Integrating the Global Enterprise of Ballistic Missile Defense
John J. Miller
The Aerospace Corporation has been contributing overarching system architecture and engineering support plus expertise in space system integration, communications, information assurance, computer network defense, and test and evaluation as it assists the Missile Defense Agency with the Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications element of the Ballistic Missile Defense System.
That deployment and operation of the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) is a global enterprise became clear when the United States announced in January 2007 that it planned to deploy radar and interceptor elements of this defense system in Europe. Fixed weapon elements are already deployed in California and Alaska; land-based mobile weapons are available in East Asia; and Aegis ships provide a mobile, sea-based weapon capability worldwide. Likewise, fixed and mobile sensor elements, both those formally included in the BMDS or counted on to support it, are deployed worldwide on land and sea and in space.
BMDS elements are developed by U.S. military services, other government agencies, and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which has overall responsibility for BMDS development. Sharing BMDS information products with allies is already under way; much broader integration of U.S. ballistic missile defense assets both with ballistic missile defense capabilities of friends and allies and with U.S. aircraft and cruise missile defenses is anticipated.
MDA is developing and deploying the Command, Control, Battle Management, and Communications (C2BMC) element of the BMDS to manage the global enterprise of ballistic missile defense. C2BMC makes possible the synergy that allows the diverse set of BMDS elements to provide the most effective and efficient defense. MDA uses an evolutionary acquisition and spiral development process to build C2BMC capabilities. Initial capabilities have been deployed, primarily in the areas of planning and surveillance (command and control) and communications. The development focus has now moved to battle management.
Aerospace personnel are contributing to integrating the ballistic missile defense enterprise as members of the Federally Funded Research and Development/University Affiliated Research Center (FFRDC/UARC) team supporting the C2BMC Directorate. In northern Virginia, Aerospace provides the lead FFRDC/UARC engineer for C2BMC's system engineering activity plus important system architecture and engineering expertise in communications, information assurance, and computer network defense. In Colorado Springs, Aerospace leads the FFRDC/UARC effort to integrate the capabilities of space and certain airborne assets with C2BMC and helps architect and coordinate C2BMC participation in the intense ground and flight test and evaluation activities needed to verify BMDS capabilities. These efforts are enhanced by support from engineers in El Segundo and Chantilly who contribute in such areas as software problem investigation, algorithm assessment, and the application of system architecture tools.
Missile Defense Strategy
Overall responsibility for global ballistic missile defense rests with U.S. Strategic Command, whose headquarters is in Omaha, Nebraska. Below this level, geographical areas of responsibility are assigned to combatant commanders. At this time BMDS capabilities are under U.S. Pacific Command with headquarters in Hawaii, which is responsible for the broad Pacific area including Korea and Japan, and U.S. Northern Command with headquarters in Colorado, responsible for homeland defense. Deployment of BMDS weapon, sensor, and C2BMC capabilities for use by the European Command and Central Command for defense of Europe and the Middle East is anticipated, with European Command given current priority. Below these levels, ballistic missile defense authority may be assigned to a theater combatant commander responsible, for example, for defense of Japan.
The overall missile defense strategy envisions a layered defense, that is, a mature system capable of engagements by different systems during the flight of a threatening object. Engagements may take place during the threat's boost phase, ascent phase (ballistic flight from booster burnout up to apogee), midcourse phase (ballistic flight from apogee to the start of atmospheric reentry) and terminal phase, depending on the trajectory of the missile. C2BMC is responsible for helping the combatant commanders to both elect and implement the appropriate engagement strategy across these flight phases.
Threat ranges are classified as short, medium, intermediate, and intercontinental. To further complicate the defense problem, threats may launch from one area of responsibility, fly over another, and require targeting in a third. Each commander needs to see an appropriate operational picture of the battle space.
BMDS Elements
BMDS elements other than C2BMC are generally characterized as sensors or weapons or both. The sensors are space-, sea-, and land-based, fixed and mobile. The weapons are sea and land based, fixed, and mobile. In 2008 ballistic missile defense sensors include the Defense Support Program and Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) for early warning; the transportable, land-based AN/TPY-2 X-band radar for forward-basing applications; the mobile Sea-Based X-band radar and the fixed upgraded early warning radars for long-range surveillance and tracking; SPY-1 radars aboard Aegis surface ships for surveillance and tracking; and the organic radar of the land-based, transportable Patriot missile system for theater defense.
An organic radar is developed and operates as part of a weapon system. For example, the Aegis ballistic missile defense system has an organic SPY-1 radar onboard the ship. Forward-based means that the radar is placed close to the enemy launch site for detection of an enemy missile early in flight. This term also implies that the radar may be a significant distance from the defended area. For example, the AN/TPY-2 radar the United States has installed in Japan contributes to the defense of the U.S. homeland and is considered to be forward-based.
Available weapon systems all use the kinetic energy of the impacting vehicle to destroy the target object. These systems include the ground-based interceptors of the ground-based missile defense system based in Alaska and California for defense against long-range missiles, the Patriot PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability-3) missile, and the Aegis Standard Missile-3, each with respective fire-control system.
As a hostile ballistic missile traverses its path, multiple sensor systems and weapon systems will be committed to detecting, tracking, intercepting, and finally negating the missile. These assets must be coordinated to increase the battlespace, which increases the shot opportunities and increases the likelihood that the threat will be destroyed. C2BMC is responsible for this coordination for U.S. ballistic missile defense. |
Evolution of Weapons and Sensors
The land-based, transportable Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, including its weapon and organic radar, is undergoing target intercept tests and is expected to be available to the BMDS in 2008. An Airborne Laser system for destruction of boost-phase targets is under development and is being installed on an aircraft in anticipation of testing against a realistic target. Also under development are the Multiple Kill Vehicle, a system capable of carrying multiple interceptors, the thrust components of a high-velocity kinetic energy interceptor, and enhancements to the SBIRS. Two precursor satellites of the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) are being prepared for launch this year. The on-orbit capability of these satellites will then be assessed.
C2BMC Element
The C2BMC element is best viewed as having three distinguishable but overlapping subelements: command and control, battle management, and communication. It is also useful to view these subelements as individual product lines within the overall C2BMC product. The term "command and control" has a variety of meanings, but in the context of the C2BMC element within the BMDS system it is best thought of as a set of functionalities that support the ballistic missile defender by providing services in two areas: planning and situational awareness.
Because it is easy to perceive that the function of fire control of an individual weapon is included in battle management, this term is a frequent subject of misunderstanding between C2BMC and weapon proponents, who, understandably, guard their fire control responsibilities. Although there are some exceptions, the reasonable and convenient way to view the distinction of decision-making responsibilities is to view C2BMC battle management as being responsible for supporting the combatant commander in making the decision to commit a weapon system (not specific interceptor) to engage a target. Once the engagement tasking is submitted to a weapon system, it is up to the weapon system to decide whether an engagement can be executed, to select the specific weapon(s) to use, and to control the weapon in its travel to the target.
With regard to communication, the C2BMC element is responsible for providing the communication capabilities for the BMDS.
The C2BMC program within MDA is using an evolutionary acquisition and spiral development approach to deliver capability to the warfighter. A group of capabilities planned for delivery as a set is referred to as a spiral. Spiral 6.2, for example, has recently been made available to the warfighter for operational use (see sidebar, C2BMC Program Objectives and Spiral 6.4).
Command and Control: Planning and Situational Awareness
The command and control product line was given initial emphasis in developing C2BMC capabilities. Though there is still work to be done, a reasonably mature set of capabilities are available to the combatant command, higher command authority, and service components.
The basic function of the command and control planner is to allow the user to examine alternative uses of limited assets against a potential or anticipated attack to determine appropriate ways to deploy and use forces to meet specified defense objectives. The planner integrates inputs from the planners of BMDS element and supporting activities to provide strategic (strategic command, combatant command) and operational level planning capability (combatant command, Joint Forces Commander, Joint Forces Air Component Commander). It allows the warfighter to train for, plan, and rehearse missile defense campaigns. The initial defense design determined by the C2BMC planner will largely dictate system performance.
Deliberate planning takes place well in advance of a battle and allows the defender to study and, as appropriate, implement effective deployment and coordination schemes and assess acquisition strategies. Crisis action planning occurs hours or days before an attack based on updated information to assess likely threat scenarios and support defensive placement to maximize protection of critical assets. A plan produced by deliberate or crisis action may also be used to provide the basic input to initiate near-real time execution planning conducted by battle management.
Because situational awareness was emphasized in the early development of C2BMC, situational displays tailored to the operator's battle perspective will be available in the spiral 6.2 capability. The multiple situational awareness tools available include a BMDS summary screen that provides a high-level threat picture, track and engagement summary data, and an integrated ballistic missile picture displayed on enterprise workstations. The integrated ballistic missile picture provides a detailed threat picture, engagement timelines, threatened status, and element status. The executive summary screen provides a high-level threat picture.
Battle Management: Sensor Management, Track Selection, Engagement Processing
Within the C2BMC element the battle management capability encompasses the ability to manage sensors, select candidate tracks for engagement, make plans for engagements, and issue commands to execute those plans. Battle management will be performed by operators using the global engagement manager. It enables the operator not only to passively monitor the situation and hope the initial plan works, but also to actively command and dynamically replan the use of the assets in response to live events that occur even after defensive missiles are in the air. The global engagement manager is supported by the stand-alone track-processing algorithms on the track-processing server that develop object tracks based on messages received from early warning sensors and ground-based radars such as AN/TPY-2 and assign them to launch families.
Sensor Management. The first forward-based X-band radar-transportable was deployed in Japan in 2006. Known operationally as the AN/TPY-2, this sensor is under the direct control of the initial battle management capabilities of the C2BMC. With spiral 6.2, for example, radar can be directed to use its search energy to execute a specific focused search plan or respond to a precision cue. Both actions are designed to allow the radar to increase its probability of detecting a specific threat object as it passes through the search zone. These commands differ in the size of the search area the radar is expected to cover and reflect the accuracy with which the path of the object is known based on prior observations. In the future C2BMC will directly control additional AN/TPY-2 and potentially other deployed sensors such as the Sea-Based X-band radar.
When C2BMC spiral 6.4 becomes operational substantial planning, situational awareness, and communications capabilities will be available to warfighters at PACOM, NORTHCOM, and STRATCOM to integrate the Ballistic Missile Defense System. Sensor management and track processing will also become available. |
Track Selection. C2BMC treats the tracks of all objects emanating from a single-threat ballistic missile as members of the same family. When a threat missile is launched it is a single body. As it travels it throws off other objects such as fuel tanks, attitude control mechanisms, nuts and bolts, and covers that are part of the normal detritus from a launch. Some of these objects fall away from the missile and some fly along with it. A future adversary is also likely to deploy various objects to complicate the ability to distinguish lethal threat objects. These nonlethal objects will fly along with the lethal. Various U.S. observation mechanisms will track these objects and report to C2BMC, which will in turn combine these so-called source tracks and hopefully produce one so-called system track for each object. From the system tracks in the same family, track selection identifies one of the tracks to be representative of the family for further engagement processing. This track is usually the one that has the highest probability of being selected for future engagement. The intention is that the chosen track be on an object that would subsequently be prosecuted.
Engagement Processing. In the near future C2BMC will execute a series of functions that build an integrated engagement plan that contains an assignment of interceptors to tracks as well as a feasible launch schedule. It will inform the operator of scheduled and current engagements and convey the global engagement manager's decisions to the launch elements.
Communications: Operation and Management of Networks
C2BMC is responsible for providing and managing the BMDS communication network. The present vision is for deployment of the global engagement manager in a distributed architecture with its functionality installed at air operations centers that manage BMD activities in a region (area of responsibility) or theater. Elements managed by an air operation center are connected by the "local" BMDS networks. These local networks are in turn connected to the overarching BMDS network for inter-area of responsibility communication and interaction with higher authority. Planning and situational awareness communications currently use the same basic communication architecture philosophy, although these capabilities are located at combatant command, higher authority, and other headquarters locations rather than the air operations center. Work is ongoing that would use a network-enabled command and control approach to providing planning and situational awareness capability. Users with appropriate clearance would be able to access capability and information developed by C2BMC and placed on a network site.
BMDS Operational Concept
There is no formally approved operational concept for the BMDS, but a general concept is emerging as the capability becomes available. This section provides a C2BMC summary description of the expected operations when the spiral 6.4 capability, including the first instantiation of the global engagement manager, becomes available sometime during 2009. The following high-level concept description is based on BMDS actions to defend against an intermediate or long-range threat.
Planning. The ballistic missile defense mission area is assigned to U.S. Strategic Command, which will be responsible for overall planning for operation of the BMDS and for oversight of ballistic missile defense execution according to this plan. The C2BMC planner will use a bottom-up and top-down approach in developing this overall plan and subordinate plans. These plans will be designed to defend designated assets with minimum expenditure of resources, particularly interceptors. They will be supported by the C2BMC planner in using a collaborative, distributed process.
Using input from the plans of individual elements, draft theater plans will be generated first and offered as input to the preparation of draft regional (area of responsibility) plans by the combatant commands. These draft combatant-command plans will in turn be input for generation of the overarching global defense plan by U.S. Strategic Command and its approval by higher authority. The contents of the approved overall plan will flow down to drive changes, as necessary, in region and theater level plans. Higher authority will give approval through U.S. Strategic Command for plan execution.
The Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications program delivers a layered defense by networking and unifying the individual elements that make up the Ballistic Missile Defense System. |
Combatant Command Situational Awareness. C2BMC will use track, estimated launch point, predicted impact point, and other information on ballistic missile objects generated by space-, air-, sea-, and ground-based sensors; prioritized lists of defended assets; operational status of sensors and weapons; and computations of protection capability to provide an operational picture to combatant commanders, to higher authority, and to forces in allied nations. The display and available information will be tailored to the needs of each user. In the spiral 6.4 operational time frame, situational awareness will be displayed at Pacific Command, Northern Command, and Strategic Command using C2BMC combatant command suites. This method for conveying situational awareness will shortly thereafter evolve to employing Web-like network-enabled command and control to provide information to users on demand.
Global Engagement Management. C2BMC global engagement management capability will be available to warfighters at nodes (collections of workstations) located at region- and theater-level air operations centers. The global engagement management situational awareness component will provide an integrated ballistic missile picture to warfighters, including information provided for combatant command situational awareness.
As soon as a missile launch occurs and is classified as threatening, early warning sensors will begin to transmit messages with information about the launch to C2BMC in the air operations center. C2BMC track processing will correlate track information, that is, identify tracks from different sources that are generated by the same object, to build tracks based on all the early warning information available to the BMDS. These are referred to as early warning system tracks. Warfighters at the air operation center will be able to use the global engagement manager sensor-management capability to use the track information provided by early warning sensors to allocate the radar energy of forward-based AN/TPY-2 sensors to improve their likelihood of detecting threat objects and generating tracks.
While AN/TPY-2 sensors are making detections under air operation center management and sending their track information to air operation centers, other forward-based sensors, such as the organic radars on Aegis surveillance and tracking surface ships, will be making detections and generating tracks using their baseline search plans determined in the above-mentioned preplanning activities. Some of these tracks may be on the same objects being observed by the AN/TPY-2. These so-called source tracks are also forwarded to the air operation center, where C2BMC track processing correlates them to produce system tracks for the observed objects.
If these detections are being made after the threat missile has completed its boost phase and reached the ascent phase, then tanks and other boost objects that are no longer necessary to the flight of the threat missile may have separated and the deployment of countermeasures may have begun. In this case, tracks will be generated on all these objects—nonlethal objects as well as the lethal object(s). Based on their observations, sensors will assess the class of the objects observed and convey that and other discrimination information along with the track to the air operation center, where C2BMC will select the appropriate discrimination information to use based on all the information it has on an object.
All object information will be used by the global engagement manager integrated-engagement processing to generate suggested engagements and prepare engagement commands for downrange weapons. This information will also be forwarded to downrange sensors, such as the Sea-Based X-band, to support "handover" of object tracking responsibility to that sensor. It will also be forwarded to weapon systems to aid the engagement of potentially lethal objects.
In most cases, once a weapon system accepts a C2BMC engagement command to commit a weapon to a target, C2BMC's engagement role is ended. The weapon system will assume responsibility for the fire control of its interceptor. In the near future, C2BMC will provide information to support the engagement process.
Conclusion
Intense efforts by the C2BMC team and supporting warfighters have led to great accomplishments developing and fielding command and control and communication capabilities to integrate the BMDS. But much work remains, and planning and development are now under way for spirals 8.2, 8.4, 10.2, and beyond to address an array of challenges, including more complete battle management, additional sensors to manage and weapons to direct and support, more complex countermeasures to counter, and greater geographical area to defend. Concurrent with future planning the capabilities of spiral 6.4 are emerging, including initial capability for integrated battle management by C2BMC. The components of this spiral have been designed and developed and are being integrated prior to a test readiness review planned for August 2008. Fielding of the spiral 6.4 capability is anticipated in 2009.
