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Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities (2005)

Chapter: 4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas

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Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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4
Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas

Naval forces have continued to be major users of information derived from space-based systems of all types. In order to help identify the Navy’s needs in space for providing future capabilities, the committee reviewed the Navy’s participation and needs with respect to current, planned, and proposed space-based capabilities that may have an impact on the successful implementation of Sea Power 21 warfighting concepts. Specifically, the committee’s review is structured around these space-based capabilities and the six National Security Space (NSS) mission areas: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); meteorology and oceanography (METOC); theater and ballistic missile defense (TBMD); communications; position, navigation, and timing (PNT); and space control.

Table 4.1 provides a status of several current, planned, and proposed space-based capabilities, from which one can conclude that the Navy needs to collaborate with a significant variety of agencies outside the Navy in order to ensure that its Navy-unique needs are satisfied. Thus, the Navy’s participation in the development of space systems needs to be flexible in order to meet the needs of a variety of partner agencies as well as to enable effective leadership of the Navy’s own programs and initiatives. The sections below detail the Navy’s current participation across each of the space mission areas and also provide an assessment of how the Navy can improve its use of these systems and better influence the development of new systems, thus ensuring that its needs in space will be met in the future.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE

The Navy has recently been moving toward the adoption of Sea Power 21 as a global instead of a regional strategy, but a strategy that still addresses regional and transnational threats. These threats are unlikely to be concentrated in a few regions that can be simultaneously addressed using concentrated forces. Instead, the National Security Strategy states that it will be necessary to address threats anywhere on the globe, and at a tempo that will permit dealing with many, widely dispersed threats quickly, decisively, and nearly simultaneously.1 This calls for forces to operate using the most exact information possible about the enemy, to analyze that information to determine critical nodes to attack, and to direct weapons systems, launched from widely dispersed platforms, to strike those nodes. The role of the Navy in such a strategy is especially important, given its traditional forward presence, sea dominance, and strategic sealift. In this role, the Navy capitalizes on and builds from NSS and organic Navy ISR capabilities to support broad coverage and over-the-horizon (OTH) targeting, followed by precision strike using precision-guided munitions (PGMs).

The capabilities of the individual Sea Power 21 pillars—Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing—are all, to varying degrees, dependent on ISR involving data from space-based, airborne, ground-based, and sea-based sensors. These capabilities are also central to the realization of the FORCEnet foundation that enables the operational implementation of Sea Power 21. NSS systems have proven invaluable for both complementing and expanding the ISR capabilities provided from other sources. ISR information from NSS sensors is merged with ground-, sea-, and air-based sensor data to develop fused products to assist in the positioning and repositioning of platforms and forces; to identify and assault critical vulnerabilities and centers of gravity of enemy forces; to assess damage; and to permit the efficient use of resources to conduct concurrent and follow-on missions. Furthermore, NSS support is used to deter enemies from employing an effective threat to U.S. strike operations by maintaining surveillance capability against potential conventional as well as unconventional strikes.

NSS ISR capabilities could become significantly more important to the Navy if, in the future, near-real-time persistence from NSS ISR systems was achieved. For space systems, persistence is achieved by increasing either the period of observation by sensors on a particular satellite (for instance, geosynchronous satellites can continuously observe one-half of Earth at a time) or by increasing the number of satellites carrying the particular sensors (for instance the Global Positioning System (GPS) uses a constellation of 24 satellites to enable continuous ground observation of at least 4 GPS satellites).

1  

President George W. Bush. 2002. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, Washington, D.C., September 17.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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TABLE 4.1 Status of Current, Planned, and Proposed Department of Defense Space Systems Programs Including General System Limitations and Risk

Space-Based Capability

Current Programs

Available?

Imagery (infrared, visible, radar)

NRO systems, FIA, SBR commercial imagery

Yes

Electronic intelligence (ELINT)

NRO systems

Yes

Navigation

GPS

Yes

Timing

GPS

Yes

Meteorology and oceanography

GOES, POES, NPOESS

Yes

Ground moving target indication

SBR

No

Airborne moving target indication

None

No

Boost-phase missile defense

SBIRS-H

No

Midcourse missile defense

SBIRS-L

No

Space-based IP networks (GIG)

TCA

No

Satellite communications

MUOS, MILSTAR, AEHF, commercial

Yes

NOTE: A list of acronyms is provided in Appendix G.

The primary constraint on ISR satellites is related to simple physics: orbits enabling long duration over a spot on Earth require high-altitude orbits—but the higher the orbit, the lower the fundamental resolution of any orbital imaging system. Thus, high-resolution space imaging systems require a large number of less-expensive, low-Earth-orbit satellites, or a smaller number of medium-Earth-orbit or geostationary-Earth-orbit satellites carrying extremely expensive high-resolution imaging systems. Recently, several novel schemes have been proposed for using fleets of microsatellites linked as an interferometric array, thus providing high resolution with small identical satellites. Such proposals are in the very

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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Oversight Agency

General Limitations

Status/Risk

DOD Executive Agent for Space, NRO, NGA

Satellite revisit time

FIA and SBR in development, SAR versus GMTI trade-offs for SBR

DOD Executive Agent for Space/NRO

Encryption, geolocation accuracy

Gap-filler satellite may fill need

Air Force

Vulnerability to countermeasures

Enhanced jamming protection programmed

Air Force/Navy

Few

Ongoing clock development

NOAA

Passive sensors only, resolution and revisit times, international partnerships

Cost, feasibility of active sensors

Air Force

Revisit time, field of view, data rates

R&D issues, cost, trade-offs between SAR and GMTI, ubiquitous coverage

None designated

Stressing technology, data rates

Ubiquitous coverage, use of space sensor for weapon guidance

MDA

Stressing technology

Cost, technical risk, system under development

MDA

Stressing technology

Cost, technical risk, no current program

DOD Executive Agent for Space

Wideband laser links

Development risk, cost, system under development

Air Force and Navy

Data assurance, link availability

Bandwidth demands growing rapidly

early development stage and might represent a novel route for additional science and technology (S&T) support. Combining improved persistent NSS ISR capability with improved communications, processing, and exploitation systems will enhance the ability of the Navy to engage in future missions (provided that the capabilities are developed in accordance with naval needs).

One additional factor (discussed in the major section below entitled “Space-Based Communications”) is the need not only for timely acquisition of ISR information, but also for its timely analysis and dissemination. This need has recently been embodied by the Department of Defense (DOD) in the information

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

dissemination concept known as TPPU, or “task, post, process, and use.” Under TPPU, all ISR data are to be made immediately available (posted) for processing and use by any potential end user. This concept has the goal of making ISR data available for use more quickly than has been possible in the past. However, under TPPU large volumes of unprocessed (raw) ISR data will be regularly transmitted to end users, and the committee is concerned that TPPU may significantly increase the communications bandwidth needed to effectively access and utilize the ISR data.

Future Space-Based Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Systems

Historically, NSS ISR systems have been managed by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and have significantly improved the effectiveness of naval missions. The Navy has been a major participant in these NRO programs to ensure that naval interests are served. While these past and current NSS ISR systems and augmentations have proven their value, NSS systems currently in the development and/or planning stage by the NRO and the Air Force hold promise of even more improvements in naval capability. Two systems in particular are noteworthy in this regard:

  • The Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) being developed by the NRO, and

  • The proposed Space Based Radar (SBR) being planned by the Air Force.

FIA is being planned to replace the NRO’s existing series of national optical and infrared imaging satellites. While the details of the program are largely classified, the FIA initiative will represent a significant improvement to the nation’s space-based imagery systems, in terms of both resolution and persistence. The Navy needs to remain engaged in this initiative to ensure that its maritime imagery needs will be met by FIA.

SBR represents a plan to field a space-based radar to enable near-continuous monitoring (through either radar imagery or ground moving target indication (GMTI)) of the majority of Earth’s surface—a critical supporting capability to enable the Navy to provide maritime domain awareness consistent with its role in homeland defense. SBR is such a major ISR initiative that the United States is unlikely to support an alternative space-based radar initiative in the next several decades. Thus, it is imperative that the Navy understand its needs for this extended time period in order to be able to ensure that its needs will be met by SBR. While the capability assessment for NSS ISR (summarized in the tables in Appendix C) is based on what could be provided with a nominal SBR, the committee believes that the Navy has not yet interacted with the SBR program office on the scale required to assure that Navy requirements will ultimately be met. The few individuals currently representing the Navy’s interests in SBR have made signifi-

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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cant progress toward inserting Navy requirements into the SBR planning process. These inputs, however, appear to have been based on limited background analyses.

The Navy is developing an understanding of the operational implications of the various modes and capabilities of SBR against future naval scenarios. The Air Force has agreed to conduct some simulations involving near-term maritime scenarios, but SBR also needs to be integrated into maritime modeling and simulations looking over the several decades that SBR would be in existence. As discussed elsewhere in this report,2 the Navy currently lacks a modeling and simulation effort to support thorough operations analysis that can permit cost-benefit and performance trade-offs across a wide range of systems (including SBR) against the needs arising from a wide range of future naval scenarios. Without full and traceable analysis of the requirements for supporting Sea Power 21, including a good understanding of the related technical issues, the committee is concerned that SBR may not meet some of the Navy’s key performance and operational requirements.

Because there has been little Navy S&T funding for SBR, there has, to this point, been an incomplete understanding of numerous aspects of how a maritime SBR could be designed differently from the current SBR baseline. To overcome some of these deficiencies, the Navy recently funded the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to identify new SBR modes of operation that can support maritime operations. As of early December 2003, the Air Force had accepted some of these options into the SBR baseline. In this case, the Navy was able to leverage its internal S&T experience to help define the technical features of the SBR needed by the naval forces. The committee encourages further similar Navy involvement.

The FIA and SBR programs will provide improved capability for monitoring fixed targets and threats (both FIA and SBR) and moving targets and threats (SBR). Following is an assessment of how existing and planned NSS ISR systems enable the capability areas identified by Sea Power 21. The resulting Sea Power 21 capability dependencies are summarized in Appendix C.

Sea Power 21 Capabilities

Sea Strike

Through Sea Strike operations, naval forces will execute and direct decisive and sustained influence in joint campaigns. Sea Strike relies on a combination of ISR assets—space-based, theater, and force—to support the conduct of the following types of operations:

2  

See the section entitled “Navy Space Support” in Chapter 3.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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  • Strike operations against fixed and moving targets on land and on sea,

  • Special operations that require precision targeting information, and

  • Defensive operations necessary to ensure strike aircraft survivability.

Today, strike targets are identified, classified, tracked, and geolocated through a combination of sensors on NSS systems, airborne platforms, and naval platforms. NSS and airborne systems are generally used cooperatively to support time-sensitive requirements of strikes. The requirements of the Navy for overland targeting are essentially identical to those of the other Services; however, the Navy will need to carefully manage and guide the course of progress on its requirements for over-water targeting to ensure that they are included in future programs. In particular, many satellite systems do not operate over the open ocean (this includes early plans for the SBR described above)—pointing out the Navy’s need to track even its most basic requirements on availability. During a system’s development and operational phases, technical and funding support is typically needed to improve performance and adapt the system to changing threat and target conditions. Additionally, the Navy will need to explore the potential of other new space ISR capabilities, such as hyperspectral imaging to assist in separating targets from background and camouflage, especially in the open-ocean and littoral areas unique to the operations of Navy and Marine Corps forces. In general, the future FIA and SBR systems could greatly enhance NSS support for Sea Strike by—

  • Improving persistence through increased numbers of satellites, and

  • Improving image resolution, thereby strengthening the ability of naval forces to identify, track, and target terrorist and other small-unit threats.

Sea Shield

To maintain littoral superiority for naval and joint force components, ISR resources must be able to support protection against conventional and unconventional (i.e., chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and environmental) threats from special operations and terrorist forces. Information from space-, ground-, and sea-based and airborne ISR resources need to be used, where possible, to identify and locate near-horizon and over-the-horizon threats, to enable afloat operations by supporting self-defense against and/or neutralization of undersea threats (including those from submarines, mines, submerged barriers, and obstacles), and to provide defense over land and over sea against theater air and ballistic missile threats. The support of all of these defensive operations currently challenges NSS ISR resources and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

One of the limitations of current NSS systems in contributing significantly to defensive antisubmarine warfare (ASW) and countermine operations is the lack

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

of persistence in making observations of offensive enemy operations. It is possible to observe enemy submarines at shallow depth from space, and also to observe the laying of mine fields or the navigation by enemy combatants through mine fields they have laid. However, the long time lapses between overhead satellite observations by current NSS systems do not support the near-continuous observations needed.3 As described above, the future FIA and SBR systems, if fielded, should significantly improve overall observational persistence.

Today, most operations rely largely on theater assets (the SPY-1D radar system on the Navy’s Aegis ships, sensors on E-2C and E-3 aircraft, and so on) to provide the ISR information necessary to support Sea Shield operations effectively. For surface warfare, Sea Shield requires that ISR capability provide near-horizon and over-the-horizon warning, tracking, and targeting information against surface targets; these requirements are similar in many regards to the Sea Strike capability needs. In addition to the improvements noted above that would enhance NSS support for Sea Strike, the future FIA and SBR systems should greatly improve NSS support for Sea Shield by—

  • Increasing coverage areas, thereby extending the engagement distance to distances beyond the threat range from enemy combatants; and

  • Establishing a space-based GMTI capability (with SBR), thereby enabling space-based, near-continuous tracking of moving surface vessels.

Similarly, undersea warfare support can be extended in area by improved persistence of SBR and FIA, provided that these systems are designed and operated specifically to address the special needs of large-area search in ocean areas. These forms of support are just the beginning, however, and long-term S&T is needed in support of effective naval specification and use of SBR. As an example, further S&T funding could be provided to support a comparison of the expected performance of radars with which the Navy is familiar (such as the E-2C aircraft radar and its upgrades) with the various options for SBR. Such analysis would help establish and maintain the connection between specialized maritime radar experts, the operational Navy, and the SBR office.

Sea Basing

Sea Basing entails the provision of the full capabilities of an at-sea joint command center as well as the provision of all of the associated sea-based logis-

3  

The Office of Naval Research has developed, under its littoral remote sensing effort, a series of automated analysis algorithms for using data from the nation’s space-based intelligence assets to assist with nearshore mine and mine field detection from the surf zone on to the beach. These algorithms have transitioned, via the organic mine countermeasures Future Naval Capabilities program, to the Naval Oceanographic Office Warfighting Center. Fleet awareness and use of these algorithms are continuing issues.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

tics needed for initial surface and amphibious strike actions. Thus, the ISR needs for Sea Basing are covered primarily by providing access to the capabilities needed to support Sea Strike and Sea Shield. The additional capabilities needed for Sea Basing are primarily structured around logistics support needs (primarily for optimal ship route planning) and are described in the next major section, “Meteorology and Oceanography.”

FORCEnet

Force projection and defense from forward-deployed Navy platforms depend on the efficient networking of naval, national, and joint nodes involved in all aspects of information production, command responsibility, and control authority through communications and computing power to meet Navy objectives. These topics are broadly included under the heading of FORCEnet.

ISR derived from NSS sensors is an important portion of FORCEnet, and the information from these NSS sources will be used in conjunction with information gathered from other sources to support overall Navy objectives. In reality, most strike actions and most projections of defensive capability will cooperatively use information from multiple ISR sources to engage targets and threats, and the actual source of any individual information element will be transparent to the warrior. The timeliness, relevance, quality, and quantity of the information, however, will continue to determine the outcomes of naval missions. As the mission of the Navy grows in the 21st century and as the theater of importance expands to global dimensions, the importance of access to global, persistent ISR information will necessarily grow. In other words, as the need for technology associated with space grows, the technology associated with the analysis, exploitation, and fusion of NSS-derived data will also need continued improvement.

In summary, then, it is unlikely that the Navy will be able to meet its overall Sea Power 21 ISR needs without a strong program of S&T, space engineering, and program participation involving naval and Navy-sponsored personnel. These efforts will also require a continuing commitment of personnel and funding to NSS ISR activities.

Capability Shortfalls and Technology Gaps of National Security Space Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Systems for Navy Use

Given the needs discussed above for ISR support from space, there are several shortfalls and gaps in current and currently planned NSS ISR capability that will limit the Navy in carrying out the elements of Sea Power 21 effectively. These are summarized in Table 4.2.

The approaches that the Navy has available to it to address the shortfalls and gaps listed in Table 4.2 fall into four general areas:

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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TABLE 4.2 Shortcomings of National Security Space (NSS) Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Systems for Navy Use

NSS ISR Shortcoming or Gap for Navy Use

Navy Issues

Persistence

Long revisit gaps between images, no long dwell sensors, too few satellites, and no moving target indication (MTI) radars. Space Based Radar (SBR) and Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) may alleviate gap.

Area coverage

Operation of satellites over ocean, resolution versus coverage, synthetic aperture radar versus MTI look angles. SBR and FIA may alleviate gap.

Ocean operations

Operation over oceans, operating modes to counter effects of ocean clutter. SBR and FIA may alleviate gap.

  • Supporting S&T to address the NSS ISR shortfalls and gaps and then transitioning the results of this S&T work into planned and ongoing NSS programs. This approach requires a knowledgeable space cadre that understands both space technology and the operations of naval forces. To date, the Navy has used such an approach effectively in many programs for which the NRO or the Navy itself has been the lead agency. Key to this success has been the Navy’s Technical Exploitation of National Capabilities Program (Navy-TENCAP), which is specifically designed to provide a link between existing national capabilities, naval operations, and fleet experiments. The Navy can benefit from a similar program aimed to experiment with Air Force programs.

  • Directly participating in programs that can mitigate these NSS ISR shortfalls during the course of the programs’ evolution. The involvement of the space cadre in these programs needs to be carefully coordinated, and billets might sometimes need to be accompanied by modest Navy dollars to provide the leverage necessary to support Navy direction and to promote changes sought by the Navy. Again, the Navy has used this type of approach well in programs with the NRO, and it would be well served to expand this level of participation into most Air Force programs.

  • Providing significant Navy dollars to relevant space programs in order to augment funds provided by the intelligence community and the DOD. These Navy funds would support changes to planned or developing programs to ensure that capabilities needed primarily by Navy users are included in NSS IRS systems.

  • Supporting the development and testing of other novel sensors, such as the hyperspectral Naval EarthMap Observer (NEMO) satellite. Such hyperspectral systems have shown great potential to support both METOC and ISR needs.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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The creation of NSS ISR systems to provide capabilities needed by the Navy would clearly be valuable and perhaps even essential to the full implementation of Sea Power 21. Such systems can be envisioned, but many represent a technical challenge, given today’s state of technology.

Recommendations Regarding Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance

Recommendation 4.1. The Department of the Navy should develop and fund directed operational analysis and science and technology (S&T) programs focused on addressing the Navy’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance shortfalls independent of whether or not the affected programs are managed by the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense (DOD) Executive Agent for Space. The Department of the Navy should also work to transition the results of these efforts into planned and ongoing National Security Space programs.


Recommendation 4.2. The Department of the Navy should continue its full support of National Reconnaissance Office intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activities and seek to extend its involvement in ISR program planning, development, and execution across other agencies’ ISR efforts.


Recommendation 4.3. The Department of the Navy should provide budget authority to augment National Security Space intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance programs to permit program and system additions that address needs unique to Navy strategies (such as maritime operation).


Recommendation 4.4. The Department of the Navy should coordinate with other agencies to support the development of advanced sensing technologies not currently part of the program plans of the DOD Executive Agent for Space. One such program that the committee believes has significant potential to provide new naval capabilities is the Naval EarthMap Observer (NEMO) hyperspectral imaging satellite.

METEOROLOGY AND OCEANOGRAPHY

The Navy has funded remote sensing research and development (R&D) in the areas of meteorology and oceanography nearly since the beginning of its involvement in space, but the military’s role in developing METOC satellites is changing. A 1994 Presidential Decision Directive mandated that the national military and civilian METOC communities consolidate all METOC satellites and

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

systems under the direction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).4

Many of the Navy’s current METOC efforts are coordinated by the Oceanographer of the Navy and the Commander, Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command (NMOC). The two largest centers within NMOC are the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVO) and the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC). Each of these offices also has a collocated NRL R&D establishment to support its mission. NAVO, the largest single element of the Navy’s METOC commands, is one of the Navy’s two primary METOC analysis centers. FNMOC is the DOD’s principal operational processing center for automated numerical METOC analyses and predictions; as such it provides a continuously updated METOC picture for use by the DOD.

NAVO is headquartered at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) John C. Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Its primary mission is to conduct oceanographic multidisciplinary surveys in the world’s oceans. The office collects hydrographic, magnetic, geodetic, chemical, navigation, and acoustic data using ships, aircraft, spacecraft, and other platforms. In addition, NAVO provides much of the ground-based data necessary to calibrate and monitor the performance of the Navy’s remote sensing systems.

In the past, the Navy has funded several satellite systems for Navy-unique METOC applications.5 These include the Geodetic Satellite (Geosat) and its successor Geosat Follow-on (GFO), NEMO, Geosynchronous Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GIFTS)/Indian Ocean METOC Imager (IOMI), and Coriolis-WindSat (see Box 4.1). Geosat and its successor GFO are radar altimeter satellites, developed primarily to map sea-surface heights. Such data are used to augment ocean circulation models and to help predict ocean weather. In addition, GFO data are used to refine the DOD geophysical models used by the ballistic missile submarine community. To date, the Navy has invested approximately $100 million in the GFO program and is planning to begin architectural studies related to development of a next-generation altimeter system.6 Such efforts are strongly encouraged since, following the design lifetime of GFO (its 5 year mission will end in 2005), the Navy will lose access to dedicated altimetry data.

NEMO was a joint government-industry effort to construct and launch an unclassified hyperspectral imaging system to support a broad range of commer-

4  

Presidential Decision Directive, National Science and Technology Council-2. 1994. “Convergence of the U.S.-Polar-Orbiting Operation Environmental Satellite Systems,” The White House, Washington, D.C., May 5.

5  

See Appendix A for further background on the Navy’s development of METOC systems.

6  

Funding data derived from recent DOD budget appropriations for FY98 through FY04.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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BOX 4.1
Coriolis-WindSat: An Example of Interagency Cooperation in Satellite Development

Since 1985, satellites from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) have incorporated the SSM/I (Special Sensing Microwave/Imager) radiometer, built by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), to measure speeds of sea-surface winds. Naval air operations also need information on wind direction, which can be obtained from the new, $70 million NRL-built WindSat microwave polarimetric radiometer now on the Coriolis satellite, launched successfully in January 2003.1

The Coriolis-WindSat mission spacecraft was built by the Spectrum-Astro Company; it was then modified to carry another payload, the Air Force Research Laboratory Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI), and was space-qualified by the Naval Center for Space Technology. Both payloads successfully competed in the Department of Defense (DOD) Space Test Program (STP), which funded the Air Force launch and 1 year of operating costs.

Currently, the Air Force provides satellite command and control for Coriolis-Windsat, and routes the data through its Spacenet to NRL; from there the data go to the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center. NRL and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) have also worked to ensure that the WindSat data can be downlinked directly to major combat ships, through the dedicated meteorology and oceanography (METOC) (SMQ-11) terminal, and made operationally useful. The sensor footprint is about 20 km in diameter and is conically scanned under the spacecraft at an angle of incidence of about 50 degrees, making a full (on-Earth) scan width of about 1700 km. Validation of Wind-Sat-derived wind speed and direction measurements is planned, and will involve comparison with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buoy measurements taken at sea level. SPAWAR currently acts as the manager for WindSat.

WindSat represents a risk-reduction program for the planned National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Conical Scanning Microwave Imager/Sounder (CMIS) sensor. Total on-orbit funding for Coriolis-WindSat was $224 million, of which $70 million came from the Navy METOC space program, $20 million from NPOESS, and $130 million from DOD’s STP and the Air Force. The Navy anticipates that this work will result in CMIS being fielded onboard NPOESS.

1  

Michael A. Dornheim. 2003. “Coriolis Testing Earth, Space Weather Instruments,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, January 13. See <http://www.ipo.noaa.gov/News/Archive/2003/jan/02/2003-01-13_Coriolis.pdf>. Accessed May 24, 2004.

cial and military needs. The Navy’s stated interest was to demonstrate a satellite-based system to improve sensor coverage and information in the world’s littorals. Government funding (approximately $70 million) was supplied by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

(DARPA). While this mission appears to have been strongly supported by the Navy, financial problems associated with the industrial partner appear to have led to the program’s recent cancellation.7

GIFTS/IOMI was a recent Navy and NASA cofunded METOC satellite program. The GIFTS satellite was to test advanced technologies for measuring water vapor, wind, and chemical composition at high resolution over the Indian Ocean. Currently, the DOD relies solely on international partners for satellite-based meteorological data for this region. GIFTS appears to have received strong initial support from both NASA and the Navy, with an anticipated Navy investment of approximately $40 million from FY02 through FY04. However, the GIFTS program was recently cancelled after apparently suffering scheduling delays.

Other recent METOC programs of Navy interest include the NASA-funded Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) satellite, expected to provide 200 m resolution multispectral data. MODIS, with its 36 spectral bands across the visible and near-infrared, is a risk-reduction effort aimed to support the inclusion of a multispectral sensor on NOAA’s planned National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). The MODIS spectral bands are designed to enable monitoring of ocean color, phytoplankton, cloud properties, aerosols, and atmospheric water vapor in support of climate forecasting and global change research. In addition the Department of Energy (DOE) recently launched its Multispectral Thermal Imaging satellite, used to provide 20 m resolution global surface-temperature data. There are other examples of METOC programs of Navy interest as well. Several years ago, NASA flew a blue-green laser on the Space Shuttle to conduct research in ocean monitoring, and has flown experimental synthetic aperture radars to demonstrate ocean surveillance.

One drawback to NOAA’s role as executive agent for environmental satellite development is that NOAA recently indicated to the Navy that active sensor systems (such as synthetic aperture radar or radar and laser altimeters) will not be placed on the next generation of national environmental monitoring satellites (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and NPOESS). This decision was made to support many of NOAA’s requirements on imaging and sensor system performance. However, the decision leaves the Navy without a ready means to leverage its participation in NOAA programs to benefit the Navy’s needs for active sensors. For instance, the Navy is currently supporting orbital altimeter systems (through Geosat and GFO), but these are experimental systems, not designed to provide the persistence and coverage necessary for use in tactical situations. In addition, the Navy’s current reliance on GFO for altimetry data is

7  

Curtiss Davis. 2002. “Hyperspectral Imaging of the Littoral Battlespace,” Overview Presentation, Coastal and Ocean Sensing Branch, Naval Research Laboratory. Available at <http://rsd-www.nrl.navy.mil/7230/pdf/7230_overview.pdf>. Accessed May 17, 2004.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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scheduled to end with the planned termination of the GFO program in FY07. This loss of altimetry data concerns the committee, as it will leave the Navy (and the naval METOC community) without any altimetry data for at least several years after the GFO program’s termination.

Finally, NOAA and the Navy have quite different missions and audiences for their products. NOAA focuses its resources on systems to provide weather predictions for the United States, while the Navy must be able to produce continually updated weather predictions for the entire navigable sea surface. These differences led NOAA to deploy the GOES satellites over the United States, leaving the Navy to rely on less timely data supplied from international partners to fill its global needs.

Sea Power 21

Three of the most pressing naval operational needs derived from Sea Power 21 are for systems enabling expeditionary warfare, countermine warfare, and shallow-water antisubmarine warfare in the littorals. Success in these warfare areas depends on local, timely environmental information. To help address naval needs, the Navy has developed a METOC Strategic Plan.8 This plan lists three mission objectives relying on space-based environmental remote sensing to provide the following:

  • Safe Operating Forces—Protect all assets.

  • Optimized Warfighting Resources—Generate fiscal savings and increase military readiness through better forecasting of the global environment.

  • Enhanced Warfighting Capabilities—Fully characterize the battlespace environment to the warfighter in terms that enable optimal employment of systems and platforms.9

The mission objectives Safe Operating Forces and Optimized Warfighting Resources tend to capture the largest share of the METOC community’s resources. The primary products meeting these objectives are derived from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), NOAA, and international partner satellite data, and synoptic and mesoscale atmospheric and oceanographic model output provided by the NMOC. Example products include forecasting services of NAVO’s Optimum Aircraft Routing System (OPARS) and optimum track ship routing (OTSR). Environmental capabilities for the Enhanced Warfighting objective come largely from Polar Operational Environmental Satellite

8  

Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command. 1997. Strategic Plan, Washington, D.C., May.

9  

Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command. 1997. Strategic Plan, Washington, D.C., May, p. 3.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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(POES), DMSP, and commercial sources, since they typically require higher spatial and temporal resolution than do the global forecasting models.

As described in the following subsections, these METOC mission objectives can be mapped into the Sea Power 21 pillars: Safe Operating Forces principally supports Sea Strike, specifically, carrier operations; Optimized Warfighting Resources supports Sea Basing, specifically, ocean routing; and Enhanced Warfighting Capabilities, the most challenging objective, supports tactical elements of both Sea Strike and Sea Shield. Appendix C presents additional detail regarding the dependency of Sea Power 21 capabilities on METOC products.

Safe Operating Forces—Sea Strike

The mission objective of providing Safe Operating Forces generally supports Sea Strike. It refers to providing atmospheric weather forecasts to get planes off carrier decks safely. NOAA currently supports this mission through Navy access to data taken by the GOES and POES systems. The geostationary network is globalized through international agreements with the European Space Agency’s Meteorological Satellite (Meteosat), India’s Indian National Satellite (INSAT), and Japan’s Geostationary Meteorological Satellite (GMS). NOAA, as executive agent for environmental satellites, is responsible for managing international agreements.

Satellite data streams are received on carrier and other large-deck ships via the dedicated SMQ-11 environmental satellite receiver. POES and DMSP data are collected twice daily, at about 1 km spatial resolution. GOES data are broadcast every 30 minutes, at a resolution lower than that of POES or DMSP data. These data sets provide timely enough information to assist with tactical weather prediction near the U.S. mainland (because GOES is stationed to observe the United States). The military must then rely heavily on augmenting national capabilities when operating in foreign countries. While the Navy is able to access data through international partner agencies, there is often excessive latency for data received from these foreign assets, particularly from Meteosat and INSAT. The planned GIFTS/IOMI, recently cancelled, was being built by NASA with support from the Navy to satisfy NSS and civilian METOC needs over the Indian Ocean.

Optimized Warfighting Resources—Sea Basing

The mission objective Optimized Warfighting Resources is focused on the provision of OPARS and OTSR modeling services and generally supports Sea Basing logistics and scheduling needs. The current model, run at the NAVO facilities in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, uses sea-surface wind and sea-surface temperature satellite data from DMSP and POES. The system can also be augmented by wave-height measurements supplied from the Navy’s Geosat altimeter and wind-speed and direction measurements supplied by NRL’s WindSat sensor

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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onboard the Coriolis satellite. While recent advances in remote sensing have aided FNMOC’s performance of these modeling activities, further improvements are still needed in the collection and archiving of detailed climatological information.

In addition, the Optimized Warfighting Resources objective includes the use of METOC information to assess optimal frequency use for tactical communications systems that cue appropriate ISR sensor systems, and to establish maps related to potential use areas for different classes of guided munitions. All of these resources rely critically on accurate and timely climatological information.

Issues for Safe Operating Forces and Optimized Warfighting Resources

Future needs for the two mission objectives Safe Operating Forces and Optimized Warfighting Resources include improved spatial resolution and timeliness of data access and update rates, as well as improvements in the overall support received from international partners. Most civil environmental satellite data have 0.8 km to 1 km spatial-resolution data sets and are supplied from passive sensors. There are plans to increase the resolution by about a factor of two in the next-generation GOES and NPOESS systems. The current data sets are generally satisfactory to enable the Navy’s global and mesoscale forecasting and large-scale ocean modeling. Continuous improvement in satellite data for these two METOC missions should be adequately met in the future through civilian efforts, because the global environmental community is at least as interested as the Navy is in improved global and mesoscale atmospheric and ocean forecasting.

One concern in this regard, though, is the remaining reliance on foreign assets (Meteosat and INSAT in particular) and their associated large data latencies. As described above, NASA’s GIFTS/IOMI satellite would provide a partial solution to this issue, but only if funding can be reallocated to the effort.

Enhanced Warfighting Capabilities, Including Sea Shield and Sea Strike

The METOC mission objective Enhanced Warfighting Capabilities includes tactical geospatial products—such as Special Tactical Oceanographic Information Charts (STOICS) and Special Annotated Imagery-Littoral (SAIL)—and model output from specialized tactical decision aids. These tactical products tend to be focused on the littoral regions, and they produce forecasting at finer spatial resolution and needing greater satellite repeat coverage than the general global forecasting services described above. For example, STOICS and SAIL typically rely on 1 m resolution data from DMSP, commercial multispectral imagers, and NSS sources. Timeliness, as discussed above, can be an issue for commercial as well as for foreign data that are often delivered in days or weeks, not tidal periods.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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Examples of tactical decision aids are subsurface acoustic propagation predictions, ocean-surface front-and-eddy thermal analyses, and nowcasts of electromagnetic ducting conditions in the atmosphere’s boundary layer.

Capability Gaps and Current Actions

The Navy currently relies on community partnerships to provide most of its satellite-based environmental remote sensing capabilities. The current METOC plan for developing satellite data to meet the needs of Sea Power 21 is to leverage R&D initiatives funded by NASA, NOAA, DOE, and other agencies, or to rely on commercially available data purchased by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). This means that the Navy’s future environmental data for enhanced warfighting will likely be limited to data that fulfill the spatial, temporal, and spectral requirements of the civilian climate change, civilian oceanographic, or commercial multispectral communities. While these data serve the needs of overall weather forecasting, there is currently no dedicated, space-based environmental support for conducting naval warfare in the littorals—including needs for expeditionary warfare, support for Special Operations Forces, shallow-water antisubmarine warfare, and countermine warfare.

Generally, these needs are first addressed through a substantive S&T program; however, the Navy has recently cut most of its funding support for advanced satellite-based METOC systems. Thus, virtually no Navy funding is available to use as leverage with other agency partners. For example, current funding does not appear to allow exploratory R&D with NASA and DOE satellites such as GIFTS or the Multispectral Thermal Imaging satellite. Limited Navy funds are, however, flowing into research for applications of future hyperspectral satellite systems and SBR.

The Navy has a long history of supporting METOC developments, but currently it does not appear to be expressing its unique interests through the various METOC partnership forums. This disconnect is hurting the Navy’s efforts to satisfy its METOC needs. For example, hyperspectral systems for naval environmental littoral applications can be designed with useful signal-to-noise in the blue-water-penetrating regions of the spectrum; however, current national interests are focused on detecting man-made materials with associated sensitivity needs in the red and infrared spectral bands.

NOAA’s current plans to limit future operations to passive systems leaves the Navy without its preferred partner when it comes to fielding active sensors, such as those with lasers or radars. No naval requirements for active systems (such as laser systems for bioluminescence detection, bathymetry, and so on) will be able to be transitioned onto NOAA satellites. This may necessitate the Navy’s involvement with other partners or the possibility of the Navy’s fielding its own satellites if it wants its needs for active sensing systems to be met.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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Since the Navy is not currently developing any new environmental satellite programs of record (other than the current GFO program), any current Navy environmental satellite R&D efforts would have no defined transition path. As discussed in Chapter 3,10 without a defined transition path programs funded through the Office of Naval Research, and through the Future Naval Capabilities (FNC) program in particular, are at a significant disadvantage when competing for advanced development S&T funds.

Recommendations Regarding Meteorology and Oceanography

Recommendation 4.5. The Department of the Navy should remain involved in developing and operating Navy-unique satellite systems. Thus, the Department of the Navy should reassess its meteorology and oceanography (METOC) remote sensing priorities. It is the view of this committee that these assessments should focus on the following:

  • Ensuring strong support for the Geosat (Geodetic Satellite) Follow-on (GFO) program,

  • Completion and launch of the Naval EarthMap Observer (NEMO) satellite, and

  • Completion and launch of the Geosynchronous Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer/Indian Ocean METOC Imager (GIFTS/IOMI) satellite.

Recommendation 4.6. The Department of the Navy should pursue research and development of integrated active and passive microwave satellite sensors development programs with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to enable all-weather meteorology and oceanography sensing, along with measurements of trafficability, fog and visibility, and sea-ice mapping. The Navy should also continue to explore other research demonstrations, including active satellite systems and higher-resolution systems for hyperspectral imaging and sounding, atmospheric refractivity characterization and prediction, ocean color and biological constituents monitoring, and denied-area shallow-water bathymetry.


Recommendation 4.7. The Chief of Naval Research should modify the Office of Naval Research’s technology transition rules to allow transition-oriented funds to support non-Navy (and non-DOD) meteorology and oceanography programs such as those fielded by NOAA and NASA.

10  

See the section entitled “Navy Space Support” in Chapter 3.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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THEATER AND BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE OF NAVAL FORCES

The broad category of theater and ballistic missile defense (TBMD) covers the availability of competent antiship cruise missile defense (ASCMD), overland cruise missile defense (OCMD), and theater ballistic missile defense capabilities. These capabilities will be essential if naval forces are to operate in littoral areas and execute the Navy’s Sea Power 21 concepts of Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing. In addition, the current Marine Corps operational concepts—Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS) and Ship-to-Objective Maneuver (STOM)—envisage the use of light and highly mobile forces that are largely unencumbered by major air defense and artillery systems. These Marine Corps concepts of operations are thus based on the provision of TBMD, OCMD, air defense, and fire support by the Navy to support deployed ground forces.

Current threats to naval and joint forces operating in littoral areas stress the capabilities of current naval TBMD systems. Indications are that the future threats from hostile theater ballistic missiles (TBMs) and cruise missiles are likely to become more stressing as these systems become more and more widely available. Future cruise missiles are also likely to utilize features such as low-altitude, terrain-obscured flight paths; low radar cross-sections (RCSs); increased speed and agility; sensors that are resistant to electronic countermeasures; and precision terminal homing capabilities. (Note that U.S. forces are currently investigating all of these potential improvements to their own cruise missiles, so the eventual inclusion of the same improvements on adversary missiles is to be expected.)

As outlined in Chapter 2 of this report, the Sea Shield mission requires naval surface forces to provide responsive fire support for engaged forces ashore. The Sea Shield concept also requires that Navy ships be capable of providing overland air defense and TBMD. In turn, these mission requirements imply that naval surface forces must be able to operate safely in nearshore waters where their survival will be totally dependent on the availability of robust capabilities. A summary of the TBMD capabilities needed by Sea Power 21 is provided in Chapter 2 in Tables 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, and 2.8.

Cruise Missile Defense

Sea Strike and Sea Shield capabilities to defend against cruise missiles are provided with the SPY-1 air defense radar (aboard Aegis-class ships), the SPQ-9B surface search radar (scheduled to be replaced by the multifunction horizon search radar), and various versions of the semiactive Standard Missile (SM)-2 and shorter-range air defense missiles. The SM-2 missile engagement of incoming threat missiles has been limited to regions in which the threat missiles can be detected by the defensive radar (SPY-1) and illuminated by a fire control radar that can provide continuous engagement guidance for the SM-2. With the development of the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), it is now possible to

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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detect a threat missile with the radar on one platform and launch a missile from another platform to destroy the threat missile.

When naval forces operate in the open-ocean environment, this ensemble of cruise missile defense weapons and sensors provides the Navy with a reliable defense against antiship cruise missiles that do not have low RCS. Under such circumstances, the Navy’s sensors can detect incoming missiles at ranges sufficient to provide a depth of fire that will allow either a shoot-shoot-shoot strategy or shoot-look-shoot strategy. However, naval forces are beginning to operate more often in littoral areas. In such environments, the ranges may be substantially degraded at which ship-based radars can detect low-RCS antiship cruise missiles following trajectories that obscure them from detection by defensive radar. In addition to the area defense concept based on the SM-2/SPY-1/multifunction horizon-search radar, the Navy’s ASCMD capabilities include a number of shorter-range and point defense systems involving short-range missiles, guns, decoys, and electronic countermeasures to assist with defense against close-in missiles.

Overland cruise missile defense can present challenging situations when the line-of-sight paths that permit the detection and illumination of threat missiles are blocked by coastal hills or mountains. Thus, continued use of defensive missiles that are dependent on semiactive radar guidance (such as the SM-2) will become progressively more problematical as the Navy is asked to conduct more overland force-protection missions. An alternative to current defensive measures is to employ interceptor missiles that can be guided close enough to the threat missile so that the defensive missile’s onboard sensor system can detect the threat missile and guide itself to closure.

Generally, OCMD is best accomplished using an elevated radar sensor with an airborne moving target indication (AMTI) capability; this sensor enables the detection and tracking of an incoming threat missile at extended ranges. However, unless the elevated platform carrying AMTI radar can also launch defensive missiles, its detection and tracking information must be relayed to a firing platform. Once a defensive missile has been launched, it must be provided with frequent guidance updates on the location of the threat missile. Current defensive missiles of the SM-2 family require update rates of 4 Hz. Thus, the maximum allowable latency for a communications system needed to enable closed-loop guidance for an SM-2-type missile is significantly less than 250 milliseconds.

Recognizing the critical importance of overland air defense and OCMD, the Navy has made extensive investments in the E-2C Radar Modernization Program (RMP). The RMP (which will incorporate space/time adaptive processing and the rotating ADS-18 phased-array antenna) is anticipated to provide the Navy with a competent overland AMTI radar capability. This RMP capability will also enable good performance even in the presence of overland background clutter. When combined with the new SM-5 missile, which will have multimode guidance and

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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thus avoid the constraints of semiactive radar guidance, the Navy’s capabilities for air and OCMD will be greatly enhanced.

While an excellent first step, the RMP may still have significant performance limitations. Further improvements in the overland AMTI performance of the E-2C RMP cannot be precluded. In particular, the E-2C normally operates well offshore and at low altitudes to enhance its survivability; this naturally limits some of the RMP’s performance. Thus, cruise missiles launched from inland sites and programmed to fly low-altitude, terrain-obscured trajectories might still elude the RMP until the detection or clear line-of-sight range is too short to support an effective terminal defense of surface ships, supply depots, or engaged forces ashore.

If an AMTI SBR were available, the ability of a missile to avoid detection through the use of terrain obscuration would be minimized. Although an AMTI SBR would be the ideal solution to the problem of detecting cruise missiles that use terrain-obscured trajectories, the problem might also be alleviated to a degree if multiple, high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with high-performance AMTI radars were available. To the committee’s knowledge, no Navy acquisition program of record exists that is designed to produce a UAV-based AMTI capability.

If an AMTI SBR capability were to be developed, it would be necessary for the system architecture to provide guidance updates to the defensive missile with latencies of less than 250 milliseconds. This requirement would have a major impact on the design of the spacecraft and its associated communications networks. The AMTI SBR would need to have an onboard processor and a direct downlink to the platform controlling the flight of the defensive weapon. In a sense, the AMTI SBR concept would need to evolve from an ISR sensor into a tactical missile control radar.

An additional OCMD problem is that the performance of the E-2C RMP may be degraded by cruise missiles with extremely low nose-on RCS values. At any given radar-to-target range, a minimum detectable target strength always exists. The extremely low RCS values that are possible or that have been achieved for some cruise missiles are generally limited to nose-on aspects, in part because current defensive systems are designed to observe oncoming missiles nose-on. In situations (as is generally the case in air or OCMD scenarios) in which only nose-on detection is feasible, incoming missiles with extremely low RCS values may not be detectable until the range of first detection is so short that successful engagement is not feasible. Fortunately, it is significantly harder to configure a missile to have all-aspect low RCS values than it is to configure a missile with low nose-on RCS values. Thus, an overhead radar might have significant advantages over an airborne radar that is generally constrained to detect an incoming hostile missile from a nearly nose-on aspect.

There is a concern that naval representatives participating in discussions and cost-benefit studies with regard to the design of SBR are unfamiliar with the

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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potentially important role that an AMTI SBR could play in overland air and OCMD engagements. The technology needed to support the development of an AMTI SBR system is generally acknowledged not to be mature enough at the present time. However, the committee was concerned that the Navy’s R&D program did not appear to be directed toward the development of subsystems and components that could allow the use of a space sensor in a closed-loop weapons guidance mode.

In summary, the stressing problem of cruise missile defense may become even more challenging in the future. One of the most important future cruise missile defense sensors may prove to be an SBR with an AMTI capability. Current levels of technology support only a limited ability to deploy such a sensor system. To date, however, little or no R&D has been devoted to the technology that might provide the capabilities necessary for an AMTI SBR.

Theater Ballistic Missile Defense

The DOD has assigned primary responsibility for ballistic missile defense (BMD) to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). However, because of the importance of theater ballistic missile defense, the Navy has devoted significant resources to the development of responsive defensive systems. In general, a fully deployed theater ballistic missile defense system likely will be based on integrating the capabilities provided by the following:

  • Patriot Advanced Capability-3,

  • Medium Extended Air Defense System,

  • Theater High Altitude Area Defense System,

  • Airborne Laser (ABL),

  • Navy Area Defense (NAD) system (or equivalent), and

  • Navy Theater Wide (NTW) defense system (or equivalent).

To operate effectively, many of these systems will need to be cued by space-based national assets, such as the Defense Support Program (DSP) and, in the future, by the Space-Based Infrared System-High (SBIRS-H) and networked in a battle management command, control, and communications system.

The development a robust theater missile defense capability demands technological advances in a number of areas in addition to that of space sensor performance. These include the need for improved long- and short-range surveillance sensors, guidance and control, propulsion, automated target-tracking technology, data processing, and lethal intercept techniques (kinetic kill, explosive charge, and the like). These systems will also rely on command, control, and communications networking for various purposes, including the provision of cueing and links of naval components to National Technical Means (NTM) and future BMD systems such as ABL. Thus, the ability to engage an attacking

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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ballistic missile successfully will depend on the availability of effective hit-to-kill interceptors, multispectral seekers, and cooperative over-the-horizon surveillance and fire control. It will also depend on the ability to detect, evaluate, and overcome penetration aids and other countermeasures to theater missile defense.

Current national, space-based sensor capabilities that have relevance to ballistic missile defense include these:

  • The DSP, and

  • Various signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection programs and their associated Tactical Receive Applications Program/Tactical Receive Equipment information dissemination systems.

Although these programs provide useful cueing, they are not structured as low-latency systems that can be used to provide real-time, closed-loop weapons guidance data. For instance, DSP satellites detect missiles in their ascent phase as soon as the missiles have risen above the cloud deck. If DSP can provide a missile’s velocity and direction of flight at burnout, then the missile’s trajectory and probable intended impact area can be inferred. Unfortunately, the data rate of the DSP sensors is relatively slow, being constrained by the spin rate of the space vehicle—DSP is a spin-stabilized spacecraft, rotating a few times per minute, using the satellite’s spin motion to scan an array of infrared detectors, operating in the short-wave infrared range, to detect the emissions from rocket plumes during the boost phase of a launch. Thus, it can take a significant fraction of a minute for the DSP system to declare a detection. Since most ballistic missiles reach burnout in less than 3 minutes, the detection process consumes a considerable fraction of the time available during the ascent stage.

A single DSP satellite gives limited geolocation data relative to the launch site and, because of the multisecond frame rate, the resulting track has a large propagation uncertainty. However, if two DSP satellites can view a launch simultaneously (binocular DSP) and their track information linked better, launch-point geolocation can be achieved, and the azimuth of the missile’s trajectory can be better predicted. While such data do not provide precise trajectory information, they certainly limit the volume that must be searched by the defensive radar. This cueing allows the radar to focus its radiated energy into a significantly narrower angular cone and thus increases the initial detection range and accuracy of the radar.

DSP is scheduled to be replaced by SBIRS-H. SBIRS-H is designed to track missiles during powered flight and to provide much higher precision tracking information than DSP does. This will be possible because the spacecraft will be a three-axis-stabilized vehicle, and the SBIRS-H optical system is based on a large, high-sensitivity, focal-plane array that can be adaptively scanned at high frame rates. This capability is planned to allow SBIRS-H to detect low-intensity rocket plumes, track the detected plumes, and provide greatly improved missile trajec-

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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tory measurements. In addition, SBIRS-H is designed to have much greater onboard signal and data processing capability than that of DSP and will also have the ability to directly crosslink to theater platforms and thus eliminate the need for overseas ground data entry points. As a result, SBIRS-H, if deployed, could provide excellent tactical warning and attack assessment and cueing data directly to forces in the field as well as to the National Command Authority. While this system has been in development for many years, its delivery date is still uncertain. This uncertainty is a matter of concern, since many of the Navy’s (and MDA’s) needs for space-based early warning are based on use of SBIRS-H.

The Space-Based Infrared System-Low (SBIRS-L) satellite system, while not yet approved for full-scale development, is conceptually designed to operate in the visible and long-wavelength infrared, 8 to 14 µm, looking at targets against the cold space background. The task of SBIRS-L would be to provide the midcourse tracking of ballistic missiles in flight and to hand off the target(s) to a midcourse or terminal defense system. With its multispectral sensors it could, in principle, provide some midcourse discrimination of warheads and decoys.

As a consequence of the decision not to proceed with the Future Early Warning System, the SBIRS-H acquisition design parameters were changed to include a capability to detect intermediate-range ballistic missiles and short-range ballistic missiles. To achieve this capability, a higher scan rate, increased sensitivity, a new detection band at 4.3 µm, and a two-dimensional focal plane array were added to SBIRS-H.

The Navy originally envisioned reliance on the Aegis weapon system, employing variants of the SM-2, to provide an in-theater (at sea) capability to engage ballistic missiles within the atmosphere (this concept is the current version of the NAD program). An advanced variant of the standard missile (the SM-3) would provide a capability to engage ballistic missiles at longer ranges outside the atmosphere (the design mission of the NTW program). Under the Sea Shield concept, forward-deployed naval forces are envisaged as being capable of making this contribution during the developing phases of a conflict, when they would be called upon to protect threatened nations and arriving joint forces against attacks by ballistic missiles.

The NTW system concept is not as mature as the NAD system concept. The Achilles heel of the NTW program is the Aegis SPY-1 radar, which is an excellent air defense radar but a marginal radar for the full range of NTW mission requirements. For ascent-phase engagements, which may be an important role for NTW, the large RCS of theater ballistic missile booster rockets may support adequate use of the SM-3 interceptor. However, even in an ascent-phase engagement, the SPY-1 radar would probably need to be cued by an external sensor so that all its available beam energy could be focused on the incoming missile. The only space-based sensor currently available to cue the SPY-1 is the DSP satellite, with the deficiencies described above. For more reliable cueing to support ascent-

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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phase engagement, an overhead sensor with the capabilities postulated for SBIRS-H appears to be needed.

Many situations may require a midcourse-engagement capability rather than an ascent-phase engagement capability. For midcourse engagements, the hit-to-kill warhead of the defensive missile will require sophisticated capabilities for both guidance and decoy discrimination. In such a situation, the SPY-1 will require external cueing by an overhead sensor with the capabilities postulated for SBIRS-L. In principle, alternate space-based sensors might be deployed that would support the decoy discrimination function. To the best of the committee’s knowledge, no significant Navy programmatic effort is under way to develop such alternate capabilities. In addition, neither SBIRS-H nor SBIRS-L is progressing at a pace that inspires confidence that it will be available in a time frame reasonable for assuming the cueing function for the NTW system.

The committee recognizes that for R&D in support of new ballistic missile defense capabilities, the Navy cannot proceed autonomously. Current DOD directives stipulate that all missile defense R&D programs be coordinated with and supported by the MDA. Although there is substantial Navy representation within the MDA, there is little indication of what more Navy representatives could do that is not part of MDA’s response to the problems of SBIRS. The SBIRS program has been beset with unresolved technological challenges and problems of cost growth and requirements creep. While the Navy may be able to field a marine-based ascent-phase BMD capability, a true ability to implement the Sea Shield concept will not occur until appropriate space-based sensors become available. There is nothing that the Navy can do about this situation, because the authority and responsibility for the development of this capability rest with the MDA.

One means to augment MDA capabilities for BMD would be through the development of an AMTI SBR. However, there are no current NSS plans to develop a space-based persistent AMTI radar similar in capability to that provided by current E-2C and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) radars. Such an NSS capability, if it were developed and fielded, would dramatically expand, to global dimensions, the range for detecting and targeting airborne threats from ranges currently provided by UAVs or piloted aircraft (hundreds of square miles). While creating such a system would represent a stretch with current NSS sensor technology, this is an area in need of further study by a concerted S&T program with the objective of identifying future NSS ISR potential in this area. A nearer-term NSS opportunity to address the missile defense mission could also involve a persistent, multiple-look-angle NSS infrared detection capability. Individual satellite sensors might each be similar in capability to that available with SBIRS-H, and multiple satellites with a view of all points of interest on Earth could permit detection and tracking of theater ballistic missiles that must be defended against by Sea Shield.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

Recommendations Regarding Theater and Ballistic Missile Defense

Recommendation 4.8. The Navy should continue its aggressive support of the E-2C aircraft Radar Modernization program so that a fleetwide capability can be achieved as soon as feasible.


Recommendation 4.9. The Department of the Navy should begin operational analysis of the cost, benefits, and requirements of a cruise and ballistic missile defense system based on a multimode missile and an airborne moving target indication (AMTI) space-based radar (SBR) system. The Department of the Navy should invest in a focused science and technology program to resolve the issues that currently render an AMTI SBR infeasible.

SPACE-BASED COMMUNICATIONS

Space-based communications are embedded in almost every portion of Sea Power 21. In order to support the President’s desire that the U.S. military “be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world,”11 there must be continuously available, low-latency, high-assurance global communications between sensor and processor, strategist and planner, and commander and tactical forces. Most beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) links to deployed tactical units currently use space-based communications systems. The role of space-based communications in supporting key elements of Sea Power 21 is discussed in the next subsection, followed by a description of the Navy’s role in providing these capabilities, and information on the gaps between the capabilities of space-based communications systems and the needs of Sea Power 21. A brief discussion of current and planned DOD space-based communications programs is provided in Appendix D. This section ends with consideration of specific findings and recommendations for closing these gaps.

Background on Satellite Communications

To provide a common level of understanding regarding communications, this section discusses some basic elements of the physics of electromagnetic waves and the regulatory environment for radio spectrum use. Physical laws constrain design and use issues, such as antenna size and placement and the attenuation and detectability of signals affected by adverse weather, while regulations specify when and where in the world various portions of the spectrum may be used, and who may use them. Figure 4.1 depicts current allocations of satellite radio frequencies for U.S. government and commercial services. As shown, a broad range of

11  

President George W. Bush. 2002. Address to the United States Military Academy graduating cadets, West Point, New York, June 1.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

FIGURE 4.1 Commercial and U.S. government satellite frequency allocations. NOTE: A list of acronyms is provided in Appendix G. SOURCE: Courtesy of Dennis L. Mauney, Information Technology and Applications Corporation (ITAC), Reston, Va.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

frequencies is currently employed for satellite communications, ranging from very high frequency (VHF) bands at the low end, through ultrahigh frequency (UHF) and super high frequency (SHF) bands, up through extremely high frequency (EHF) bands at the current high end. Certain specific subbands, such as the C, Ku, and Ka bands, are also well-known designations in their own right.

Laid out across these spectrum bands are both commercial and government satellite communications systems. For example, Inmarsat and Iridium are commercial services in the L band (1.5 and 1.6 GHz) while Global Broadcast Service (GBS) is a government system in the Ka band. In the future, the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) will occupy the bands labeled UHF Follow-on (UFO) system, and the Wideband Gapfiller System (WGS) will occupy the X, C, and Ka bands.

As a general rule, higher-frequency systems provide more user capacity (bandwidth) than systems lower in the radio-frequency (RF) spectrum. For example, the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS) system in the Ka band provides roughly 1 Gb/s to a terminal, in contrast with Inmarsat, which provides on the order of 32 kb/s in the L band. Although to some extent this is simply because there is more RF spectrum available in the high bands, overall it is as much a matter of technological and regulatory history as anything else. For instance, reasonably high bandwidth satellite services could be provided even in the rather limited UHF bands if the military Services were willing to dispense with the decades-old legacy of subdividing the UHF band into fixed 25 kHz channels.

Figure 4.2 provides a useful sketch of the user terminals currently employed by the Services to access satellite communications. Note that the new MUOS program will be significantly driven by the preexisting community of 82,000 UHF satellite communications (SATCOM) terminals for handheld and vehicle-mounted systems; whereas the X- and Ka-band systems have, in general, been designed for far fewer, but much larger, user terminals, thus enabling faster and easier Service-wide terminal upgrades.

In general, high-capacity satellite links require larger antennas than those needed for low-capacity links. This difference has obvious platform implications for the Navy and Marine Corps. While big-dish antennas 7 to 9 ft in diameter may easily fit on large, surface ships, they are infeasible for the advanced amphibious assault vehicle of the Marine Corps or for submarines. Thus, large-deck ships are far more likely to enjoy direct, high-capacity satellite links than are smaller platforms or dismounted units.12 Most high-capacity satellite systems also rely on

12  

To this end, it may be desirable to create a FORCEnet network architecture with large-deck or otherwise advantaged platforms as satellite downlink and uplink “hubs” that relay packets to other platforms via a variety of near-Earth networks, such as provided by the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Wideband Networking Waveform. Such a system is typically described as a hybrid communications system.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

FIGURE 4.2 Types and number of terminals used by the Services to access current (and planned) communications satellites. NOTE: A list of acronyms is provided in Appendix G. SOURCE: Christine M. Anderson, Program Director, Military Satellite Communications Joint Program Office. 2002. “Transformational Communications,” slide 6, presentation to Ground System Architectures Workshop, El Segundo, Calif., March 14.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

nongeostationary satellite constellations. Hence, the associated antennas must be continuously steered not only to account for the motion of the platform, but also to account for the motion of the satellite.

Another difficult area for naval communications is the need to keep a clear line of sight between the antenna and the satellite. In many shipboard antenna placements, the superstructure may block this line of sight as the platform maneuvers. To compensate, the platform may need multiple, linked antennas positioned so that at least one antenna always has a clear view of the satellite. Navy platforms may need as many as four linked antennas in order to achieve acceptable (greater than 99 percent) availability, or they may need to have the antenna systems moved to higher positions relative to the superstructure.

Optical communications systems (called lasercom) are conceptually similar to highly directional, high-band RF systems—though laser transmitters and receivers are physically quite different from radio equipment. Lasercom is capable of very high bandwidth capacity, up to tens of gigabits per second to a terminal and, as envisioned by the DOD Transformational Communications Architecture (TCA) program, will provide the high-capacity data links of the future. Numerous studies have concluded that optical links between seaborne and satellite platforms are feasible; however, optical communications can be severely impacted by weather, turbulence, and other obscurants. Studies within the continental United States have concluded that a single optical link’s Earth-to-space availability is on the order of 55 percent at best (as measured in “sunny” Roswell, New Mexico) and is driven to a large extent by relatively long term phenomena such as cloud cover.13 Even quite complex schemes, with available optical bandwidth dynamically derived from cloud-scatter pulse-dispersion models, required three sites broadly scattered across the continental United States to achieve greater than 90 percent availability for a relatively modest 100 Mb/s of optical link.14 Direct optical links from sea or Earth platforms to satellites will therefore be difficult to implement for the mobile tactical user.15

While many current efforts (such as TCA) are aimed at providing direct bigbandwidth links to mobile users, other alternatives do exist. Among these are information compression systems as simple as text messaging. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Services all made extensive use of text-messaging capabilities

13  

Sabino Piazzolla and Stephan Slobin. 2002. “Statistics of Link Blockage Due to Cloud Cover for Free-Space Optical Communications Using NCDC Surface Weather Observation Data,” Proceedings of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, Vol. 4635, pp. 138-149.

14  

Daniel V. Hahn, Clinton L. Edwards, and Donald D. Duncan. 2002. “Adaptive Compensation of Atmospheric Effects with a High-Resolution Micro-Machined Deformable Mirror,” Proceedings of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, Vol. 4821, pp. 320-331.

15  

However, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Optical RF Link Experiment may provide a significant mitigation by implementing a hybrid radio-frequency/optical link in a single aperture. This system is intended to employ radio frequency at all times, but also to take advantage of optical connectivity when available.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

to create tactical chat rooms. The low bandwidth inherent in these systems allowed for greater communications and interaction between combat elements even when bandwidth resources became limited. Another alternative to direct high-bandwidth links is the employment of hybrid hub-and-spoke architectures. The hybrid systems proposed typically rely on a single, dedicated high-bandwidth satellite link to a single server (often envisioned as a capital ship or a high-altitude unmanned air vehicle) that relays the information via high-bandwidth line-of-sight links to the mobile users.

The Role of Space-Based Communications in Sea Power 21

Communications constitute a critical function for each of the pillars of Sea Power 21, the Navy’s strategy for implementing naval transformation. The allocation of communications functions and the scaling of performance parameters between space, airborne, and terrestrial systems are not clearly delineated by the Navy in descriptions of Sea Strike, Sea Shield, Sea Basing, and FORCEnet.

In order to support modern military and naval operations, there must be continuously available, low-latency, high-assurance communications between sensors and processors, strategists and planners, and commander and tactical forces worldwide. Most BLOS links to deployed tactical units are now transmitted via space-based communications systems, and as bandwidth demand rises, so will the Navy’s dependency on space-based communications assets. For example, in order to conduct Sea Strike operations, space communications linking of information from sensors, to analysts, to decision makers, to the warfighters will be necessary. Sea Shield relies critically on space-based communications to provide individual and fused threat information quickly and to cue theater and strategic missile defense assets. Sea Basing cannot function without the high bandwidth necessary to link commanders to tactical units throughout the theater, and to link the chain of command for rapid strategic and tactical planning and decision making. Finally, the FORCEnet concept requires the flexible, low-latency, worldwide communications that are only enabled by space-based communications capabilities. Each of the major concepts of Sea Power 21 is thus critically dependent on space-based communications, and a review of the specific elements within Sea Power 21 reveals that most of them carry fundamental dependence on space-based communications systems. These Sea Power 21 capability dependencies on communications are summarized in Chapter 2, in Tables 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, and 2.8.

Space-Based Communications Support for Sea Strike

Sea Strike operations will involve the dynamic application of strike, naval fire support, ship-to-objective maneuver, and strategic deterrence to deliver devastating power and accuracy in future campaigns. The primary function of space-

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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based communications in Sea Strike is to provide assured, all-weather, reliable, timely, and accurate communications from ISR sensors, analysis, exploitation, and data fusion processors and centers to the diverse command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems linking strike weapons, platforms, and infrastructure. Some of the more important space-based communications links in strike operations include the following:

  • Defining and coordinating missions with other command elements;

  • Requesting appropriate support, including logistics and search and rescue;

  • Tasking and relaying data requests from nonorganic sensors;

  • Providing communications of information from space-based, airborne, and ground-based sensors to processing and interpretation centers;

  • Supporting data fusion operations by communicating raw and processed information to interpretation, data fusion, information analysis, target identification, and target selection elements;

  • Providing selected communication of strategic and tactical targeting information to weapons delivery systems; and

  • Relaying post-strike information for damage assessment and interpretation.

In addition, space-based communications have an increasingly important role in recent conflicts, supporting Special Operations Forces and Marine Corps operations in littorals as well as supporting forced entry and other small, mobile ground force operations. These operations have heavy dependency on the requirement for high-availability, high-assurance, low-probability-of-intercept, low-latency, all-weather communications. In these operations, antenna size, portability, and ease of setup and disassembly are critical. Both voice and digital data are required, as is connectivity for weather, space- and ground-based intelligence information, and integrated near-real-time threat assessment. This capability, with increased numbers of users being supported, was a top priority identified recently by the Commander, U.S. Central Command.16

Providing these space-based communications capabilities across all of the naval elements in a manner that is both affordable and places minimal constraints on the operations of various elements is a goal that has not been met. Bandwidths are oversubscribed, communications links have marginal availability at times, and new capabilities in development (e.g., streaming video) cannot now be easily supported from space. Some of these capabilities will be provided by the TCA

16  

Written response by General John Abizaid, USA, Commander, Central Command, during his congressional confirmation hearing, June 24, 2003. Available at <http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2003/June/Abizaid.pdf>. Accessed May 17, 2004.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

program, the Joint Tactical Radio System, and other elements currently under development by the Air Force and other Services and agencies. However, because of low levels of space-based communications S&T funding, the naval forces do not appear to be advancing options to potentially address the complex issue of achieving the Navy’s communications goals.

The only new ideas presented to the committee to address these issues were presented by the Naval Center for Space Technology (NCST). The NCST concept of a geosynchronous, ultrawideband payload addressed two of the critical naval needs: scalability to high bandwidths and small apertures. Furthermore, this concept proposed that spot beams and bandwidth could be directly controlled by the Joint Task Force Commander. Unfortunately the S&T funding to evaluate this concept fully does not start until FY05 and is provided at a low level until FY07. Thus, by the time the study’s results are in hand, most of the TCA program’s early trade-offs will be completed. This eventuality again points to the Navy’s need for continuous and sustained S&T support, since time often will not allow for the Navy to initiate an S&T activity and get results soon enough to support other Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) or joint decisions.

The lack of an integrated Navy communications strategy is reflected in the separation of conventional communications links from space data links, resulting in limited distribution of important data. For example, the tactical airborne reconnaissance pod system (TARPS) (for F-18 E/F aircraft) provides a large-area ISR capability that is communicated to ships by the common data link, a line-of-sight communications system that has a bandwidth of 274 Mb/s. However, current Navy ships typically have at most 8 Mb/s of satellite communications (BLOS) capacity to communicate these data off the receiving ship; hence, only meager snippets of information can be transferred to other users. This is contrary to the seamless, wideband precept of the Global Information Grid (GIG) and inhibits implementation of the TPPU concept.

The next generation of many types of space-based ISR sensors is being designed to collect data at many gigabits per second. Hence, without significant improvements to maritime antennas, naval forces will potentially be deprived of information that has been collected but cannot be distributed to naval platforms. This capability gap can only be overcome through careful communications planning and implementation of systems with improved bandwidth, latency, and availability.

Space-Based Communications Support for Sea Shield

To maintain littoral superiority for naval and joint force components, communications resources must be able to support protection against conventional and unconventional (i.e., chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive) threats from special operations and terrorist forces as well as threats that might be mounted by more conventional enemy ground forces. Information from

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

space-, ground-, and sea-based and airborne ISR resources must be communicated to neutralize near-horizon and over-the-horizon threats. Such information is needed to enable deep-ocean and littoral operations by supporting self-defense against or neutralization of undersea threats (including submarines, mines, submerged barriers, and obstacles) and to provide defense over land and over sea against theater air and ballistic missile threats. The Sea Shield mission requires that naval forces establish air control against hostile aircraft and be capable of mounting a successful defense against cruise and ballistic missile attack, both in naval operating areas and as far inland as practicable. The Sea Shield mission also requires naval forces to assure their own survival (afloat or ashore) and the survival of their associated air and surface logistic forces.

Sea Shield operations currently depend on terrestrial line-of-sight communications for battle group defensive capability based on the CEC,17 while depending on space-based communications for general support in detecting, identifying, and neutralizing OTH threats, deep-water mine fields and for linking and communications between theater and national sensor systems and command structures. Expanding the CEC and other new capabilities, such as wide-area distributed undersea operations, will also require low-latency, high-assurance communications. Space communications will be an essential link in establishing extended capability, but with respect to Sea Strike, naval S&T has not yet been focused on the these issues. The NCST recently introduced two concepts to examine options for the distributed sensing: one is an Internet Protocol (IP) net-distributed expeditionary sensor, and the other is on-demand conflict support via tactical microsatellites.18 A proof-of-principle example of the latter, supported by the OSD Office of Transformation, has a focus on rapid support from space but not on associated communications needs.

In the emerging area of theater missile defense, space-based communications will provide the capability to link national, threat-sensing systems such as the Space Surveillance and Tracking System to command-and-control and countermissile defensive systems. Space links will be vital in linking information from BLOS sensing systems in many theater or strategic missile defense scenarios, including geolocation and computation from space-based assets of the trajectory of inbound tactical and cruise missile threats.

Finally, communications links to SBR will provide large amounts of data over even larger areas than are covered by the TARPS capability described above. Further, SBR may also have a potential role in the target identification of low-observable cruise missiles, should AMTI functionality be included in the system. For this to be effective, very low latency is essential, and current concepts for GIG transport services do not appear to support such demands.

17  

See the associated discussion in the preceding major section.

18  

Peter G. Wilhelm, Director, Naval Center for Space Technology, “Space S&T Initiatives Supporting the Navy’s Role in Space,” presentation to the committee, June 27, 2003.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

Thus, space-based communications will provide essential capability in support of Sea Shield. They will provide OTH sensor and command information to the fleet and must provide high-bandwidth, assured, low-latency communications.

Space-Based Communications Support for Sea Basing

Sea Basing provides the operational platform capability from which the Navy will project both offensive strike (i.e., Sea Strike) and defensive protection (i.e., Sea Shield) as well as supporting the Marine Corps and joint forces as appropriate to the missions. Sea Basing is accomplished by using the fleet assets with platform, logistics, and communications improvements, but without extensive use of existing port facilities and logistics ashore. A significant space communications demand arises when the sea basing includes the forward-deployed command center. Joint forces’ command center communications needs are particularly stressing. For example, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, estimates of peak communications to support operations of the joint forces were over 750 Mb/s.19 This level is nearly 75 times the planned capacity for any Navy ship (prior to FY07).20 With data and bandwidth usage roughly doubling each year across the DOD, the next decade could bring the Navy’s deployed communications capacity needs into the tens of gigabits per second for each naval platform; this would aggregate to terabits per second for total fleet bandwidth capacity needs.

Sea basing of the joint operations command center provides the final example in which the evolving concepts of Sea Power 21 will cause explosive growth in space communications needs. On the sea base, large-scale planning will require access to large, globally dispersed databases, and since most data will be collected away from the sea base, rapid agile planning on the sea base will require extremely large bandwidth communications in order to collect and assess planning information, to implement high-quality video conferencing, to access near-real-time sensor information (e.g., SBR), and to implement the TPPU concept of linked worldwide DOD information data structures.

Space-Based Communications Support for FORCEnet

FORCEnet is the networked communications and information collection, fusion, and processing capability required to implement the command, control,

19  

Lt Gen T. Michael Moseley, USAF, Commander, Central Air Forces. 2003. Operation Iraqi Freedom—By the Numbers, Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., April 30, p. 12.

20  

By FY07, the Navy is planning for large-deck ships to have bandwidths of 10.5 Mb/s at most. See the subsection below entitled “Space-Based Communications Capability Gaps and Issues” for further detail.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

and communications functions of Sea Power 21. FORCEnet focuses on the gathering, processing, transportation, and presentation of information in support of the scope of the Sea Power 21 vision. It is planned to be the integrator and enabler for the three pillars Sea Strike, Sea Shield, and Sea Basing. It will rely on programs such as the GIG and TCA to implement information transmission worldwide, and is focused on providing the communications infrastructure, network protection, and information-assurance functions internal to the network. In addition, FORCEnet provides an integrated common operational and tactical database. FORCEnet core capability is based on the implementation of an IP-based, Internet-like protocol and on the adoption, where possible, of commercial standards for communications. Force projection and defense from forward-deployed naval platforms depends on the efficient networking of naval, national, and force nodes involved in all aspects of information production, command responsibility, and control authority.

The dependence of FORCEnet on space-based communications is implicit in the domain of FORCEnet functionality. FORCEnet has not developed, as far as the committee can discern, a systems-engineered view of the connectivity and capability required from space-based communications systems. This is a major shortcoming that needs to be addressed so that the Navy can define and defend its requirements to the DOD community, can plan and allocate resources, and can articulate S&T needs.

Some of the space and terrestrial communications needs that FORCEnet is built upon are as follows:

  • A global communications capability, with sufficient diversity to ensure accurate and timely information communications in order to enable unencumbered naval operations;

  • Access to all categories of tactical and strategic information, both digital and voice;

  • Information availability and assurance commensurate with data type, category, and priority;

  • Diverse, robust, and redundant communications pathways to overcome communications loss owing to threats, antenna blockages, or weather effects;

  • Information types and volumes tailored to the needs of sending and receiving data among systems, platforms, and users;

  • Timely delivery of information;

  • Dynamic, programmable allocation of bandwidth;

  • The ability to grow communications capacity efficiently and gracefully over time;

  • Maintaining of compatibility with legacy systems, including EHF, SHF, GBS, and UHF; and

  • Support for all naval organizational needs, including Navy and Marine Corps platform needs (sea/undersurface/air/land/space), dismounted operational

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

Navy and Marine Corps unit needs (sea/land), and Navy and Marine Corps needs in the areas of command, control, administration, organization, and logistics.

As discussed above, major shortfalls already exist in the scale of the bandwidth that supports the Navy, but the gaps will grow as other organizations supported by Sea Shield and Sea Basing increase their information bandwidth demands on Navy communications systems. In particular, these demands will involve the current NGA migration toward greatly increased bandwidth sensors outputting high-quality, high-definition-television information and streams of UAV video; powerful new video teleconferencing tools being deployed to improve planning and coordination (some of which require up to 6 Mb/s of capacity); and the Distributed Common Ground System, which is being developed to transmit large sensor data sets over high-rate (a few gigabits per second) links. Lastly, the DOD’s implementation of the TPPU concept has the potential to greatly increase the demands for space-based information bandwidth. Under TPPU, large numbers of users will be accessing relatively unprocessed data directly collected from sensors. For example, the large amounts of data that the TARPS E/F collects under this model should be posted for all other potential users to access. While there are many ways to implement the solutions (e.g., by shipboard server farm storage, terrestrial data warehousing, and so on), they all involve very high bandwidth space-based communications among warfighting platforms and storage locations. So, worldwide high-bandwidth, high-availability space-based communications are essential for implementation of the TPPU concept.

Space-Based Communications Capability Gaps and Issues

Bandwidth Needs

Future bandwidth available for naval forces can be understood in two ways—as an aggregate available bandwidth for a theater and as the maximal available bandwidth for a given platform. The aggregate is limited by the Navy’s upper bound on allocations of bandwidth from satellite systems. A platform’s bandwidths are typically limited (1) by the installed apertures and terminals on the platform, assuming that there is enough theater bandwidth available to service that platform; and (2) by the electronic capability to multiplex and handle the various data types flowing to and from the space segment.

Figure 4.3 shows the estimated amount of wideband communications bandwidth available to the afloat Navy during the spring of 2003. It shows that the total U.S. fleet had available approximately 192 Mb/s of bandwidth. Note that the majority of the indicated commercial and DOD resourced bandwidth was provided by unprotected communications (Inmarsat, Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS), and Commercial Wideband Satellite Program (CWSP)).

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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FIGURE 4.3 Fleet bandwidth (in megabits per second (Mb/s)) estimated for spring 2003. NOTE: A list of acronyms is provided in Appendix G. SOURCE: Data provided by the Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, Computing, and Space at a presentation to the committee on August 26, 2003.

Protected EHF (Military Strategic, Tactical, and Relay Satellite (MILSTAR)) systems provided only about 12 Mb/s (or 6 percent) of the Navy’s total capacity.

To understand how much bandwidth may be required by a large naval platform, the Naval Network Warfare Command (NETWARCOM) maintains a communications-requirements database, detailing current and future communications needs by data type, user, and so on. Figure 4.4 shows NETWARCOM’s estimate, resulting from this analysis, of the bandwidth required by a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (CVN) from 2003 through 2009. Although this analysis is of the wideband requirement, it would be only modestly augmented by addition of narrowband and secured communications capabilities.

Thus, the current requirement of about 8 Mb/s is anticipated to grow to about 25 Mb/s for a CVN over the next 6 years. This threefold increase is representative of the expectations of the operational warfighter’s anticipated needs. The NETWARCOM analysis is based on a bottom-up, interview-based analysis of data types, linked to fleet needs and desires. According to NETWARCOM, the assessment was done prior to the requirements collection activities of FORCEnet and the collection of the associated needs of the three pillars of Sea Power 21.21 The study also was likely influenced by the perception that available space-based bandwidth will be relatively fixed until 2009 when MUOS and the Advanced

21  

VADM Richard W. Mayo, USN, Commander, Naval Network Warfare Command, presentation to the committee, August 26, 2003.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

FIGURE 4.4 Future wideband communications needs for a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. NOTE: Estimates assume duplex terminal operation. SOURCE: CAPT John Yurchak, USN, Naval Network Warfare Command. 2003. “C5I [command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, and intelligence] Day—Progress Report Fleet Satellite Network Communications,” presentation to ADM Robert J. Natter, USN, Commander, Fleet Forces Command, Norfolk, Va., March 31.

Wideband System (AWS) are scheduled to enter operation. Finally, it appears to the committee that the Navy’s input to the TCA is also based on this limited analysis.

Table 4.3 presents an estimate of the aggregate theater bandwidth that was available for naval forces in FY00, the actual theater bandwidth available to U.S. Central Command in FY03, and NETWARCOM’s projection of future theater bandwidths available by FY07. The total available satellite bandwidth for a theater was approximately 22 Mb/s in FY00 and 49 Mb/s in FY03, with a potential of 318 Mb/s in FY07. Table 4.4 presents maximum bandwidth (in Mb/s) available for individual platforms (those that have been fitted to the current state of the art) in FY00 and FY03 as well as NETWARCOM’s projection for FY07. Note that even in FY07, naval platforms will have rather low communications bandwidth. For example, a command ship (LCC) will have slightly more than 10 Mb/ s, while an attack submarine (SSN) will have no more than 0.5 Mb/s of wideband capacity.

Note that the projected communications shortfalls will be particularly significant in cases in which command resides on a naval platform. As stated above, for example, during Operation Iraqi Freedom (spring 2003), the U.S. joint forces

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

TABLE 4.3 Total Theater Bandwidth Available for Naval Forces in FY00, Actual Theater Bandwidth Available to U.S. Central Command in FY03, and Naval Network Warfare Command’s (NETWARCOM’s) Projection of Future Theater Bandwidth Available by FY07

 

System

Bandwidth (in Mb/s)

FY00 (Estimated)

FY03 (Actual)

FY07 (Projected)

Earth Beam

Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS)

8.192

17.408

0.0

Commercial Wideband Satellite-communications Program (CWSP)

10.752

30.208

0.0

International Maritime Satellite (Inmarsat)

3.968

13.888

11.200

Wideband Gapfiller System (WGS)

 

 

0.0

Spot Beam

Extremely High Frequency Medium Data Rate (EHF MDR)

 

0.0

14.080

Global Broadcast Service (GBS)

 

49.152

49.152

Wideband Gapfiller System (WGS)

 

 

244.480

TOTAL

 

22.912

110.656

318.912

SOURCE: CAPT John Yurchak, USN, Naval Network Warfare Command. 2003. “C5I [command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, and intelligence] Day—Progress Report Fleet Satellite Network Communications,” presentation to ADM Robert J. Natter, USN, Commander, Fleet Forces Command, Norfolk, Va., March 31.

utilized over 750 Mb/s of communications on a sustained basis.22 This level is approximately 50 times that being planned for any Navy command ship, even out to 2007. Since bandwidth utilization has historically grown exponentially (and there is no reason to believe that it has yet leveled off), this current gap will only grow by 2007. The committee believes that this problem will be particularly acute for the Sea Basing mission (as described above), since a joint forces command-and-control center may need to be based at sea and thus rely solely on space-based communications.

Communications Capability Gaps

In reviewing available information and in assessing the space-based communications capabilities required to implement the robust elements of Sea Power 21 described above, the committee noted several gaps and apparent issues that will

22  

Lt Gen T. Michael Moseley, USAF, Commander, Central Air Forces. 2003. Operation Iraqi Freedom—By the Numbers, Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., April 30, p. 12.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

require concerted naval effort to resolve over the coming years. While the Navy is correct in projecting a general trend of bandwidth growth, the committee believes that the exponential growth in capability- and platform-generated data cause the current naval bandwidth projections to be severely underestimated. Further, the committee believes that the reliance of warfighting capability on satellite communications will necessitate new requirements to substantially increase assured and nonassured link availability.

The tactical and mobile user will require high-availability, high-bandwidth, assured communications links worldwide. To some extent this issue has been discussed and recognized by many in the Navy, but the Navy has not converted these issues into clear goals, requirements, or documentation. In particular, the requirements-based analysis of future needs, to date, has been largely derived by looking back at what has been the communications capability, with respect to data types, speeds, and sources. Because the analyses were developed prior to the clear articulation of the Sea Power 21 and TPPU concepts as well as before the experiences of Operation Iraqi Freedom, they could not be expected to support these new needs. Also, the current communications requirements have not accounted for the push of technological capability to provide new data types and capabilities (e.g., streaming video from multiple BLOS UAVs, the extreme bandwidth needs of the SBR, and the articulation of Sea Basing). Finally, the migration to TPPU from the previous concept of tasking, processing, exploiting, and

TABLE 4.4 Naval Platform Wideband Capacity Available for Naval Forces in FY00, Actual Naval Platform Wideband Capacity Available in FY03, and Naval Network Warfare Command’s (NETWARCOM’s) Projection of Naval Platform Wideband Capacity Available by FY07

Platform

Wideband Capacity (Mb/s)

FY00 (Estimated)

FY03 (Actual)

FY07 (Projected)

Command ship (LCC)

2.048

3.072

10.496

Aircraft carrier, nuclear-powered (CV/CVN)

2.048

3.072

8.448

Amphibious assault ship (LHD/LHA)

2.048

2.304

8.448

Dock landing ship/amphibious transport dock (LSD/LPD)

0.064

0.064

3.328

Guided cruiser (CG)

0.064

0.384

3.328

Guided missile destroyer (DDG)

0.064

0.128

3.328

Destroyer/guided missile frigate (DD/FFG)

0.064

0.064

3.328

Fast combat support ship (AE/AO/AF)

0.064

0.512

0.512

Attack submarine (SSN)

0.032

0.064

0.512

Guided missile attack submarine (SSGN)

NA

NA

0.768

NOTE: NA = wideband capability not available to platform. SOURCE: CAPT John Yurchak, USN, Naval Network Warfare Command. 2003. “C5I [command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, and intelligence] Day—Progress Report Fleet Satellite Network Communications,” presentation to ADM Robert J. Natter, USN, Commander, Fleet Forces Command, Norfolk, Va., March 31.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

disseminating (TPED) will require the reassessment of database locations, server sizes, and communications bandwidth across the GIG. The current integration of total space-based communications needs is being compiled by NETWARCOM and, it is hoped, will engage many of these issues.

Thus, it appears that the Sea Power 21 concept is inconsistent with current Navy plans and future requirements for space-related communications, and it appears that the Navy is not investing appropriately in thorough operational analysis to support these established requirements. Robust, high-bandwidth space-based communications will be essential for FORCEnet, but it is unclear whether planned improvements in naval space-based communications will satisfy even the minimal FORCEnet needs for bandwidth, availability, or information assurance. Table 4.5 summarizes some of these more important current gaps and resulting needs.

TABLE 4.5 Space-Based Communications Gaps and Resulting Needs for Navy Use

Space-Based Communications Needs

Gaps or Shortcomings

Gb/s bandwidth to platforms

Continual expansion of communications bandwidth is caused by: consolidation of Sea Power 21 pillars; technology push; transition to concept of tasking, posting, processing, and using; and new generations of high-data-rate sensors (SBR, UAV streaming video, and others).

Very high link availability

Current analysis shows nonavailability of instantaneous tactical-user communications connectivity ranging (minute by minute) from 5 to 30 percent of the time. As ISR cueing migrates to beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) ranges, this will be unacceptably low.

Very high communications assurance

Most space-based communications bandwidth is now supplied by unprotected DOD and commercial systems. Currently there is no parsing of requirements into assured versus unprotected bandwidth needs and no analysis of how to perform operations in the event of losing access to unprotected communications.

Seamless integration with the Global Information Grid

Naval communications are largely channelized, including architectures for MUOS and WGS. The Transformational Communications Architecture will strongly migrate to IP-based architecture, and will require a large shift in communications philosophy, systems, operations, training, and platform systems.

Very low latency worldwide communications

Beyond-line-of-sight cueing for theater and strategic missile warning and defensive systems will require revision in many communications concepts, infrastructure, and capabilities.

NOTE: A list of acronyms is provided in Appendix G.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

While the Navy is supporting S&T development in some of the areas indicated in Table 4.5, it would be unwise to focus all naval space S&T into a space-based communications research program. Virtually all aspects of space-based communications will be far more useful if combined into hybrid systems (e.g., combined space and airborne networks), so it is important also to devise S&T activities that cross the space/nonspace boundary. Finally, it is noted that many productive research programs, including several current ones, do not issue from a top-down analysis of needs, but from the understanding of technical requirements by capable technologists who propose innovative and unconventional ways to apply technology or provide new approaches to difficult problems; such efforts at innovation and technology push are encouraged.

Findings and Recommendations Regarding Space-Based Communications

Basic Communications Capabilities

For the naval forces of the future to be effectively engaged in large-scale planning, command and control, and ISR operations as part of the joint forces, naval capability requirements for future fleet space-based communications appear to be significantly underestimated in the following areas:

  • Total fleet bandwidth requirements,

  • Individual platform bandwidth requirements, and

  • Availability and assurance of GIG communications for mobile/tactical users.

The shortcomings of official requirements estimates are recognized by the Navy and are likely being accounted for in FORCEnet requirements studies now under way.23 However, a large mismatch currently exists between the FORCEnet and Sea Basing needs and the current bandwidth planning estimates. In addition, the evolving concept of TPPU may drive increases in communications bandwidth, processing power, and interpretation functionality at the user end of the GIG.

Much of the Navy’s current operational communications capability is dependent on nonprotected space-based communications systems; hence, loss or adversary exploitation of this bandwidth could have significant consequences during naval operations. While the Navy relies on MILSTAR and its successor, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite, for assured communications, it is unclear if current and planned assured communications bandwidths

23  

RADM Jay Cohen, USN, Chief of Naval Research, presentation to the committee, July 29, 2003.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

that could be made available to the Navy are sufficient to sustain core naval operations in the event that unprotected communications assets were disrupted.

Thus, current naval platforms suffer from fragile and intermittent network connectivity. Connectivity and communications availability are currently limited by antenna multiplicity, placement, and real estate issues related to the design of the platform superstructures. Implementing the Sea Power 21 concepts will require near-continuous communications between commanders and tactical forces, and the current level of communications outages due to antenna geometry and placement will become increasingly unacceptable.


Recommendation 4.10. The Department of the Navy should increase its depth of understanding of Navy and integrated joint future communications needs.

The Department of the Navy cannot remain relatively passive in accepting the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) space-based communications systems capabilities. The Navy should conduct its own systems analysis of communications requirements for a 20-year period on the basis of Sea Power 21 concepts. This function should be ongoing; it should be done in conjunction with a set of developed and maintained mission scenarios over the moving window of planning periods as technology, warfighting concepts, and threat understanding evolve. In particular, such an analysis program should include the following:

  • Input from the space-based-communications, information-assurance, and science and technology communities, as well as from warfighters, to help ensure that potential limitations and future capabilities are included in the analysis;

  • Regular interaction with large-scale experimental testbeds, including the evolving Transformational Communications testbed being developed by the Naval Research Laboratory;

  • Investigation of the partitioning of requirements between space- and ground-based systems and additionally among various space-based systems, independent of current program management—the investigation should also be revalidated periodically to ensure that it is current with warfighting, weapons, sensors, and threat analyses and should serve as a basis for participation in the development of detailed requirements for all space-based communications acquisition programs undertaken by the Navy, Air Force, or other DOD agencies;

  • Review of future terminal and antenna configurations and strategies in order to develop a long-range strategy to consolidate antennas, terminals, and network interface electronics into an efficient, continuous interface to the Global Information Grid for naval platforms;

  • Regular red teaming to ensure that space-based communications requirements are consistent with warfighting strategy, new systems concepts, and evolving technology; and

  • A comprehensive account of naval and joint warfighting operations and of technology evolution. Specific elements should include the following:

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×
  • Joint operations having extensive involvement with the DOD Executive Agent for Space as well as with other Services;

  • Sea Strike, Sea Shield, Sea Basing, and FORCEnet capability needs;

  • Increasingly large data volumes expected to be produced by emerging airborne and space-based sensor capabilities, including Space Based Radar, the Future Imagery Architecture, and unmanned aerial vehicle constellations;

  • Partitioning of communications requirements by assurance levels to enable a warfighting core capability should unprotected communications prove vulnerable; and

  • Advanced data and technology concepts, including the needs associated with the tasking, posting, processing, and using concept.

Research and Development Programming

Although the Navy has several proposed communications projects targeting the bandwidth gaps discussed above, the current R&D program is underfunded and appears unlikely to produce the technology base necessary to enable the acquisition of systems that will reliably and continuously connect tactical naval users to the GIG. Naval communications requirements derived from Sea Power 21 concepts rely on such global connectivity. The Chief of Naval Research (CNR) recently stated that “extremely high data rates using laser communications will not be available to the Navy tactical user without technology development for the ‘final mile’ to the fleet.”24 Thus, reliable, extremely wide bandwidth communications connectivity is the most significant projected Sea Power 21 capability gap. The Navy currently lacks the space-based communications operational analysis needed to assess future technical options and their maturity. Without such an analytic basis, the Navy will find it increasingly difficult to interact with and influence DOD programs (such as TCA) and judge the degree of reliance that the Navy will need to place on such programs during its own strategic and operational planning.


Recommendation 4.11. The Department of the Navy should fund and manage an expanded operational analysis program focused on supporting research and development in space-based communications.

The expanded program should focus on developing solutions in order to accomplish the following: (1) provide multiple gigabit-per-second-class bandwidth, connecting mobile Navy users to the Global Information Grid; (2) provide high availability for all user platforms; (3) provide high assurance for all user platforms; (4) resolve antenna and terminal multiplexing issues; and (5) ensure that Navy-led space-based communications programs such as the Mobile User

24  

RADM Jay Cohen, USN, Chief of Naval Research, presentation to the committee, July 29, 2003.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

Objective System, as well as shipboard and ground-based networks, evolve to be fully compatible with the GIG and the Distributed Common Ground System transport standards. The Department of the Navy should also allocate funding for basic communications R&D to ensure that new technologies and concepts are available in the future.


Recommendation 4.12. The Department of the Navy not only should support research and development programs, but also should support experimental programs aimed at supporting space-based communications.

In particular, the Department of the Navy should consider supporting a space experiment (perhaps through the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration program) to demonstrate high-availability communications at gigabit-per-second rates from space to a deployed naval platform. Such an effort should be considered together with current and proposed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Air Force programs in optical communications from space, with a suggested naval research role in supplying the last-mile link from space systems to the fleet or other mobile naval tactical users. This experimental program and analysis should include verification of the end-to-end Transformational Communications (TC) Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion concept using the Naval Research Laboratory’s TC testbed. This testbed is already being organized by the Naval Research Laboratory for use with TC as well as for use by other defense agencies. It would be wise for naval communications studies and architecture development teams to take advantage of the testbed’s existence.


Recommendation 4.13. The Department of the Navy should direct research and development aimed at the problem of low-latency communications from space-based sensors to platforms, particularly with respect to the cueing of fast-moving targets from beyond-line-of-sight sensors and national systems. Such an activity should be done in conjunction with improvements to the Cooperative Engagement Capability as well as other missile defense efforts.


Recommendation 4.14. The Department of the Navy should focus more science and technology efforts on consolidated antenna and terminal configurations necessary to enable near-100-percent-reliable shipboard communications.


Recommendation 4.15. The Department of the Navy should support a naval space-based communications challenge and fund its science and technology (S&T) community to aggressively anticipate potential future space-based communications requirements.

For example, a suitable challenge to the S&T community is to demonstrate from space worldwide, 40 Gb/s connectivity to naval platforms with near-100-percent-available, high-assurance communications connectivity.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×
Narrowband Communications

Historically the Navy has been a leader in supplying national capability for communications to the tactical warfighter. It is continuing this leadership in the Mobile User Objective System program. By leading, staffing, and executing the study, specification, acquisition, activation, and operation of narrowband space-based communications systems, the Navy has an opportunity to invest the naval space cadre with on-the-job training and experience in space technology, issues, contracting, and operations. This experienced core, in turn, will increase the Navy’s effectiveness as a partner in other National Security Space systems acquisitions, while ensuring that the acquired narrowband capability meets the Navy user’s needs over the long term.


Recommendation 4.16. The Department of the Navy should continue its role as lead agency for narrowband communications. The Department of the Navy should direct the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) program to direct special attention in FY05 to ensuring that MUOS will interface effectively as an edge system in the Transformational Communications Architecture, and to harden the system, as is feasible within cost and schedule constraints, against the evolving counterspace threat environment.


Recommendation 4.17. The Department of the Navy should revise its strategy of relying largely on commercial and unprotected communications during conflict. The Navy should carefully review the nature of potential threats to unprotected communications, both ground- and space-based, and take these threats into account when specifying next-generation communications needs and requirements. The Navy should also determine its core warfighting communications capability needs and should specify robust protection for these minimum capabilities to ensure adequate communications capabilities in the event of a total loss of access to commercial systems.

Navy Participation in National Security Space Activities

The leadership of the Navy in defining the Transformational Communications Architecture is established, but its increased participation in evolving the system concept is essential in providing the technology base and the system definition, development, and acquisition.


Recommendation 4.18. The Department of the Navy should increase its personnel assignments to support the Transformational Communications Architecture program. The Department of the Navy should allocate naval personnel so that on the order of 10 to 15 percent of the total military and support staffing of this major acquisition program is represented by the Naval Services.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

POSITION, NAVIGATION, AND TIMING

Effective military operations extending across the entire spectrum of warfare require a robust and accurate system for position, navigation, and timing (PNT). Space-based navigational systems (GPS in particular) use satellites to allow users to establish three-dimensional positions (latitude, longitude, and altitude) of airborne and terrestrial platforms and to coordinate precision time and time-interval measurements. Such navigational systems have become the predominant means for providing vital military information. This fairly recent move away from long-wave radio navigation and timing systems (such as the Long Range Navigation (LORAN) system) and celestial observations has influenced military operations well beyond original expectations. Highly accurate clocks and frequency sources are now of vital importance to the DOD, because the accuracy and stability of these devices are key determinants of the performance of command, control, communications, and intelligence; navigation; surveillance; electronic warfare; missile guidance; identification-friend-or-foe systems; and precision military operations.

Background

Transit

The first satellite navigation system, the Navy’s navigation satellite system—Transit—had its inception just days after the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik on October 4, 1957.25 The idea for Transit came about when scientists at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University were able to determine Sputnik’s orbit by analyzing Doppler shifts of its radio signals measured during a single pass. Frank McClure, then-chairman of APL’s research center, later suggested that if the satellite’s position were known and predictable, then the measured Doppler shift could be used to locate a receiver on Earth—in other words, one could navigate by satellite. Under sponsorship by the Navy’s Strategic Programs Office and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), APL began developing the Transit system in 1958; the system became operational in 1964.26

Transit was originally developed to provide accurate, reliable, all-weather, global navigation for use by ballistic-missile-carrying submarines. Transit’s use spread to surface vessels, and in 1967 the system was released for public and

25  

Additional detail on the Navy’s development of space is provided in Appendix A.

26  

Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory. 1996. The Legacy of Transit, Laurel, Md.; and National Research Council. 2002. An Assessment of Precision Time and Time Interval Science and Technology, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

commercial use by ships of all friendly nations. Approximately 28 Transit-series satellites were launched during the lifetime of the program, and an 8-satellite constellation was still operating when the DOD phased out its use as a navigational system on December 31, 1996.

Timation

In 1964, NRL put forth a new concept for an improved space-based navigation system. This system would involve time (or range) measurements between a satellite and a user that were based on the utilization of spaceflight-qualified precision clocks. It was predicted that timing signals from such a satellite could provide more precise navigation than was available from Transit, as well as supplying a uniform global time standard. To achieve this goal, NRL started programs to develop improved quartz frequency standards suitable for spaceflight. Soon thereafter, the Timation program, which relied on atomic clocks in space, was established. Three satellites were launched during the experimental Timation program. The third Timation satellite was renamed Navigation Technology Satellite (NTS) 1 and flew the first atomic clock in 1974. Later, in 1977, NTS-2 was launched and flew the first cesium clock in space. These space-qualified atomic clocks were then used in the next-generation satellite navigation system, the Navigation Satellite Timing and Ranging/Global Positioning System (NAVSTAR/GPS), more commonly known as GPS.27

NAVSTAR Global Positioning System

The position, navigation, and timing system known today as NAVSTAR/ GPS (or just GPS) capitalized on the several satellite navigation systems and concepts developed by or for the DOD, including Transit and Timation, and additional Air Force (Project 621B) and other DOD-wide studies. By 1972, the best characteristics of each of these programs had coalesced to form the general system characteristics and initial design parameters for GPS. From its inception, GPS was designed to meet the radio navigation requirements of all of the military Services as well as those of civilian users. On February 22, 1978, the Air Force began launching experimental GPS satellites, termed Block I satellites. After the third satellite successfully achieved orbit, testing of the system began. Using a portable receiver mounted in a truck moving 80 kilometers per hour, the Air Force showed that the desired positioning accuracy of 10 meters in two dimen-

27  

Gary Federici, Robert Hess, and Kent Pelot. 1997. From the Sea to the Stars: A History of U.S. Navy Space and Space-Related Activities, Working Paper, The Center for Naval Analyses, Alexandria, Va.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

sions was easily achievable. After tests with the first three experimental satellites proved successful, eight additional Block I satellites were launched to complete the design and testing phase of the GPS program. Although these satellites were intended to have a 3-year life span, they achieved an average operational life of almost 7 years.28

GPS relies on the principle of pseudo-ranging to provide accurate positioning to its users. Each satellite in orbit continuously transmits a radio signal with a unique code, called a pseudo-random noise (PRN) code, that includes data about the satellite’s position and the exact time that the coded transmission was initiated, as kept by the satellite’s onboard atomic clock. (GPS utilizes Coordinated Universal Time maintained by the U.S. Naval Observatory, in Washington, D.C.) A pseudo-range measurement is created by measuring the distance between a user’s receiver and a satellite by subtracting the time at which the signal was sent by the satellite from the time at which it is received by the user. Once three ranges (or distances) from three known positions are measured, a position in all three dimensions can be determined. In the case of GPS, however, a fourth satellite is generally needed in order to eliminate a common bias in the pseudo-ranges to all satellites caused by a lack of synchronization between the satellite and receiver clocks. Once this clock bias is eliminated by the presence of a fourth signal, a highly accurate three-dimensional position can be determined.

Instead of transmitting one PRN code on one radio signal, each GPS satellite actually transmits two distinct spread spectrum signals that contain two different PRN codes, called the coarse acquisition (C/A) code and the precision (P) code. The C/A-code is broadcast on the L-band carrier signal known as L1, which is centered at 1572.42 MHz. The P-code is broadcast on the L1 carrier in phase quadrature with the C/A carrier and on a second carrier frequency, designated as L2, that is centered at 1227.60 MHz.

The L1 C/A-code provides free positioning and timing information to civilian users all over the world; it is known as the standard positioning service (SPS). The timing information on the C/A-code is also used by some receivers to aid in the acquisition of the more accurate P-code. The P-code is normally encrypted using National Security Agency (NSA) cryptographic techniques, and decryption capability is available only to the military and to other authorized users. When encrypted, the P-code is normally referred to as the Y-code. Y-code availability through authorized decryption capability is known as the precise positioning service (PPS).29

28  

National Research Council. 1995. The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

29  

National Research Council. 1995. The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

Before the PPS and SPS were officially established, GPS designers had anticipated that use of the Y- and C/A-codes would produce very different levels of positioning accuracy. Use of the Y-code was expected to result in 10 m accuracy, whereas the C/A-code was expected to provide accuracy of 100 m. Developmental testing of the Block I GPS satellites, however, showed that the accuracy difference between the two codes was not this significant. PPS accuracy was officially specified as 16 m spherical error probable (SEP), and SPS accuracy was set at 100 m SEP. This two-level accuracy arrangement was made possible on the Block II/IIA satellites through an accuracy denial method known as selective availability (SA). SA is a purposeful degradation in GPS navigation and timing accuracy that controls access to the system’s full capabilities. SA was accomplished in part by intentionally varying the precise time of the clocks onboard the satellites, which introduces errors into the GPS signal. An extensive study conducted by the National Research Council (NRC) in 1995 determined that the military effectiveness of SA was significantly undermined by differential GPS augmentations.30 For this and other, related civil-use reasons, the NRC recommended that SA be turned to zero, but the capability is retained for potential emergency use by the National Command Authority. By Executive Order in 2000,31 SA was turned to zero on the C/A-code L1 signal. SA and a new antispoofing encryption are still retained for the military Y-code.

Differential GPS (DGPS) is the most widely used method of GPS augmentation; it can significantly improve the accuracy and availability of basic GPS. DGPS is based on knowledge of the highly accurate, geodetically surveyed location of a GPS reference station, which observes GPS signals in real time and compares their ranging information to the ranges expected to be observed at the DGPS fixed reference location. The differences between observed ranges and predicted ranges are used to compute corrections to GPS parameters, error sources, and/or resultant positions. These differential corrections are then transmitted to GPS users, who apply the corrections to their received GPS signals or computed position. As an example, the Wide-Area Augmentation System is a wide-area DGPS concept planned by the Federal Aviation Administration to improve the accuracy, integrity, and availability of GPS to levels that support flight operations in the National Airspace System, from en route navigation through Category I precision approaches.

30  

National Research Council. 1995. The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

31  

Statement by the President Regarding the United States’ Decision to Stop Degrading Global Positioning System Accuracy, May 1, 2000. Available online at <http://www.ostp.gov/html/0053_2.html>. Accessed February 19, 2004.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

GPS user equipment varies widely in cost and complexity, depending on the receiver design and application. Receiver sets, which currently vary in price from less than $400 to over $30,000, can range from simple, one-channel devices that only track one satellite at a time and provide only basic positioning information, to complex, multichannel units that track all satellites in view and perform a variety of functions. Currently, GPS is the sole U.S. navigation satellite system for civil and military use.

The Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System

The Russian Global Orbiting Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) was developed in the early to mid-1980s by the military of the former Soviet Union. The GLONASS space segment also is designed to consist of 24 satellites, but these satellites are to be arranged in three orbital planes at 19,100 km (11,870 mi) altitude and at an inclination of 64.8 degrees rather than in six planes as for GPS. The full GLONASS constellation was scheduled to be operational in 1995.32 Currently, 11 GLONASS satellites are on-orbit.

GLONASS differs from GPS in the way that the user segment differentiates one satellite from another. Instead of each satellite’s transmitting a unique PRN code as GPS satellites do, GLONASS satellites all transmit the same PRN code on different channels or frequencies. All of these frequencies, however, are in the L band near either of the two GPS downlink signals, which simplifies the task of designing integrated receivers. In addition, GPS and GLONASS use different time standards and coordinate systems. Discrepancies between these standards and coordinates exist and must be corrected by combined receivers if an integrated GPS/GLONASS capability is desired.

Galileo

In May 2003, the European Space Agency initiated a program to develop a global satellite navigation system (Galileo) with capabilities similar to those of GPS. However, the European Space Agency has asserted that Galileo will be built for civilian purposes, with sufficient positional and timing accuracy to support Europe’s integrated transport system. Galileo will consist of about 30 satellites (27 operational and 3 spares), positioned in three circular orbital planes at 23,616 km altitude and at an inclination of 56 degrees. Galileo will provide dual downlink frequencies in the L band, with a high degree of availability through an integrated failure-reporting system. The initial Galileo validation launches are planned for 2005 through 2006. Once the on-orbit validation phase has been

32  

National Research Council. 1995. The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

completed, the remaining satellites will be launched to reach a full operational capability in 2008.

Galileo will provide an additional search-and-rescue feature: each satellite will be equipped with a transponder that will be able to transfer distress signals from users’ transmitters to a Rescue Coordination Center for the activation of a rescue operation. At the same time, the system will provide a signal to the user, indicating that the situation has been detected and that help is being provided.

It is intended that the Galileo user’s receiver equipment be interoperable with GPS and GLONASS.

Current and Planned Capabilities

The NAVSTAR GPS is recognized as the only satellite navigation system currently employed by the U.S. military and civil sectors. GPS is viewed as a key enabler to DOD transformation, as its precision positioning and timing capabilities enable continuous situational awareness, precision strike, autonomous operations, and precision synchronization of combat operations.33

Space Segment

A space-based radio positioning system nominally consisting of a 24-satellite constellation, GPS provides navigation and timing information to military and civilian users worldwide. The constellation currently consists of Block II, IIA, and IIR satellites, arranged in six orbital planes of 55-degree inclination, at 10,988 nautical miles altitude. Each satellite completes one orbit in one-half of a sidereal day and therefore passes over the same location on Earth once every sidereal day (approximately every 23 hours and 56 minutes). The particular orbital configuration and number of satellites allows a user at any location on Earth to have at least four satellites in view 24 hours per day. Each Block II/IIA satellite is designed to operate for 7.5 years; the Block IIR satellites’ design life is 10 years. Block II/IIA provides SPS with a 16 to 24 m SEP on the C/A code L1 signal and PPS with a 16 m SEP on the P-code L1 and L2 signals.34

Block IIRs began replacing Block II/IIAs on July 22, 1997. There are currently eight Block IIR satellites on orbit, with the next launch planned for October 2003.35 Block IIR satellites boast dramatic improvements over the previous blocks. They also have reprogrammable satellite processors enabling in-flight

33  

Global Positioning System Joint Program Office (GPS JPO). 2003. NAVSTAR GPS—Providing DOD Transformation, Washington, D.C., October 28.

34  

Global Positioning System Joint Program Office (GPS JPO). 2003. NAVSTAR GPS—Providing DOD Transformation, Washington, D.C., October 28.

35  

Global Positioning System Joint Program Office (GPS JPO). 2003. NAVSTAR GPS Overview, March.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

problem fixes. Eight Block IIR satellites are being modified to radiate the new, military-only (M-code) signal on both the L1 and L2 channels, as well as the more robust civil signal (L2C) on the L2 channel. The M-code signal is a more robust and capable signal architecture. It will have increased power and reduced vulnerability to signal jamming. In addition to the improved signals, the reliability of the GPS navigation message will be improved by adding more satellite monitoring stations. These additional stations will ensure that at least two stations will be able to simultaneously monitor each satellite. The data collected by these additional stations will then be combined with the data from the existing monitoring stations and sent to the master control station for processing. The result is improved accuracy of the navigation message broadcast by the satellite. The Block IIR positional accuracy today is 6.6 m. The first modified Block IIR (designated as the IIR-M) is planned for launch in 2004.36

Block IIF satellites are the next generation of GPS space vehicles. Block IIF provides all of the capabilities of the Block IIR-M with some additional benefits as well. Improvements include an extended design life to 12 years, faster processors with more memory, and a new civil signal on a third frequency (L5). Block IIF positional accuracy is planned to be 3.4 m. The first Block IIF satellite is scheduled for launch in 2006.37

Control Segment

The GPS operational control segment (OCS) consists of the master control station, located at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado; remote monitoring stations, located in Hawaii, Diego Garcia, Ascension Island, and Kwajalein; and uplink antennas located at three of the four remote monitoring stations and at the master control station. The four remote monitoring stations contribute to satellite control by tracking each GPS satellite in orbit, monitoring its navigation signal, and relaying this information to the master control station. The master control station is responsible for overall satellite command and control, which includes maintaining the exact orbits of each satellite and determining any timing errors that may be present in the highly accurate atomic clocks aboard each satellite.

Major improvements are planned for the OCS. They include a new master control station with improved operator interfaces and Block IIR/IIF capabilities at Schriever Air Force Base, an alternate master control station at Vandenberg Air Force Base, and the establishment of additional monitoring sites at NGA locations around the globe.38

36  

Global Positioning System Joint Program Office (GPS JPO). 2003. NAVSTAR GPS—Providing DOD Transformation, Washington, D.C., October 28.

37  

Global Positioning System Joint Program Office (GPS JPO). 2003. NAVSTAR GPS Overview, Washington, D.C., March.

38  

Global Positioning System Joint Program Office (GPS JPO). 2003. NAVSTAR GPS—Providing DOD Transformation, Washington, D.C., October 28.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×
Modernized User Equipment

Another effort under way at the GPS Joint Program Office (JPO) is that of developing a single modernized GPS receiver card to demonstrate M-code receiving and processing capability. The Services are expected to procure their own modernized user equipment based on the demonstrated performance of the M-code receiver card and to integrate this capability into their respective specific platform host receivers. The M-code card development effort is planned for completion by February 2008. To assist the GPS JPO with these activities, the DOD Executive Agent for Space recently requested that each of the Service departments conduct a GPS user equipment synchronization study to ensure that M-code user equipment development is synchronized with space- and ground-segment M-code capabilities.

Global Positioning System Block III

A future positioning system, the Block III Global Positioning System (GPS III), is in the planning stages. This system is intended to provide for the assured delivery of enhanced PNT signals and to offer related services to meet the needs of the next generation of GPS users. The GPS III program includes an integrated space-segment and control-segment system that incorporates the nuclear detonation detection system, a security infrastructure to provide user access to and protection of the entire system, and the incorporation of additional mission capabilities (including blue force tracking, search and rescue, and others).

GPS III is envisioned to involve a total reexamination of the GPS architecture in order to achieve increased performance in hostile electromagnetic environments and possibly to feature the use of satellite-to-satellite links to improve control efficiencies. GPS III is also planned to incorporate a third civil signal and the use of spot beams to enable higher effective radiated power in small warfare theaters. It has been established that GPS III will have a minimum of +20 dB gain over Block IIA/IIR capabilities, with a long-term objective of +27 dB to achieve significant performance in jamming environments.39 GPS III positional accuracy is expected to be 1.9 m.

The statement of objectives for GPS III was released in August 2001, as part of a system definition and risk reduction announcement by the GPS JPO.40 The first launch of a GPS III satellite is planned for 2012, with a full operational capability set for 2018.

39  

Global Positioning System Joint Program Office (GPS JPO). 2003. NAVSTAR GPS—Providing DOD Transformation, Washington, D.C., October, 28.

40  

Global Positioning System Joint Program Office (GPS GPO). 2001. Global Positioning System (GPS) III, System Definition and Risk Reduction (SD/RR), Statement of Objectives (SOO), Washington, D.C., August 30.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

Role of the Department of the Navy

Assigned the primary lead in PNT for the Navy, the Oceanographer of the Navy is responsible for providing resource and program sponsorship. In addition, the Fleet Forces Command is responsible for forwarding the fleet’s GPS and PNT requirements, the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) is assigned to develop and acquire naval GPS user equipment, ONR supports R&D on precision clocks, NRL monitors all GPS clock performance, and the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) maintains the master time reference for the DOD.

Requirements

The Navy, together with the other Services, participates in developing the functional and performance requirements for the GPS constellation, based on a number of military applications. Table 4.6 provides a summary of naval applications and associated positioning and radio frequency interference (RFI) resistance requirements. Table 4.7 provides a summary of military aviation and precision-guided munitions applications and associated positioning and RFI resistance requirements. Both of these tables were published in 1995 in the National Research Council report The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset,41 and although somewhat dated, they provide a good indication of requirements placed on GPS for positional accuracy, integrity, and RFI resistance. In addition, Appendix C of this report provides an evaluation of Sea Power 21 dependencies on current and projected PNT capabilities. The overall result of this comparison shows that precision PNT is critical for most Sea Power 21 military operations identified.

User Equipment

SPAWAR and the GPS and Navigation Systems Division of the SPAWAR Systems Center-San Diego, are the Navy’s principal acquisition and engineering development activities for GPS receiver development and integration. These organizations have provided technical, management, and engineering support for GPS receivers deployed on more than 120 Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard platforms. SPAWAR Systems Center-San Diego also manages the GPS Central Engineering Activity Laboratory for evaluating GPS receivers.

Timing Standards

NRL, ONR, and USNO continue to maintain their leadership role in the research and development of precision time standards. As noted earlier, through

41  

National Research Council. 1995. The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

TABLE 4.6 Naval Applications and Associated Positioning and Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) Resistance Requirements

 

Application

Accuracy

RFI Resistance

En route

Pilotage and coastal waters

72.0 m CEP

High

Navigation

Inland waters

25.0 m CEP

High

Open waters

2400.0 m CEP

High

Rendezvous

380.0 m CEP

High

Harbor

8.0 m CEP

High

Mine warfare

Swept channel navigation and defensive mining

16.0 m CEP

High

Offensive mining

50.0 m CEP

High

Antimine countermeasures

<5.0 m CEP

High

Geodetic reference guide

128.0 m CEP

High

Special warfare

Airdrop

20.0 m CEP

High

Small craft

50.0 m CEP

High

Combat swimming

1.0 m CEP

High

Land warfare and insert/extraction

1.0 m CEP

High

Task group operations

General task group operations

72.0 m CEP

High

Amphibious warfare

Beach surveys

185.0 m CEP

High

Landing craft

50.0 m CEP

High

Artillery and reconnaissance

<6.0 m CEP

High

Surveying

Hydrographic

<5.0 m (2 drms)

High

Ocean and geophysical deep ocean

90.0 m (2 drms)

High

Oceanographic

100.0 m (2 drms)

High

NOTE: CEP, or circular error probable, represents an accuracy that is achievable 50 percent of the time in two dimensions (latitude and longitude). Drms, or distance root mean square; 2 drms = 2.4 × CEP. SOURCE: National Research Council. 1995. The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

its Timation program NRL made significant contributions to the development of precision frequency standards suitable for spaceflight. NRL became a key participant in the development of advanced atomic clocks for flight in GPS satellites.42 Navy responsibility in precision time is currently designated by DOD Instruction 5000.2, Part 7, Section C, which calls for the Department of the Navy to carry out the following:

  • Maintain the DOD reference standard through the USNO.

  • Serve as the DOD precise time and time interval (frequency) manager, with responsibilities for

42  

National Research Council. 2002. An Assessment of Precision Time and Time Interval Science and Technology, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

TABLE 4.7 Military Aviation and Precision-Guided Munitions Applications and Associated Positioning and Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) Resistance Requirements

 

Application

Accuracy

RFI Resistance

Aviation

Low-level navigation and air drop

50.0 m (2 drms)

High

Non-precision sea approach/landings

12.0 m (2 drms)

High

Precision approach/landings (unprepared surface)

12.5 m (2 drms)

High

Precision sea approach/landings

0.6 m (2 drms)

High

Amphibious and antisubmarine warfare

50.0 m CEP

High

Anti-air warfare

18.1 m CEP

High

Conventional bombing

37.5 m CEP

High

Nuclear bombing

75.0 m CEP

High

Close air support/interdiction

9.0 m CEP

High

Electronic warfare

22.5 m CEP

High

Command, control and communications

37.5 m CEP

High

Air refueling

370.0 m CEP

High

Mine warfare

16.0 m CEP

High

Reconnaissance

18.1 m CEP

High

Magnetic and gravity survey

20.0 m CEP

High

Search and rescue/medical evacuation

125.0 m CEP

High

Mapping

50.0 m CEP

High

Precision-guided munitions

 

3.0 m CEP

High

NOTE: CEP, or circular error probable, represents an accuracy that is achievable 50 percent of the time in two dimensions (latitude and longitude). Drms, or distance root mean square; 2 drms = 2.4 × CEP. SOURCE: National Research Council. 1995. The Global Positioning System: A Shared National Asset, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.

  • Developing an annual DOD-wide summary of precise time requirements, and

  • Coordinating the development of precise time and time interval techniques among DOD components.43

In addition to maintaining the DOD’s master clock, the USNO has an active research effort in clock development, timescale algorithms, and time transfer. NRL also maintains Navy expertise in space clock technology, providing services and advice to Navy and DOD programs related to the space-based clocks used in GPS and other systems.44

43  

Department of Defense. 2002. DOD Instruction 5000.2, “Operation of the Defense Acquisition System,” Part 7, Section C, E. Andrews, Jr., J. Stenbit, and T. Christie, April 5.

44  

National Research Council. 2002. An Assessment of Precision Time and Time Interval Science and Technology, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

Findings and Recommendations Regarding Position, Navigation, and Timing

Precision position, navigation, and timing are critical to the Navy’s new operational concepts embodied in Sea Power 21. An important factor is the global nature of these concepts. Naval forces arrayed over thousands (even tens of thousands) of miles rely heavily on space-derived PNT to coordinate and execute these operations effectively. The U.S. Navy has filled an important role in the research and development of much of the technology that led to today’s highly capable satellite navigation systems and is currently engaged in the development of new technology for precision, space-qualified time standards.

NAVSTAR GPS continues to be the premier spaceborne capability for military and civilian users of precision PNT. An ambitious program is under way to replenish and upgrade this system with advanced-technology spacecraft and a modernized ground control system to better serve the needs of military and civil users. The new GPS M-code signal will have a significant impact on the accuracy and reliability of the system. The GPS Joint Program Office has an important technology development effort under way to demonstrate a single GPS receiver card for M-code receiving and processing. All military Services are effectively involved in and working with the GPS JPO in the evolution of future-generation GPS III capabilities. Each Service also conducts receiver development programs that are keyed to GPS space- and ground-segment developments.


Recommendation 4.19. The Department of the Navy should retain close ties with the Global Positioning System (GPS) Joint Program Office during the development of upgraded GPS space and ground segments. The Department of the Navy should also ensure that specific applications of integrated GPS (precision weapons systems, for example) are coupled to spacecraft capabilities that affect the resistance of these systems to radio-frequency interference (jamming). The Department of the Navy should conduct trade-off studies to determine the most cost-effective approach and strategy in developing guidance systems that rely on a combination of GPS and inertial guidance capabilities.


Recommendation 4.20. The Department of the Navy should initiate a GPS synchronization study similar to that being conducted by the Air Force to ensure that M-code (military-only) user equipment development is synchronized with space-and ground-segment M-code capabilities.


Recommendation 4.21. The Department of the Navy should sustain support to continue research and development in the area of precision timing standards and time transfer techniques, especially for potential use in future GPS space systems.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
×

SPACE CONTROL

As increased reliance, if not outright dependence, on space capabilities becomes more widespread, space superiority and/or space control capabilities become more critical. While many of the details regarding space control have been and will remain classified, it is clear that naval forces will need the same level of security for space support as is needed by other joint forces. It is also clear that the Navy is well positioned to support the space control mission.

The space control mission area includes the elements of space situational awareness, defensive counter-space, offensive counter-space, and related battle management and command and control. Space situational awareness provides predictive battlespace awareness. Defensive counter-space provides protection for friendly space capability. Offensive counter-space provides the ability to disrupt, degrade, deny, or destroy adversary space capability. Battle management and command and control provide the ability to integrate space control with other joint force activities in the prosecution of warfighting. Obviously, multiple electronic, directed-energy, or kinetic system applications and concepts can be envisioned for effectively engaging in space control. Platform basing can be an issue when such concepts are being considered, and from this perspective the potential advantages offered by sea-based platforms appear reasonably significant.

Security classification restrictions prohibit meaningful discussions in this report of all space control efforts—specific plans, shortfalls, and technology gaps are largely classified. Suffice it to say that it would be in the best interests of the United States to pursue broad “disrupt, degrade, deny, or destroy” countermeasure capabilities to apply against any space-based capabilities that contribute to the threat posed by potential adversaries. Although the Under Secretary of the Air Force, as the DOD Executive Agent for Space, has the lead for space control efforts, it appears that other Services could support these activities within their own areas of competence. Thus, it would appear appropriate for the Navy to pursue potential sea-based space control concepts in close coordination with the Air Force.


Recommendation 4.22. The Department of the Navy should explore potential sea-based space control concepts in coordination with the activities of the DOD Executive Agent for Space.

Suggested Citation:"4 Implementation: Navy Support to Space Mission Areas." National Research Council. 2005. Navy's Needs in Space for Providing Future Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11299.
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The United States must operate successfully in space to help assure its security and economic well being. The Department of the Navy is a major user of space capabilities, although those capabilities are now primarily provided by DOD, the Air Force, and NOAA. Following a DOD assessment of national space security management in 2001, the Navy commissioned a Panel to Review Space to assess Navy space policy and strategy. As an extension of that review, the NRC was requested by the Navy to examine its needs in space for providing future operational and technical capabilities. This report presents a discussion of the strategic framework of future space needs, the roles and responsibilities for meeting those needs, an assessment of Navy support to space mission areas, and a proposed vision for fulfilling Naval forces space needs.

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