"We'll do away with the GEOs, and the big, exquisite expensive satellites," said SDA Director Derek Tournear.

美国太空发展局(Space Development Agency,SDA)主管德里克·图尔纳（Derek Tournear）表示：“我们将取消地球同步轨道（GEO）和大型、精致、昂贵的卫星。”

 

By   THERESA HITCHENS

on September 21, 2022

作者：特蕾莎·希钦斯

2022年9月21日

 

Lockheed Martin’s Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (NGG) Block 0 early missile warning satellite. (Lockheed Martin)

洛克希德马丁公司的下一代过顶持续红外地球同步轨道 (NGG) Block 0早期导弹预警卫星。（洛克希德马丁公司）

 

AFA 2022 — The Space Force is still going through with the first iteration of its multi-billion Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared System (Next-Gen OPIR) missile warning/tracking satellite program. But once those systems are launched, they’ll represent the last of their kind, with the service instead focusing on constellations in lower orbits, Space Development Agency Director Derek Tournear said today.

AFA 2022-太空部队仍在进行其数十亿的下一代过顶持久红外系统（下一代OPIR）导弹预警/跟踪卫星计划的首次迭代。但空间发展局局长德里克·图尔纳今天表示，一旦这些系统发射，它们将是同类系统中的最后一个，而服务将侧重于较低轨道上的星座。

 

“The path that the Space Force is marching towards is that we won’t rely on those in the future,” he told reporters at the annual Air and Space Forces Association conference near Washington, DC. “We’ll do away with the GEOs, and the big, exquisite expensive satellites.”

他在华盛顿特区附近举行的美国空军与太空部队协会年度会议上告诉记者：“太空部队正在走向的道路是，我们未来不会依赖这些武器”，“我们将取消地球同步轨道，以及大型、精致、昂贵的卫星。”

 

The Next-Gen OPIR program is a series of three geosynchronous orbit (GEO) sats being built by Lockheed Martin, and two satellites in highly elliptical polar orbits, being built by Northrop Grumman. The Pentagon at the moment plans to launch the first Next-Gen OPIR GEO satellite (called NGG, for “Next Generation Geosynchronous”) in 2025 or 2026, and to have the entire constellation on orbit by 2029.

下一代OPIR计划是由洛克希德·马丁公司正在建造的三颗地球同步轨道（GEO）卫星和诺斯罗普·格鲁曼公司正在建造中的两颗高度椭圆极轨道卫星组成的一系列卫星。五角大楼目前计划在2025年或2026年发射第一颗下一代OPIR GEO卫星（称为NGG，意为“下一代地球同步”），并在2029年之前将整个星座送入轨道。

 

The first three NGG sats originally were designated Block 0 by SSC, and the plan had been that they would be replaced in the future by more capable blocks — in a manner similar to the SBIRS program before it. Now, that is not the case — meaning that Lockheed’s decades-long lock on missile warning/missile tracking from GEO will also be coming to an end.

前三颗NGG卫星最初被SSC指定为Block 0，并且计划在未来被更强大的Block取代——其方式类似于之前的SBIRS计划。现在，情况并非如此——这意味着洛克希德公司长达数十年的对来自GEO的导弹警告/导弹跟踪的锁定也将结束。

 

The Space Force asked for a whopping sum of nearly $3.5 billion for the Next-Gen OPIR program in its fiscal 2023 Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RTD&E) budget request, covering development of advanced technologies, the two types of satellites in different orbits, ground systems, and integration. Between FY23 and FY27, the service is budgeting nigh on $12 billion for the program.

太空部队在2023财年的研究、开发、测试和评估（RTD&E）预算请求中，要求为下一代OPIR项目提供近35亿美元的巨额资金，包括先进技术的开发、不同轨道上的两种卫星、地面系统和集成。从23财年到27财年，该服务为该项目预算约120亿美元。

 

Tournear explained that the NGG satellites will remain as part of the missile warning/tracking architecture through their lifetimes, which usually stretches to at least 15 years. But after that, he said, missile warning/tracking will take place from low Earth orbit and medium Earth orbit, rather than rely on large expensive ones in GEO.  And while that timeline — roughly 2045 or so — may seem far off, by the standards of space programs, such decisions need to happen now.

德里克·图尔纳解释说，NGG卫星在其寿命期间（通常至少长达15年）将作为导弹预警/跟踪体系结构的一部分。但在那之后，他说，导弹预警/跟踪将从低地球轨道和中地球轨道进行，而不是依赖于地球同步轨道上昂贵的大型导弹。虽然这一时间线——大约2045年左右——似乎还很遥远，但以空间项目的标准来看，现在需要做出这样的决定。

 

Instead, in the future, the US military will rely on the large constellation of a couple hundred LEO missile warning/tracking satellites being developed by SDA, and the network of at least four satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) now being planned under “Resilient Missile Warning Missile Tracking – Medium Earth Orbit (MEO),” by the Space Force’s Space Systems Command.

相反，未来，美国军方将依赖SDA正在开发的数百颗低轨导弹预警/跟踪卫星组成的大型星座，以及航天部队空间系统司令部正在“弹性导弹预警导弹跟踪-中地球轨道”下规划的至少四颗中地球轨道卫星网络。

 

“We will have this proliferated layer in LEO and MEO that provides missile warning, missile tracking, and then also what we call the fire control from the LEO layer,” Tournear said. “So, you’ll get missile warning missile tracking and full missile defense from LEO, and then missile warning/missile tracking from the Next-Gen OPIR development program is being developed to replace the current Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) satellites.”

德里克·图尔纳说：“我们将在低地球轨道和中地球轨道上建立这一增加层，提供导弹警报、导弹跟踪，然后我们称之为低地球轨道层的火力控制。”“因此，您将从低轨卫星获得导弹预警导弹跟踪和全面导弹防御，然后正在开发下一代OPIR开发项目的导弹预警/导弹跟踪，以取代当前的天基红外系统（SBIRS）卫星。”

 

Satellites in LEO and MEO are not only more capable of tracking hypersonic missiles, but also provide more resilience through sheer numbers — complicating the targeting calculus of adversaries such as Russian and China.

低地球轨道和中地球轨道上的卫星不仅能够更好地跟踪高超音速导弹，而且能够通过数量提供更大的弹性，这使得俄罗斯和中国等对手的目标定位计算更加复杂。

 

The plan to ditch missile warning from GEO stems from the force design study completed late last year by the Space Force’s Space Warfighting Analysis Center.

放弃GEO导弹预警的计划源于去年年底由太空部队太空作战分析中心完成的部队设计研究。

 

The decision to go ahead with a MEO development program was signed off by the Space Acquisition Council on Jan. 27, and also was based on the SWAC’s force design — which focused not only on the traditional mission of detecting the launch of ballistic missiles and tracking their trajectory, but also on highly maneuverable hypersonic missiles that are a challenge for current systems.

1月27日，航天采办委员会签署了继续进行MEO开发项目的决定，这也是基于SWAC的部队设计——该部队设计不仅侧重于探测弹道导弹发射和跟踪其弹道的传统任务，还侧重于对现有系统构成挑战的高机动高超音速导弹。

 

The idea is that the ground system for the new MEO constellation will be integrated with the LEO satellite constellation optimized for hypersonic missile tracking that SDA is developing in partnership with the Missile Defense Agency under what the Space Force now calls the “Resilient Missile Warning/Missile Tracking – Low Earth Orbit (LEO)” program.

其想法是，新MEO星座的地面系统将与为高超音速导弹跟踪而优化的低轨卫星星座集成，SDA正与导弹防御局合作开发该星座，航天部队现在称之为“弹性导弹警报/导弹跟踪-低地球轨道（LEO）”计划。

 

The first eight of those LEO sats are part of SDA’s “Tranche 0,” which also includes 20 “Transport Layer” data relay satellites. They will be launched by the end of the year, after a 3 month slip in schedule caused by supply chain issues. SDA in October 2020 awarded SpaceX $149 million and L3Harris $194 million to each build four Tracking Layer Tranche 0 satellites, designed to detect ballistic, cruise and hypersonic missiles using a wide field of view IR sensor.

这些低轨卫星中的前8颗是SDA“第0批次”的一部分，其中还包括20颗“传输层”数据中继卫星。在因供应链问题导致3个月的进度落后之后，这些产品将于年底推出。2020年10月，SDA向SpaceX公司和L3Harris公司分别授予1.49亿美元和1.94亿美元的资金，用于建造四颗跟踪层第0批次卫星，这些卫星旨在使用宽视场红外传感器探测弹道导弹、巡航导弹和高超音速导弹。

 

L3Harris and Northrop Grumman beat out five other contractors for development of SDA’s second set of satellites, called Tranche 1 Tracking Layer. Each contractor will build 14 satellites under an Other Transaction Authorities (OTA) contract: L3 Harris’s award with a potential value of approximately $700 million; and Northrop Grumman’s potentially worth about $617 million, according to SDA’s press release. SDA plans to begin launching the satellites in 2025.

L3Harris公司和诺斯罗普·格鲁曼击败了其他五家承包商，开发了SDA的第二组卫星，称为“第1批次跟踪层”。每个承包商将根据其他交易权限（OTA）合同建造14颗卫星：L3 Harris公司的合同，潜在价值约7亿美元；根据SDA的新闻稿，诺斯罗普·格鲁曼的潜在价值约为6.17亿美元。SDA计划于2025年开始发射卫星。