Congress wants more money for satellite sensor payloads able to detect and track enemy hypersonic weapons
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate’s annual defense policy bill would authorize an additional $120 million toward a space-based sensor layer to detect and track hypersonic weapons, even though the Pentagon did not seek more funding for this project. C4ISRnet reports. Continue reading original article
The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:
2 July 2020 -- The Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) is the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) answer to the growing threat of hypersonic weapons being developed by China and Russia.
Hypersonic weapons present a significant challenge to current U.S. missile-warning architectures. Not only can these weapons maneuver around ground-based sensors, but they also are too dim for satellites in high orbits to detect and track.
HBTSS aims to solve this problem with a constellation of satellite sensor payloads in low Earth orbit, where they can pick up and track hypersonic munitions. Because the satellites are closer to the Earth and have a limited field of view, however, the system must be able to pass information from sensor to sensor as the weapons traverse the globe.
John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics
