(missile fires)
- [Shelby] As U.S. troops face and respond
to a barrage of attacks
from Iran-backed groups in the Middle East,
they've got an advantage over their adversaries.
Space.
Among other space technologies,
the military receives crucial missile warnings
from a constellation of sensors
that can detect missile launches
from tens of thousands of miles above Earth.
- Being able to provide missile warning
to say, "There's a missile inbound
"and here's the location that it came from,
"and here's where it's headed,"
is valuable information to keep people safe.
- [Shelby] Here's how that space technology works
and why the U.S. is racing to upgrade its system
to maintain the advantage.
The Pentagon says there have been more than 150 attacks
on U.S. forces in the Middle East
since fighting broke out between Hamas and Israel.
And some of those attacks
have included anti-ship and close-range ballistic missiles.
In a wide ranging interview at the Pentagon,
Chief of Space Operations, General Chance Saltzman,
told the Journal that providing missile warning
is one of the many ways that Space Force Guardians
and space capabilities
are supporting troops in the Middle East
and around the world.
- We have satellites on orbit
that are monitoring for infrared signatures.
That's another way of saying they look for heat.
Not only do they see heat,
but they can see that that heat is moving.
And we have operators
that are able to characterize fast-moving heat
and say whether it is on the kind of profile
that we would see with a particular ballistic missile,
and then we provide that data out
to everybody that's interested.
- How critical is that technology right now?
- It's very critical.
- [Shelby] The technology is known in the Pentagon as SBIRS,
the Space-Based Infrared System.
It includes sensors in highly elliptical orbits,
which are good for monitoring the northern polar region,
and sensors in geosynchronous orbit
that allow satellites
to stay over the same part of the Earth continuously.
The spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit
are equipped with both a scanner and a starer.
The scanner continuously monitors the Earth
for infrared heat
while the starer can be pointed at a certain location
to stare at areas of interest.
SBIRS also includes older satellites
from a legacy program known as DSP.
Working together, this constellation provides
what the military calls global persistent coverage
and it cues other missile defense systems,
like an Army Patriot battery or a Navy destroyer,
to a missile launch.
While the SBIRS program was billions of dollars over budget
and years behind schedule,
space-security experts
say it has been seen as essential to U.S. security.
- It gives us the advantage of being comfortable
that we will not have a surprise attack.
- SBIRS can provide an estimation
of where the missiles might land,
which can be hugely valuable for mitigating casualties.
- General Saltzman was unable to discuss specifics
about how SBIRS is helping the U.S.
in the Middle East today,
but there is precedent
for it protecting troops in the region.
In 2020, when Iran launched missiles at U.S. forces in Iraq,
the military said missile warnings from SBIRS saved lives
by giving troops enough time to duck and cover.
Is that likely happening right now?
- That is likely happening right now.
SBIRS is gonna detect many of these launches.
It's the system that's going to figure out
where the missiles are going
and who needs to be alerted
to protect themselves or defend themselves
with a missile defense battery like the Patriot.
- The flight time of a ballistic missile at these ranges
will be a matter of minutes.
That's why these space capabilities are so critical,
so you can detect the hot plume of the rocket exhaust
as it launches.
- [Shelby] SBIRS is also one of several technologies
that can be helpful
in determining where certain attacks are coming from
and what missiles are involved.
That's important information,
since the U.S. and its partners
have begun striking back at missile launchers
and other assets that are being used to attack U.S. forces
and commercial vessels.
- Again, our aim remains to deescalate tensions
and restore stability in the Red Sea.
- [Shelby] While the U.S. maintains an edge in space,
adversaries like Russia and China
are constantly working to try and match
and counter the U.S.'s capabilities.
- It used to be that we could just say,
if you could operate the system, you were good to go.
Now we have to be able to operate the system
and deny an adversary's ability
to take the system away from us.
- [Shelby] But with just a few
highly valuable satellites in orbit,
the SBIRS system is considered to have vulnerabilities.
- SBIRS was designed to work
at a particular point in space,
and there are very few numbers of them,
and they are easy targets for our adversary
because of their small numbers and their importance.
- [Shelby] And that's why the Space Force
is working on upgrading the architecture for missile warning
by launching lots of spacecraft into various orbits,
something General Saltzman refers to
as a proliferated constellation.
- That's a much more resilient architecture
because an adversary has a lot harder time
disrupting thousands of satellites
than it would one or two.
- That's what the next generation looks like.
It will be a layer cake of LEO, MEO, and GEO orbits
that all offer different missions and capabilities.
And it's a bewildering array of missions to keep track of,
but that's what the Space Force was created to do.