Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) successfully launched the JCSAT-16 commercial communications satellite and landed the first stage Falcon 9 rocket on a droneship in the Atlantic Ocean early on the morning of August 14.

The JCSAT-16 is a Space Systems Loral (SSL) telecommunications satellite carrying Ku-band and Ka-Band transponders and is meant to function as an in-orbit back-up for the Tokyo, Japan-based SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation’s satellite television services.

The company offers video distribution and data transfer communications services in the Asia, Russia, Oceania, Middle East, and North America regions.

The Falcon 9 delivered the JCSAT-16 to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO).

Following the successful first stage launch, the Falcon 9 completed its secondary-mission objective of landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” droneship on station in the Atlantic Ocean. Before the launch, SpaceX said “given this mission’s GTO destination, the first-stage will be subject to extreme velocities and re-entry heating, making a successful landing challenging.”

The launch occurred at 1:26am ET on August 14 at Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. It occurred at the beginning of a two hour launch window.The satellite was successfully deployed about 32 minutes after liftoff.

“I am very proud of the entire Space Coast team. Their flawless work made this mission a success,” Col. Walt Jackim, vice commander and mission launch decision authority at the 45th Space Wing, said in a statement.

“Today’s launch reflects a superb collaborative effort between commercial launch providers, allied customers, and U.S. Air Force range and safety resources,” he added.

OHB System AG awarded Northrop Grumman [NOC] a contract to supply a space inertial reference system for Germany’s SARah satellite-based radar reconnaissance system, Northrop Grumman said August 22.

The company will provide its Scalable Space Intertial Reference Unit-L (Scalable SIRU-L) to offer sensor pointing/stabilization and attitude control on the SARah satellite system. This is the first international application of the Scalable SIRU-L configuration, Northrop Grumman said.

The Scalable SIRU-L is derived from the SIRU model but is affordable because its calibration process leads to a shorter delivery schedule and lower cost, the company said.

The Scalabel SIRU is a long-life attitude control product that supports commercial, government, and civil space missions. It is based around a patented hemispheral resonator gyro, which has had over 35 million operating hours in space with no mission failures.

“We are excited to provide our allies with a cost-effective, low-risk solution that will ensure mission effectiveness throughout the entire life of the mission,” said Dean Ebert, vice president of the Northrop Grumman Mission Systems navigation and positioning systems business unit.

The U.S. Air Force is nearing completion of a plan to restock its missile-warning satellite system, according to a key service official.

The Air Force’s Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program, whose prime contractor is Lockheed Martin [LMT], is in the midst of acquiring six geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) satellites and four sensors on classified host satellites in highly elliptical orbit (HEO). For the past two years, the Air Force has been studying what comes after those spacecraft.

“The Air Force has a need to replenish and/or augment … SBIRS on-orbit assets to provide continuing capabilities for strategic missile warning, theater missile warning, missile defense, battlespace awareness, technical intelligence and civil/environmental monitoring,” said Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, commander of Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center and Air Force program executive officer for space. “The Air Force … is working toward a follow-on acquisition strategy approval in fall 2016.”

GEO-1 and GEO-2 were launched in 2011 and 2013, respectively. GEO-3 is scheduled to lift off in October, followed by GEO-4 in 2017. GEO-5 and GEO-6, which will replace the first two satellites, are to be available for launch in 2020 and 2021.

HEO-1 and HEO-2, which achieved orbit in 2006 and 2008, respectively, are to be replaced by HEO-3, which was launched in 2014, and HEO-4, which is being integrated onto its host satellite.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Lockheed Martin [LMT] has developed a new ground-based radar to perform air surveillance.

Unveiled at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium that took place in Huntsville on Aug. 16-18, the TPY-X radar can detect manned and unmanned aircraft, cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles at ranges of up to about 250 nautical miles, said Paul Goulette, Lockheed Martin business development manager for ground-based radar. The company has tested it against airborne targets, including small fighters.

The rotating radar can be configured for short-, medium- or long-range surveillance. At the symposium, it was set up for long-range detection and was about 30 feet tall. The digital, software-defined radar also can be adjusted to defend against new electronic attack threats.

“The big advantage, really, is that it’s flexible and that it’s easily changed in terms of what it can do,” Goulette said. “It’s scalable because it has these modular building blocks, so you can make it bigger or you can make it smaller.”

TPY-X is intended mainly for the export market, but its technology could be applied to the U.S. military, including the Army’s Patriot radar replacement program and the Air Force’s Three-Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar (3DELRR) program, according to Lockheed Martin.

“Everybody needs surveillance radars,” Goulette said. “There are a large number of radars out there that could be replaced by such technology.”

Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, took off the week of the week of August 15 on a barnstorming tour of the Asia-Pacific region, where he sees a central role for land forces as the United States continues its effort to focus on the political situation on that side of the planet.

On his third tour of the region since taking over as the Army’s most senior officer a year ago, Milley from Aug. 15 to 23 will meet counterparts and other senior officials from South Korea, Japan and China. While he has visited South Korea as Army chief, Milley will make inaugural stops in Japan – a staunch, long-time U.S. ally in the region – and China – an increasingly aggressive potential adversary.

His meeting with Korean officials was to include discussion of deployment of a Lockheed Martin [LMT] Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) unit to the peninsula.

In China, Milley planned to meet with the senior leadership of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to discuss a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues. He will also visit the PLA’s Academy of Military Science, a center for the development and teaching of doctrine in the PLA, to exchange views with faculty and students.

Milley and PLA commanders will seek to identify ways to deepen practical cooperation in areas of mutual interest while also constructively managing differences, according to a statement from the Army.

In Korea, Milley will spend time with U.S. Army troops in several locations on the peninsula and receive an update on rotational brigade deployments, the combined U.S. and Republic of Korea 2nd Infantry Division, the relocation of U.S. Army units to Camp Humphreys, and plans to deploy a THAAD unit to protect South Korea from provocative North Korean ballistic missile threats.

During a stop in Japan, Milley will reaffirm the importance of the U.S.-Japan alliance as the cornerstone of peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region and discuss opportunities for closer collaboration between the U.S. Army and Japanese Ground Self-Defense Forces.

Milley will end his visit in Hawaii where he will meet with U.S. Pacific Command leaders and visit Soldiers from the 8th Theater Sustainment Command and the 25th Infantry Division.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) plans to issue a broad agency announcement (BAA) “shortly” to solicit white papers on a new airborne laser prototype, according to an MDA official.

An industry day will follow the BAA, probably in mid-September, to further explain the agency’s plans, said Richard Matlock, MDA’s program executive for advanced technology.MDA logo

If MDA is encouraged by the input it receives, it could issue a request for proposals by year’s end, Matlock told reporters Aug. 17 after speaking at the Space and Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville.

In fiscal year 2015, the agency awarded five contracts to companies to develop concepts for the demonstrator aircraft. The agency’s fiscal year 2017 budget request, which is pending before Congress, contains $24 million to award design contracts to two firms. MDA hopes to pick one contractor in 2018 to build the prototype, which might be unmanned. Flight tests would begin in FY 2020.

The demonstrator, whose “low power” laser would be roughly 100 kilowatts, is expected to determine the feasibility of destroying enemy missiles in their boost phase of flight, before they can deploy countermeasures. MDA has said that the effort is far smaller in scale than the agency’s now-canceled, multi-billion-dollar program to equip a Boeing [BA] 747 jumbo jet with a megawatt-class laser.

As part of MDA’s risk reduction activities in this area, two Predator B/MQ-9 Reaper unmanned planes detected and tracked a ballistic missile target during a test in the Pacific in late June. During the test, the target was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF) in Hawaii. The Reapers took off from PMRF and flew several hundred kilometers off the coast of the island of Kauai.

The test was the first of its kind. MDA’s Advanced Technology Directorate will continue to assess the results and “observe other target launches as the opportunities arise,” MDA spokesman Christopher Johnson said.

Another laser initiative highlighted at the conference, the Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s (SMDC’s) High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) program, plans to switch from an Oshkosh [OSK] Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) to a smaller, more mobile Oshkosh Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) truck, and upgrade to a more powerful, longer range laser than the current 10-kilowatt device.

The Army expects to receive a new 50-kilowatt laser from Lockheed Martin [LMT] in 2017 and test it on a HEMTT in 2018 to reduce risk for a future 100-kilowatt, FMTV-based laser, said Julie Schumacher, deputy to the commander of SMDC/Army Forces Strategic Command. The Army plans to begin a competition for the FMTV-based system in FY 2017. The system will include a new beam control subsystem and be demonstrated in FY 2022.

HEL MD is designed to shoot down rockets, artillery, mortars and unmanned aircraft. The 10-kilowatt HEMTT system shot down mortar rounds and drones in 2014 tests.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) plans to conduct two key intercept tests of sea-based defenses later this year, the agency’s director said Aug. 17.

In October, the Standard Missile III (SM-3) Block IIA, a new, longer-range version of the SM-3 interceptor that MDA is developing with Japan and Raytheon [RTN], will undergo its first missile shootdown attempt, Vice Adm. James Syring said at the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville. The SM-3, deployed mostly on Aegis combat system-equipped ships, is designed to destroy short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their midcourse phase of flight.

And in December, the new Sea Based Terminal system will conduct its second intercept try, Syring said. The Aegis ship-based SBT will fire the Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) interceptor that Raytheon has developed for cruise and ballistic missile defense and anti-surface warfare. The SM-6 shot down its first ballistic missile target in July 2015.

The tests will “send a message around the world of what Aegis is doing and what Standard Missile is doing to defeat the threat,” Syring said.

MDA is also gearing up to conduct two intercept tests in the next 14 or 15 months of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which is designed to protect the United States against long-range ballistic missiles. One test will counter an ICBM, while the other will fire a “salvo” of interceptors at a target.

By year’s end, MDA plans to pick a “preferred site” for a potential GMD site in the eastern United States to improve protection against Iranian missiles. The agency has been conducting an environmental impact study of the three military installations under consideration in Michigan, New York and Ohio. Syring reiterated that a decision to build an eastern site has not been made and that no funding has been made available.

The United States has 30 GMD interceptors deployed in Alaska and California. That total is on track to rise to 44 by 2017, Syring said.

While MDA has several efforts underway to make GMD more capable and reliable, including redesigning the GMD interceptor’s kill vehicle and fielding a long-range discrimination radar in Alaska, Syring said the agency will eventually need to field new space-based sensors to track increasingly advanced threats, including hypersonics and ICBMs. The pair of Northrop Grumman-built [NOC] Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) demonstration satellites launched in 2009 “shows it can be done,” he argued.

But he cautioned that a high price, which helped doom the Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS) as an STSS successor in 2013, would turn off policymakers. He noted that MDA plans to spend a relatively modest sum on the Space-based Kill Assessment (SKA), which is placing a network of small sensors on commercial satellites to help evaluate the results of missile defense tests.

“Space does not have to be expensive,” he said. “I don’t know what the answer is, but I know that if we keep getting back to [the view that] this is a $50 billion or $100 billion program, the answer will be no.”

MDA is also looking to cut the cost of targets, and recently issued a request for information on how to achieve that goal. “We need to test more,” Syring said. “In order to test more, I need more affordable targets.”

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) probably will have to live within its current financial means despite calls in some quarters for the agency to get more money, MDA’s director said Aug. 17.

Overall Department of Defense funding continues to be constrained, and MDA already has several significant efforts underway to improve its systems to outpace Iranian and North Korean missile advances, making a major budget increase for the agency unlikely, Vice. Adm. James Syring said.

“Every organization in DoD will say that they need more money,” Syring told the annual Space and Missile Defense Conference in Huntsville. “What I think about is how is this country postured against the threat that we face from North Korea and Iran, and I can say from a developer’s standpoint [that] we’re pretty good, given the limited dollars that we have, where defense spending fits and what this country faces in terms of debt in the future.”

But Syring expressed confidence that if a new threat materialized and the technology to counter it was mature, DoD would come through with more money for the agency.

Syring’s comments came in response to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which concluded that MDA’s shrinking budgets and growing responsibilities are increasingly hurting its ability to conduct research and development. One option, the report said, would be to add more than $2 billion a year to the agency’s budget. MDA’s fiscal year 2017 budget request, which is pending before Congress, is $7.5 billion, down from an FY 2007 peak of $9.4 billion.

Two Predator B unmanned planes built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) detected and tracked a ballistic missile target during a test in the Pacific in late June, GA-ASI said Aug. 15.

The remotely piloted aircraft, equipped with Raytheon [RTN] Multi-spectral Targeting Systems-B (MTS-B) electro-optical infrared turrets, participated in the test “as part of an ongoing program” for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, GA-ASI said. MDA is exploring whether Predators could help extend the engagement zone of Standard Missile-3 interceptors.

“The test provided valuable data in our ongoing effort to develop an effective airborne missile defense capability,” said Linden Blue, chief executive officer of GA-ASI.

The event was part of Pacific Dragon, a missile defense tracking exercise held June 26-28 off the coast of the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii. The U.S., Japanese and South Korean navies also took part in the exercise.