Developed and built by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. Army, JTAGS receives and processes data from the Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) constellation of satellites, including Defense Support Program and Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) sensors, and other infrared satellite sensors. (Northrop Grumman)
AFA 2022 — The Space Force is in “early” discussions with the Army to potentially take over the Army’s Joint Tactical Ground Station (JTAGS) missile warning system and assimilate it into a Space Force Delta, according to a senior Space Force official.
“We’re on the very beginning stages of that,” Maj. Gen. Doug Schiess, vice commander of Space Operations Command (SpOC) told the annual Air Force Association conference in Maryland.
JTAGS, built by prime contractor Northrop Grumman, receives, processes and disseminates direct down-linked infrared data from the Defense Support Program and the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) infrared missile warning satellites. It is used to cue active theater missile defense systems, as well as “attack operations assets to detect and destroy enemy launch capability,” according to Northrop Grumman’s website.
Further, JTAGS will link into the Army’s new Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS), which is at the heart of the service’s Project Convergence — the Army’s contribution to the Defense Department’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort. That linkage was tested in March, when IBCS successfully defeated incoming missiles in two separate flight tests at White Sands Missile Range.
The Army-Space Force discussions follow the formal transfer on Aug. 15 of the Army’s satellite communications (SATCOM) mission to the Space Force, including operations of the primary payload onboard the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) system. WGS is used by all Combatant Commands and nine partner countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, New Zealand, the Czech Republic and Norway.
Schiess said the transfer involved some 300 personnel — soldiers and civilians who made up Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s 53rd Signal Battalion and SATCOM Directorate — to Space Force Delta 8.
“So now within Delta 8, the whole SATCOM architecture is within one Delta command and one field command to be able to do that integration,” he said. “We’re finding synergies already, and being able to take people off of one network and put them on another that in the past could have happened, but was much harder to do.”
If and when the JTAGS transfer happens, Schiess explained, it will “bring all of that missile warning for all of the theater combatant commanders into one [Space Force Delta] as well.”
