Northrop Grumman and L3Harris Technologies completed a critical design review of a relay ground station for missile warning and tracking, which will be used by the U.S. Space Systems Command in the Pacific. Northrop said Thursday that it is developing Relay Ground Station-Asia under a contract with the U.S. Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, which plans to replace its missile warning system by 2025.
CLARIFICATION/UPDATE:
To reflect that the SDA Tracking Layer satellites will be able to directly tip and queue other OPIR satellites in future; and the resumption of the program.
WASHINGTON: The $4.9 billion contract to produce three Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) missile warning satellites seems to fly in the face of loudly touted Air and Space Force efforts to embrace open standards and cut the number of ground stations, receivers and antennas, experts said.
Instead, the new contract awarded to Lockheed Martin includes bespoke ground systems and sensor processing software raising questions in particular about how the data collected eventually will be shared with the Space Development Agency’s ballistic and hypersonic missile tracking sats.