Space-based radar, lasercoms

Latest chapters in two verrry long stories. I still remain
puzzled by the relationship, or lack thereof, between the
space-based radar program Teets is talking about and the
radar component of the NRO's Future Imagery Architecture.
Teets, as D/NRO as well as acting secretary of the Air
Force, presumably has had to address this matter.

--------------------------------------------------

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123010013
Teets tells Congress lasers-based communications coming
by Staff Sgt. C. Todd Lopez
Air Force Print News

3/11/2005 - WASHINGTON -- The military's senior adviser on space
testified before Congress on March 8.

Peter B. Teets, who serves as both the acting secretary of the Air
Force and the Department of Defense's executive agent for space, spoke
to the House Armed Services Committee subcommittee on strategic forces
about the importance of programs like space radar and the
transformational communications satellite.

"I believe there is a strong need for us to provide persistent
intelligence collection to combatant commanders day and night in all
weather conditions," Mr. Teets said. "Only space radar can do that. In
open areas and in denied areas, space radar can provide us with
persistent intelligence collection."

Providing that persistent intelligence to commanders in the field will
require a constellation of satellites launched into space. Each
satellite will use radar to take pictures of the earth, through any
kind of weather, to provide both military and civilian intelligence
communities information about what is happening on the ground and over
the hill ahead, officials said.

Mr. Teets said he recently directed the restructure of the Space Radar
program, consolidating it in the Washington D.C. area, to create a
tighter-knit community between the civilian and military agencies that
will benefit from it.

"We have restructured the space radar program in a way that will allow
us to move forward in a team sense -- military community and
intelligence community -- to use the same satellites to provide
information for warfighting operations as well as for intelligence
analysis," he said. "I think our restructured space radar program will
indeed allow us to achieve those goals."

One short term goal of the program is to demonstrate the capability of
the system by launching a quarter-scale model satellite by 2008. The
knowledge learned from that launch and from working with the satellite
during its test phase will help the program develop larger operational
systems, Mr. Teets said.

"It will mature the technology," he said. "The transmitter/receiver we
will use in the demo satellites will be used for the full operationally
capable satellites as well. We will demonstrate that technology and
demonstrate the cost of producing roughly a quarter-scale model
spacecraft. We will have a high confidence then of what it will cost us
to ultimately field the operationally responsive satellite."

Mr. Teets said the department plans for the first space radar satellite
to be launched in 2015.

Also critical to the DOD space program is development of the
Transformational Communications Satellite program. This program will
create larger bandwidth for use by the DOD in both war and peace time.
Bandwidth describes how much electronic information can be passed
through a communications device at any time. More bandwidth means more
information, and a greater capacity to serve more people at one time,
Mr. Teets said.

"The bandwidth we talk about is enormously important," he said. "We are
going to be able to serve this communications on the move. We will have
to service thousands of users simultaneously around the globe."

New developments in communications include laser communications -- the
exchange of information between two points on a beam of light. Mr.
Teets told Congressmen the DOD had conducted a test of the concept in
New Mexico. The experiment had been successful, he said, because it
showed the possibility of laser communications between both space and a
ground station and space and a flying aircraft.

With the advent of transformational satellite program combined with
laser communications, the Department of Defense will gain an enormous
increase in bandwidth, Mr. Teets said.

"Today our satellites are operating with higher bandwidth of about a
factor of 10 than they were just a few years ago," he said. "We will
get another factor of 10 when advanced extremely high frequency
launches along with wide-band gap filler. And there is a third order of
magnitude of bandwidth increase when we go to laser communications."

That bandwidth will be used by Soldiers in the field to get the
critical information they need to do their job and to stay ahead of the
enemy, Mr. Teets said.

"When somebody wants a map of the area in front of (him), that can be
requested in a way that will have enough bandwidth capability to get
that map to him in seconds," he said.

While the satellite program is in development, DOD officials use
commercially procured bandwidth to conduct some operations. Mr. Teets
told lawmakers the services have agreed to come together to work on
developing policy to define its use of that bandwidth.

Hmm. Apparently the SBR has experienced some slippage.


One short term goal of the [space radar] program is to demonstrate
the capability of the system by launching a quarter-scale model
satellite
by 2008.

Mr. Teets said the department plans for the first space radar
satellite to be launched in 2015.


Compare that with

http://www.losangeles.af.mil/smc/pa/fact_sheets/sbr.htm

(Current as of June 2001)

Technology maturation, risk reduction and concept development
are essential elements of the SBR program strategy to reach
initial operational capability (IOC) prior to the end of FY10.
Investments in key technology areas are focused to mature
technologies leading to component design and demonstration.
Concept development activities will focus on reducing risk,
integrating technologies, and demonstrating of a system level
concept. Demonstrations as well as modeling and simulation
will facilitate maximization of the operational capabilities
of the SBR system.

and


http://www.afa.org/magazine/aug2002/0802radar.asp

In February [2002], the Air Force-led Joint Program
Office for SBR gave Congress a roadmap for the program.
At the end of this month, a midterm report on an SBR
analysis of alternatives will be presented to Air Force
Undersecretary Peter B. Teets. If all goes as planned,
Teets this fall will approve a program go-ahead. The
service has penciled in an unofficial goal of awarding
hardware contracts in Fiscal 2004-05, with a first
satellite to be lofted about 2010.

some slippage.

and

http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/p...umentID=1685#4

The Air Force is pressing ahead with its Space Based
Radar (SBR) program, despite serious cuts to the system's
proposed FY 2004 budget by Congress. The House recommended
a reduction of $100 million, while the Senate thought $75
million should be taken out of the SBR's $271 million
budget request. Both sides were worried about extreme
cost growth (over 500 percent from last year) in the
program's budget. However, Air Force undersecretary
Peter Teets signed last month an acquisition memorandum
approving the program's structure. Additionally, the
Air Force has been pressing the Hill to authorize the
full funding request of $4.4 billion through FY 2009.
The SBR is envisioned to be composed of satellites in
Low Earth or Medium Earth Orbit which would generate
Synthetic Aperture Radar and Digital Terrain Elevation
Data, as well as Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI).
Two or three contractors are to be picked next year for
risk reduction work, with the goal of launching the
first SBR in 2012.
(Defense Daily, Aug. 27, 2003 )

Allen Thomson,
You and your interesting topic must be on the same taboo/nondisclosure
banishment list as myself. You seem to be thinking either a little too
far outside of their mainstream status quo box or, into topics of
whatever's 'nondisclosure', such as I've discovered whenever I've
suggested utilizing our existing 0.5 milliradian ABL of 100 MW class
laser cannon (somewhat modified from IR to perhaps 450 nm) for
interplanetary communications. If nothing else, it seems our growing
fleet of ABLs should be capable of starting our first 'War of the
Worlds' faster than our resident warlord(GW Bush) can point out another
oily rock hiding that first WMD, or perhaps even Osama bin Laden.

I've even suggested having those relatively small and energy efficient
radar image receiving apertures situated upon the moon, in as mush as
such would have been providing 10 mm/pixel and possibly even as good as
16 bits/pixel look-see at the likes of Venus and Mars, 100 mm/pixel and
8 bits/pixel of the likes of Saturn and of that nifty Titan moon, not
to mention absolutely terrific NEO spotting and tracking capability.

It seems that my LSE-CM/ISS and of it's dipole element deployment of a
dozen or so 100 GW laser cannons to within 50,000 km of mother Earth
isn't what their doctor ordered either.

Thus for the likes of radar or better yet being of a near-UV or even IR
spectrum data throughput as focused to a relatively small spot or
target zone is absolutely terrific, especially if that were of the
near-UV or into the UV/a spectrum, as per say that's not going to fry
your butt, just slicing through a few strands of your DNA, of which a
good dosage of steroids or banked bone marrow should eliminate most of
the negative affects. Actually, if it's not too terribly clouded, a
fairly small amount of laser energy is necessary as long as the GPS
tracking is good and if need be you could keep yourself out of the
satellite sights until the download is finished, of which that process
shouldn't exceed but a millisecond if that beam were utilizing a
quantum/FM binary packet bullet mode of data transfer.

How many GBPS are they thinking of?

Basic township that's situated upon Venus:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
Basic LSE (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Other available topics by; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm

Apparently there has been, or will be, a Grand Unification.

Space Radar will be the single space radar effort for
the nation, and provide the deep look, all-weather,
day and night surveillance and reconnaissance
capabilities required by both the IC [Intelligence
Community] and joint warfighters.


Or maybe not, or not quite. Note the "propose" below.
One remembers that the DOD Space Radar, in several
previous manifestations, has been proposed for
unification with the NRO's future radarsats.


http://i-newswire.com/pr12223.html

Teets: Air Force's biggest challenge is
recapitalizing the fleet
(2005-03-27)
by Staff Sgt. C. Todd Lopez
Air Force Print News

WASHINGTON -- During a roundtable discussion at the
Pentagon March 22, the acting secretary of the Air
Force discussed space, the F/A-22 Raptor and
business ethics.

[snip]

The space radar program has suffered scrutiny on
Capitol Hill, but Mr. Teets said he has responded
to that scrutiny with positive actions to streamline
the program and move it forward.

"One of the things we have done this year for the
space radar system is propose that we have a
national radar collection system that will serve
both the needs of the (Central Intelligence Agency)
and the Department of Defense," he said.

Apparently there has been, or will be,
a Grand Unification.

[snip]

Or maybe not, or not quite.

Or maybe so. It will be interesting to see if Mr.
Negroponte weighs in on this and similar NROish
issues.



Perfect Harmony?
by Amy Butler
Aviation Week & Space Technology
April 4, 2005
pp. 51-54
[EXCERPT from p. 54]

Better collaboration between the NRO and Air Force
is producing the first "dual-use" system for the
military and intelligence communities in the Space
Radar program, Teets says. Rumsfeld and Porter
Goss, the director of the Central Intelligence
Agency, have signed a joint memo designating Space
Radar as the only system of its kind for the country.

"I don't think there is a single satellite right now
that is truly dual use," Teets says. "I think this
is breaking new ground. I really do."

Officials are planning a 2008 demonstration with
two one-quarter-scale satellites. The first full-
scale Space Radar satellite would launch in 2015.
The constellation would use synthetic aperture radar
to collect images through clouds and dust for the
intelligence community and provide near-real-time
data on moving ground targets like convoys for the
military. It is with this collaboration that [Teets'
national security space adviser Maj. Gen. Robert]
Kehler says the integration staff can help to make
the most of the government dollar.

"Left to its own devices, I think that perhaps we
could have had a situation where the NRO pursued a
Space Radar system and the Air Force pursued a
Space Radar system for different purposes," Teets
says. "The NRO has operated as a national agency
collecting national intelligence. I think it has
only been recently that we've started to really
find ways to get intelligence collected by NRO
assets into the hands of warfighters direct. I
think for a long time it was a huge struggle to get
nationally collected information into the hands of
the warfighter."

Among the earlier roadblocks were security
classifications and the technical complexity of
linking various collection and dissemination
systems.