Page 34 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2021

34 DEFENCE BUSINESS
NOVEMBER 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
position – coupled with relatively benign weather patterns, a stable political system and a growing and skilled space industry – provides the basis for a sovereign SDA network.
Under Air 3029 Phase 1 a US C-Band Space Surveillance Radar (SSR) was relocated from Antigua in the Leeward Is- lands and installed in a purpose-built facility at Learmonth, beginning in 2014. The facility is operated by Australian per- sonnel with data received transmitted back to the US and achieved Final Operational Capability (FOC) in March 2017.
In addition, a Space Surveillance Telescope (SST) in- stalled at Learmonth under Air 3029 Phase 2 is expected to become fully operational in coming years. The SST will offer a wide-field view of deep space, including the abil- ity to track dimly-lit objects out in the GEO belt. Also in-
LEFT: The C-Band space tracking radar at Learmonth is operated by the RAAF’s No. 1 Remote Sensor Unit
BELOW: In April 2021, Air Surveillance Operators at No. 1 Remote Sensor Unit based at Edinburgh concluded training on the first RAAF Space Surveillance Telescope
After considering industry responses to a Request for Proposal (RFP) released in mid-2020, CASG’s Wide Area and Space Surveillance Project Office (WASS SPO) and Space Acquisition Project Office (SAPO) released a re- vised roadmap in September and will now seek to deliver capability under a number of tranches.
The ‘tranched’ approach is intended to be flexible enough to respond to rapidly-developing sensor and mis- sion control systems technology and acquisition of the first tranche, in the form of ground-based optical (GBO) sen- sors, is expected to begin in mid-2022. Further tranches are expected to be offered for government consideration on a roughly two-year cycle.
AIRCDRE Gordon said GBO solutions are felt to be more technically mature than other proposals at the pres- ent time and although they will initially be operated by industry, under a ‘Data as a Service’ (DaaS) mechanism, later tranches of JP9360 will seek to acquire a sovereign mission system.
“We’ve chosen that path deliberately to de-risk this (ini- tial) tranche and make some early progress, (because) we don’t have to build facilities. We can pay industry to deliv- er a DaaS capability – we don’t have to go through a Public Works process, we can pay industry to deliver a DaaS ca- pability and we believe that gives us the ability to work at the speed of relevance. We’re not choosing one GBO sen- sor, I’ve challenged the team to find a way to support up to three companies to deliver three different systems, so we can start receiving a diversity of information,” AIRCDRE Gordon explained.
“Importantly, we’re not choosing between different types of submarines, we’re choosing which will be the next batch of capabilities we introduce into our system, and which will need more time and investment to mature. This is not a binary choice, but about building out multiple sensors to give us multiple vantage points.” ■
“JP9360 (SPACE DOMAIN AWARENESS) AIMS TO DELIVER A DISTRIBUTED, MULTI-TECHNOLOGY AND MULTI-LAYERED APPROACH”
stalled in a purpose-built facility, the SST achieved the ‘First Light’ milestone (denoting the first im- age recorded) in March 2020 and training of RAAF air surveillance operators began in April this year.
Sustainment of the SSR and SST will fall under the auspices of JP9360, as will the construction of a co-located SST Mirror Recoating
Facility (MRF), beginning in 2022. The on-site MRF facil- ity will reduce the risk of damage to the telescope’s large and expensive mirrors, which would otherwise have to be shipped to a US-owned facility in Hawaii.
A SOVEREIGN SPACE CAPABILITY
Launched in July 2020, JP9360 consolidates six space sur- veillance projects – Air 3029 Phase 2, Space Surveillance Telescope Relocation; JP9350 Phase 1, ADF SSA Mission System; JP9351 Phase 1, ADF SSA Indigenous Sensors; JP9352 Phase 1, Space Surveillance Radar Replacement; JP9355 (Overhead Persistent Infra-Red Enhancement); and JP9356 (Overhead Persistent Infra-Red Enhance- ment) – into a ‘program of programs’ approach.
JP9360 (Space Domain Awareness) aims to deliver a distributed, multi-technology and multi-layered approach and among the capabilities sought are threat warning, at- tribution and detection, tracking, and the ability to char- acterise natural and man-made objects.
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