Air Force, which sought to justify continuation of the program, initially renamed the Advanced Warning System (AWS), once again, and then the Follow-on Early Warning System (FEWS). In November 1993, the FEWS program was canceled and replaced with a cheaper alternative called the Alert Locate and Report Missiles (ALARM) program. Before the ALARM program could really get started, however, it was replaced in its turn by the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS).
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