Wanted: Standard Comms For BMD Systems

 

Photo: DoD

Aug 19, 2011 By Michael Fabey aerospace daily and defense report

U.S. missile ballistic defense (BMD) officials want to standardize the different messaging and communication processes among BMD platforms to make sure the right information is delivered in time to support the decision of whether to fire an interceptor, says an official for a company involved in BMD efforts.

Some form of standardization is “being looked at,” says Larry Brachfeld, principal engineer of Sparta, a Cobham Analytic Solutions unit working on BMD command-and-control issues.

“Is this a goal for the future? I would think so,” Brachfeld said during an Aug. 18 presentation at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International conference in Washington.

For example, Brachfeld says, it is likely that the future Aegis Ashore BMD messaging platform will be different than that used on the Aegis-equipped warships. “What is used on the ship may not be the same,” he says.

The Aegis shield deployed on the ships was intended for ship defense and not BMD. Moreover, as Brachfeld notes, that Aegis system was developed as a separate program through the years, as were other systems now used for BMD, with little or no thought given to a standard messaging protocol.

But with new or proposed platforms, like Aegis Ashore or possibly an unmanned aerial vehicle like a MQ-9 Reaper, a standard process is being reviewed.

Standardized messaging across the spectrum of different BMD sensors and platforms would provide more detailed data and a more accurate and complete picture in faster fashion, Brachfeld says.

That is important for BMD, especially in the European region — the focus of the Phased Adaptive Approach, which is the BMD priority now for the U.S. and its allies across the Atlantic — where a decision to fire an interceptor must be made much more quickly in a local conflict than a decision to intercept an ICBM being fired at the U.S., Brachfeld notes. “You have to make a decision in the first minute of launch,” he says. “That is extremely difficult.”