Start of the new season of American missile defense
If many words of the new president of the United States can be skeptical, since they do not always correspond to the real state of affairs both in America and around the world, then Donald Trump's statements about missile defense on 100% correspond to the actions of the United States. Moreover, the program for the further development of missile defense declared in the White House will very soon open up the direct possibility of armed conflicts in near-Earth space.
As soon as he took office, Trump ordered the Pentagon to assess the state of affairs with missile defense by a special memorandum from 27 in January. "The Minister of Defense will conduct an analysis (of the system. -" NVO ") of the missile defense to identify ways to expand its capabilities," the new president said.
10 February, the largest US media, in particular, UPI news agency, spread the message that the leadership of the Ground Forces (US Army), which include the newly created Command of Space Operations and Missile Defense, approved a list of companies to develop a high-altitude space missile defense program.
According to the Ministry of Defense, the contract in 3 billion dollars provides for the preparation of a technical task for 2026 for the development and production of promising missile defense facilities. Moreover, it is abundantly clear that, in the mass, such means are deployed in near-Earth space.
On the eve of the first budget message of the Trump administration to the Congress, the military leadership is going to step up efforts to deploy an integrated orbital command and control system for communications and reconnaissance under the national missile defense program. The fact is that, according to the recognition of the command of the Air Force and the Aerospace Defense of North America (NORAD), today's expenses for such space-based facilities "look like a fragment from what we saw at the beginning of the 2000's." The corresponding program, which provides for the orbital deployment of 9 – 12 target tracking and space monitoring devices, was closed by the Barack Obama administration in 2013.
It is the firm conviction of the military-political leadership of the United States related to building missile defense, the main objective of this program is to intercept ballistic targets as close as possible to the place of their launch, that is, on the active part of the trajectory. To do this, it is necessary to reduce the time of detection of launches by no more than 20 with. Today’s American early-discovery tools based on the SEWS DSP satellites cannot perform this task.
The military expects that the next budget of the Ministry of Defense will provide funds for the full deployment of satellite facilities under the SBIRS program - an infrared space-based system. The satellites of this system will enter as the means of combat control of US missile defense.
As part of the SBIRS program, it is planned to deploy a group of several dozen vehicles in low and stationary orbits: about 7 satellites in stationary (36 ths. Km) and high-eliptic orbits and 20 – 30 satellites in orbits with apogee to 1600 km
According to expert estimates, the SBIRS satellites' optoelectronic equipment will operate in the infrared range of the 4 spectrum up to 16 μm. Satellite data will be processed at the NORAD Center in Colorado Springs. By the way, the work on the SBIRS program began in the middle of the 1990-s and should have been completed in the 2010 year, but as of the beginning of the current year only six satellites were put into space, three in low and high orbits.
Of course, the powerful orbital grouping of combat control, communications and intelligence, which is a critical element of the entire US missile defense system, will not be able to function without adequate protection. This, in turn, implies an immediate launch into space. weapons class as a “space – space” and “space – surface”. Actually, the Americans have already begun preparations for combat orbital operations with the deployment of a “space command post”. As General Dave Goldfin (Chief of Staff of the Air Force) and General Jay Raymond (Commander of the Air Force Space Command) said recently, “last year an agreement was reached between the Air Force, the US intelligence community and the Strategic Command to create the Joint Center for Military Space Operations, which will allow us to learn that we do not know (to fight in space, in other words. - AK), to develop and test new equipment in space ”.
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