Draft legislation before a key Senate panel would assign the Missile Defense Agency responsibility for developing the Space Sensor Layer, bucking a Defense Department gambit to fold the project into the new Space Development Agency as part of an effort to develop a new multimission satellite constellation.
The bill would mandate MDA be assigned permanent responsibility for the development and deployment of the hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor within 30 days of the president signing the FY-20 defense policy bill into law.
Moreover, the legislation includes a provision that would require MDA to fund the Space Sensor Layer program. For two consecutive years, MDA directors — along with numerous senior officials, including the head of U.S. Strategic Command — have attested to the importance of a Space Sensor Layer but have not backed that up with funding requests. Instead, MDA has twice identified this capability as its top unfunded priority…
In addition, the draft legislation would set a Dec. 31, 2021 target to begin on-orbit testing of a hypersonic and ballistic tracking space sensor, “with full operational deployment as soon as technically feasible thereafter.”
That was a good article from Jason Sherman, “Draft Senate bill would assign MDA responsibility for Space Sensor Layer.” Inside the Pentagon’s Inside Missile Defense; Arlington Vol. 25, Iss. 13, (Jun 19, 2019). The end of 2021 isn’t all that far away, wonder how they expect to get there.
It is interesting with all the talk about the Space Corps and centralizing space, it seems that responsibilities are fracturing. The SDA is looking to create a new space architecture, but must coordinate across several organizations to ensure interfacing, etc., works out. It seems that NAVWAR (the old Navy SPAWAR) will maintain some space capabilities, even if “Space” was removed from the system command name.
Yet the fracturing is perhaps healthy. Each organization has its own requirements. Each organization will emphasize a different application of space systems. And MDA seems to be the only organization interested in precision tracking so it can accomplish its intercept mission. It would be self-defeating to stand up the MDA and spend more than $10 billion a year when enabling technologies are left in the hands of others, or are cancelled:
In 2013, DOD canceled plans for the Precision Tracking Space System after an independent CAPE analysis estimated the satellite constellation would cost as much as $17.5 billion to develop, deploy and sustain — 40% more than costs tallied by MDA.
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