Safeguarding Our Military Space Systems

Space-based radar

The concept of national air defense against aircraft and cruise missiles has been evolving in parallel with the Strategic Defense Initiative and is being referred to as the Air Defense Initiative. One of the most promising sensor concepts for the Air Defense Initiative is space-based radar. Operated at microwave frequencies as an instrument for wide-area surveillance, space-based radar may be useful in mission areas such as fleet defense and battlefield surveillance.

Uncertainties in Building a Strategic Defense

Building a strategic defense against nuclear ballistic missiles involves complex and uncertain functional, spatial, and temporal relations. Such a defensive system would evolve and grow over decades. It is too complex, dynamic, and interactive to be fully understood initially by design, analysis, and experiments. Uncertainties exist in the formulation of requirements and in the research and design of a defense architecture that can be implemented incrementally and be fully tested to operate reliably. The analysis and measurement of system survivability, performance, and cost-effectiveness are critical to this process. Similar complexities exist for an adversary's system that would suppress or use countermeasures against a missile defense. Problems and opportunities posed by these relations are described, with emphasis on the unique characteristics and vulnerabilities of space-based systems.