During a Senate Armed Forces Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) questioned General Gregory M. Guillot, the Commander of the United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, about domain awareness.
00:05so we may have more than one round of questions.
00:09I'll begin the first round.
00:11General Guillaume, I've appreciated our past conversations
00:15about the need for increased domain awareness.
00:19For we cannot shoot what we cannot see.
00:23As we look towards Golden Dome and the future of missile defense,
00:27what additional improvements need to be made with respect to domain awareness?
00:34Madam Chair, I think that what I call the domain awareness layer of Golden Dome
00:41is the most critical that we need to have first for the reasons that you just mentioned.
00:45Any chance of using advanced interceptors or defeat capabilities would not be possible
00:51if we can't detect and track these threats.
00:54I think that it's a seabed-to-space approach.
00:58We need to have undersea sensors to detect submarines that can now get closer
01:03to North America than they could before based on improved stealthiness of those ships.
01:10And then a ground layer that can see much further out
01:14because of the advanced standoff weapons that our adversaries can now employ.
01:20We need an air layer like the E-7 to close the kill chain
01:25with fighter aircraft or surface-to-air systems.
01:30And then a space layer.
01:31The space layer would both track airborne moving targets or aircraft,
01:36but also systems like HBTSS that could track hypersonics
01:41as well as the warning capability that we need to detect the launches to begin with.
01:47Is there anything you can tell us in this setting about Golden Dome
01:54and the options that may be available on the sensors
01:59and the radar systems that would be used?
02:04Madam Chair, I don't know what the Golden Dome will look like,
02:09but I suspect that it would be able to use a lot of the systems that are already in place
02:14and currently in development, which would give us a full capability
02:19in probably something closer to zero to five years
02:22as opposed to something, you know, a decade out into the future.
02:25A couple of those systems would be the HBTSS that I just mentioned
02:29for the hypersonics, space-based AMTI,
02:32which we have a number of prototype systems on orbit now
02:36over the horizon radars, which are also operational
02:42and not in the United States but elsewhere.
02:46And then, for instance, the E-7, which many other countries operate.
02:51So given that, how much risk would Golden Dome incur
02:56if the department was forced to vacate the lower 3 gigahertz
03:00or portion of the 7 to 8 gigahertz spectrum that it now has?
03:05Madam Chair, it's my assessment that we would assume
03:08an extraordinarily high level of risk
03:11if we lose control of those portions of the spectrum.
03:16Many of the systems that we rely on every day today,
03:19much less in the future, for Homeland Defense
03:22reside in that spectrum range.
03:25So, General Collins, can you provide us with an update
03:28on the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor
03:33or the ABTSS system?
03:37Yes, Madam Chair, thank you.
03:39So the Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor
03:41is a prototype program that MDA pursued
03:44to prove out the technology such that from space
03:49we could close the hypersonic fire chain,
03:53the kill chain on a hypersonic weapon.
03:56And the focus of that was to prove out that the space system
03:59could have the accuracy, the track quality,
04:01and get that data into the command and control system
04:04fast enough to be able to close that fire control loop.
04:08Those two systems launched in February of last year have gone through two testbed launches
04:15where we had a testbed target launch, fly a hypersonic profile,
04:20and we have collected data from the sensors during that.
04:24So far, we have proven out the timeliness, latency of the fire control loop with those systems
04:32as well as the sensitivity of those systems to close the loop.
04:36We're going back with some algorithm updates into the payload
04:39to improve on the track quality, but we see that closing as well.
04:43It's been a very successful prototype program.
04:46And all along, we've worked in parallel with the Space Force
04:49and the Space Development Agency.
04:51They now have our HPTSS-like requirements
04:54as part of their proliferated warfighting space architecture.
04:57And in the tranches to come in the follow-on years,
05:01they will slowly be building up an operational hypersonic tracking layer for us.
05:08Perhaps in another setting, we can talk about a more definitive timeline
05:13when that would be available.
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