Reaper Eyed As Missile Defense Sensor
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By Amy Butler
The Pentagon could begin to integrate unmanned aerial vehicles suitable to track ballistic missiles early in flight into the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) layered system within two years, says agency director U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly.
Already, MDA has used the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper UAV, which carries the Raytheon MTS-B electro-optical/infrared sensor, to “observe” at least one missile defense target in April, O’Reilly said. Data from these demonstrations indicate that the sensor is suitable to help provide tracking data of ballistic missiles early in flight.
The Reaper’s sensor is able to deliver the “same type of tracking data that we are looking for from our radars [in] precision and intensity,” O’Reilly said during a July 14 Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington. “It has proven to be extremely accurate and extremely sensitive. So, there is very little modification we see that will be necessary to the UAVs themselves.”
In its fiscal 2010 budget request now being debated in Congress, MDA put more funding into improving testing and reliability of the existing regional defenses — the Aegis sea-based system and land-mobile Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense effort — while terminating programs that focused on engagement in the midcourse phase of flight. The MDA director says the use of UAVs for tracking could enhance the chances of achieving early ballistic missile intercepts.
“We’ve always wanted to intercept missiles as early as we could,” O’Reilly said. “We’ve made a conscious decision to refocus investment.”
MDA and the Air Force are now teaming up to refine the Reaper concept.
Ideally, MDA hopes to maximize the ability of existing interceptors, such as the Aegis-based SM-3 Block IA and soon-to-be-tested SM-3 Block IB for kinetic engagement. However, Reaper’s ability to loiter for a day or more and stare at a particular location makes it attractive for the mission of early tracking. “It gives you a great capability from hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away to be able to view a missile launch and actually track it and provide data to our shooters to intercept,” O’Reilly says. Though the so-called soda-straw of data provided by Predator and Reaper UAVs has been criticized by advocates of wide-area staring surveillance capabilities, it is well suited for ballistic missile tracking as long as intelligence provides proper coordinates for potential launch sites.
O’Reilly says that the Reaper is one of several technology programs designed to provide early sensor data on ballistic missile flights.
Photo: USAF
