Congress Demands Space-Based Missile Defense Weapons and Sensors No Matter What

GhostZ06

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US. lawmakers from the House and Senate have agreed on a final version of the approximately $716 billion defense spending bill for the 2019 fiscal year, which requires the U.S. military begin work on developing new warning satellites to spot incoming ballistic missiles and weapons to blow them up from space. The draft law requires the Missile Defense Agency to pursue these programs even if it argues against them in an up-coming ballistic missile defense strategy review, which might be setting the Pentagon up for a battle with Congress, but might also highlight the opinions of certain senior U.S. military leaders.

Legislators announced they had agreed on a single version of the law, formally known as the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, on July 23, 2018. The House expects to put the measure to a vote by the end of the month and then send it to the Senate in August 2018. If it passes both chambers, then it would go to President Donald Trump to become law.
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Hyten spoke specifically about the need to speed up development and fielding of the Midcourse Tracking Sensor, which will be able to track threats in the cold vacuum of space. At present, U.S. military surface- and space-based sensors primarily spot and track missiles during launch and again when the warheads they carry begin to come down at the other end of their flight trajectory.

One of the existing sensors, the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), may have some limited “cold body tracking” functionality, but not to the desired level. Really, the biggest limiting factors are the logistics and costs associated with deploying enough radars, which can have a relatively narrow field of view, and satellites to provide persistent coverage.

Without a more robust capability, though, there is an ever more dangerous gap in the stream of information where traditional ballistic missiles have a perfect opportunity to deploy decoys or other countermeasures to throw off defenders. The existing combination of systems also has no effective means of monitoring the travel of hypersonic vehicles while they are briefly in space or as they careen through the upper atmosphere. You can read about these issues and the Midcourse Tracking Sensor in more detail here.
At the same time, this clear need to have advanced anti-ballistic missile sensors in space, and improving U.S. military capabilities in space broadly, has revived discussions about putting actual weapons of some sort up there, too. In March 2018, Michael Griffin, the present Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, highlighted various possible weapons that could be well suited for space-based missile defense applications, especially various types of directed energy weapons, at the 2018 Directed Energy Summit, which private firm Booz Allen Hamilton hosted.

"I’m going to be very welcoming of other approaches that may not have had a lot of focus in recent years or recent decades,” Griffin said. “I would urge us to keep a lot of arrows in our quiver as we go forward figuring out how we’re going to translate directed energy technologies into warfighting systems that are going to defend this country and our allies.”
This final concept involved relatively small satellite-based kinetic interceptors that would be scattered throughout orbital space and activated as necessary. By 1990, the plan was to build 4,600 individual interceptors at a total cost of $55 billion – equal to more than $95 billion today.

This didn’t include the funds necessary to support the “Brilliant Eyes” sensors that would have supported the complete system. In 1993, President Bill Clinton canceled the program and renamed the Strategic Defense Initiative as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, the predecessor to today’s Missile Defense Agency.

A quarter of a century later, the U.S. military seems to be ready to give this another shot and Congress seems eager to push it along. Technology has advanced considerably since the U.S. government scrapped Brilliant Pebbles, including with regards to solid-state lasers, high-power microwaves, and railguns.
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http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...le-defense-weapons-and-sensors-no-matter-what
 
I take it theres much more going on in space than we're supposed to believe.
 
sniper said:
I take it theres much more going on in space than we're supposed to believe.
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Well its the based way to shoot down missles, also....yes.

Example we still have little to no idea what the X-37B is doing up there. Also the Darpa other space plane XS-1 reached a mile stone. Also planes to make a hypersonic shuttle is also in the works. Plus the SR-72. A lot of investment into space these years and new space propulsion for craft.
 
Who is gonna pay for this? Money has to come from somewhere.
 
Rematch said:
Nothing's urgent until... well... you know... it's urgent.
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An almost trillion dollar project. The F35 currently costed about 400 billion with an estimated 1.1-1.3trillion dollar total cost over it's service life. Knowing the government, a 700 billion project could turn into hundreds of billions more.

We went to the moon on 150 billion dollars. (2017 money). The ISS price tag is around 200 billion. This thing is 700 billion +++.

That's some serious cash.
 
Space Force! Blasting into space! Duuurrrrr!

<Kpop775>

I can't wait!
 
Is this the Space Force thing your guy was talking about?
 
Thepaintbucket said:
Seems like a lot of money to spend for no urgent reason.
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Agreed, we could put the money into programs and also inner city spending for schools and school accessories.
 
M3t4tr0n said:
Space Force! Blasting into space! Duuurrrrr!

<Kpop775>

I can't wait!
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durrrr!!!! mars has ice and possibly water!!! hahah DURR

sPACE FORCE! tRUMP!
 
Nah... This is just them letting you know we have had tungsten rods ready and orbiting, they just decided to make the practice public.
 
Orgasmo said:
Who is gonna pay for this? Money has to come from somewhere.
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Wait, in a few a trump supporting with a trump dildo in his mouth an explain how winning is great and trumps space force is awesome, an talk about imaginary money...
 
Thepaintbucket said:
An almost trillion dollar project. The F35 currently costed about 400 billion with an estimated 1.1-1.3trillion dollar total cost over it's service life. Knowing the government, a 700 billion project could turn into hundreds of billions more.

We went to the moon on 150 billion dollars. (2017 money). The ISS price tag is around 200 billion. This thing is 700 billion +++.

That's some serious cash.
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Ok stop, projection price has nothing to do with the real price. It never was gonna be a 1T.
 
"A million poor since 2004 and they got illions and killions to waste on a war... it make ya question what the taxes is for, or the cost to reinforce, the broke levie ward" -mos def
 
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