Missile threats seemingly evolve into dangerous new directions every few months – from air-launched hypersonic missiles to mobile and nuclear-capable medium-range ballistic missiles, and modern intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The speeds, maneuverability, countermeasures, and destructive power these threats possess create challenges in missile warning and tracking (MWT), requiring on-orbit sensor payloads to respond within accelerated kill chain timelines. That requires ubiquity or universal coverage spread across all orbits to sense threats and eliminate them.
“It’s a different threat that requires us to provide a new set of capabilities, both in sensing and tracking,” said Aaron Rogers, director of requirements and capabilities for Mission Solutions & Payloads at Raytheon, an RTX business. “The government continues to need new solutions to adapt, be flexible, and have wide coverage for all sorts of new scenarios that are popping up unexpectedly.”
To address those threat scenarios, Raytheon is now building and prototyping advanced MWT payloads that detect launch and maintain custody.
These payloads handle the entire MWT mission using onboard sensors and advanced processing.
Persistent sensing and tracking
The Defense Department’s strategy for space-based MWT is an all-of-space architectural approach called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture across low-Earth (LEO), medium-Earth (MEO), and geosynchronous-Earth (GEO) orbits that provides a variety of capabilities and resiliency against disruption from kinetic and non-kinetic attacks.
“The challenge is that we’ve gone from a period of time when we knew the threats were all in one location and could have a persistence of that detection,” said Rogers. “Now we have potential threats coming from all over the world and the government is rightly focused on a hybrid, proliferated constellation architecture with a lot of sensors that provide global coverage and resiliency at the constellation level. If you lose one, you don’t lose all.”
For example, the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) satellites will soon augment the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellites with enhanced MWT, along with resiliency capabilities.
Raytheon is building the infrared sensor payloads for the Next-Gen OPIR GEO satellites, which will detect the heat of launching missiles and evolving threats. In 2024, Raytheon delivered the first sensor payload hardware to the prime contractor.
“We have a long heritage in building and fielding these types of payloads in multiple orbital regimes,” said Davin Swanson, technical director for Mission Solutions & Payloads at Raytheon. “Using that expertise, we’ve come up with novel optical designs that provide both high-sensitivity and wide-area coverage, as well as advanced algorithms and a next-generation processing capability that we can field on orbit to improve sensitivity and track performance beyond what was capable in previous payloads.”
Raytheon delivered the first operational Next-Generation OPIR software platform called Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution Mission Data Processing Application Framework (FORGE MDPAF) at U.S. Space Force’s Overhead Persistent Infrared Battlespace Awareness Center (OBAC). This is a new framework that provides more robust cybersecurity and allows for future faster delivery of operations applications for the ground system.
The FORGE Framework processes satellite data from both the Space Force’s SBIRS constellation and the soon-to-come Next-Gen OPIR constellation, as well as from other future sensors. A modular and adaptable framework that enables fast integration of mission-focused applications to process, exploit, and disseminate information from satellites, the FORGE Framework is designed to scale in a way that can handle the current volume of missile warning data and grow to support future proliferated space data processing needs.
Advanced payloads for sensing missions
Raytheon is addressing the demand with a strong focus on design for manufacture and test, along with software-defined sensors that can be upgraded from the ground to extend the useful life of on-orbit assets and respond more quickly to ever-changing threats. This approach enables Raytheon to deliver payloads that can be built efficiently and operated affordably over their lifetime compared to previous designs.
MWT payload development also draws upon broader Raytheon and RTX experience in manufacturing high-performing optical payloads across warfighting domains—space, airborne, naval, and terrestrial. The company’s expertise in producing modularized open-standards-compliant sensors that are platform-agnostic helps streamline the integration of space payloads to satellite buses built by various prime contractors.
“Our common modular subsystems include processing electronics with standard software and firmware libraries and optical designs,” said Swanson. “With these common modular components and manufacturing baselines, the benefits we’re realizing with this approach in programs like Next-Gen OPIR GEO can be of great benefit to other companies looking to build and integrate their buses with advanced MWT payloads.”
To meet today’s national security needs for cost-effective and high-performance payloads quickly, Raytheon is using its expertise from designing and manufacturing advanced payloads for commercial space projects like the Vantor™ WorldView Legion® Earth-Observation program. WorldView Legion is six Earth observation satellites; all include next-generation imaging instruments designed by Raytheon. Providing a significant leap forward in surveillance and monitoring at a fraction of the cost of heritage systems, applications include national security, military and commercial mapping, maritime monitoring, telecommunications network planning, change detection, and feature identification.
“The WorldView Legion program is part of a market trend of acquisition, moving toward firm fixed-price contracts,” said Rogers. “Raytheon is experienced with firm fixed-price programs and the production activities associated with them.
“We support the government’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture and are addressing the expected payload delivery requirements with confidence that we can meet schedules and budgets and, of course, all the performance metrics for coverage, sensitivity, and accuracy of the missile warning and tracking mission set.”