JORN and the art of missile defence

The Jindalee HF radar at Alice Springs is the focus of a long-term effort to see if JORN can detect the launch of ballistic missiles.
This country has had a long-standing - if not always overt - involvement in missile defence that has ranged from cooperation with the US in ballistic missile early warning through the Nurrungar (since closed) and Pine Gap joint defence facilities, and more recently to cooperation with the US in experiments with Over The Horizon (OTH) radar for the early detection of theatre ballistic missile launches.

The Relay Ground Station at Pine Gap, which controls the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites and receives mission data from them, was modified years ago with 10-metre antennas to do the same with their proposed replacement, the SBIRS High satellites. But that space-based infrared satellite program has all but stalled with very significant cost blow-outs that have alarmed US authorities. Due to cost and technical difficulties, which have proved intractable, the program has been scaled back from at least five to no more than three spacecraft.

The US takes ballistic missile defence seriously and the stated mission of the US Missile Defense Agency is to field a layered missile defence system that integrates land, sea, and air-based missile defences to protect the US homeland, deployed troops, and America's friends and allies against all types of ballistic missiles in all phases of flight.

Basically, that means the ability to shoot down short, medium, and long-range ballistic missiles in their boost phase; during their mid-course flight, normally outside of the Earth's atmosphere; and as they descend toward their target.

The system will incorporate a global array of sensors and radars, satellite tracking and surveillance; interceptors aboard ships at sea; ground-based interceptor missiles in underground silos; mobile-launch interceptors; and powerful lasers fixed to aircraft.

The goal is to have several cracks at shooting down enemy missiles in various stages of flight, as well as to hedge against an accidental ballistic missile launch.

Currently the US has a limited missile defence capability and despite the layers of early warning satellites, ranging from high altitude, geosynchronous, to low earth orbit systems, there are major holes in surveillance coverage especially in the low level air and the marine surface environment.

Radar, in particular Over The Horizon Radar, is seen as the most effective means of plugging these surveillance holes. And Australian OTHR expertise, exemplified in the very wide area surveillance JORN system, and its genesis and research and experimental test bed, the Jindalee Facility Alice Springs (JFAS) is of special interest to the US Missile Defense Agency and its director, LtGen. Henry (Trey) Obering, who last year visited Australia for talks with government and defence officials involved in the Jindalee project.

The Australian government has long flirted with missile defence. It was a key to
The Australian government's support for the US ballistic missile defence program was articulated in Prime Minister John Howard's January 2004 statement, that it would be 'recklessly negligent' to not explore ways to defend the country against missile attack.

The official support was confirmed in June of that year when Defence Minister Robert Hill signed an MOU with the US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on ballistic missile defence. The MOU provides a 25-year framework for Australian-US cooperation on missile defence with areas of cooperation including technological transfer, and the use of long-range OTH land-based radars in Australia.

In 1995, DSTO co-operated with the US Ballistic Missile Defense Organisation (BMDO) in a cooperative project involving sensor/data fusion testing conducted at the Woomera Missile Range in October 1995. This experiment correlated multiple sensors (optical and RF radar) during the boost phase of a rocket and transmitted the real-time data and imagery via satellite link to the United States.

Two years later Australia and the United States conducted a series of joint scientific experiments to investigate early detection of theatre ballistic missile launches. The 1997, and subsequent Australia-US sensor experiments, were dubbed DUNDEE (Down UNDer Early-warning Experiment).

In the 1997 experiment, four Terrier-Orion tactical surface-to-air rockets, modified to have a radar cross-section equivalent to a ty
The DUNDEE trial results were not wholly conclusive, but they did demonstrate the potential of the radar for the early detection of missile launches.

Subsequent trials, led by the DSTO and conducted in April 2004 near Darwin with US officials present, examined whether Australian OTH Radar technology could improve the detection of ballistic missiles during their early boost phases, thus allowing for early interception.

While there was no immediate threat to Australia from ballistic missiles, this collaborative work puts Australia and its scientists at the forefront of leading edge research and development. It was also a prudent investment in potential future capabilities for the defence of Australia, Hill said.

In a veiled reference to the SBIRS program he said existing missile detection systems that depend on infra-red detection from spacecraft, for example, may not always detect the missile until it breaks cloud cover.

"The latest trials were aimed not only at detecting the target but also whether additional and more accurate information about the trajectory of the missile could be obtained using multiple receiving systems.

"The Darwin trials used an aircraft as a target rather than a missile. Given that missiles are a more demanding target than an aircraft in level flight, a further trial of the technology will be undertaken later that year using missile launches from a test range in the United States as targets of opportunity.

"Subsequent work would investigate the automatic detection and tracking of the missile signatures and the fusion of this information with information from other sources," Defence Minister Hill said.

The multiple receiving systems the Minister referred to are part of a suite of HF surveillance products that the Advanced Technology Group of BAES Australia has developed in conjunction with the Over the Horizon Radar System Program Office (SPO) and DSTO at JFAS and Edinburgh, in support of the Jindalee and JORN OTH radar programs. These activities were funded through the OTHR SPO and BAE Systems R&D, and include:

* Digital HF Receivers

* Reference Frequency Generation and Distribution

* Digital Waveform Generator

* Co-ordinate Registration and Data fusion

As the Minister indicated would be the case, the multiple digital OTHR receivers have been used in further Australian experiments at the US missile range (White Sands) for the detection and tracking of Terrier missiles. The advantage of multiple digital receiver systems of course lies in improved system sensitivity and resolution and in the volume of data that can be stored for subsequent analysis, presumably including such valuable information as the trajectory of the missile after launch and hence an indication as to its impact point.

But while it can be assumed that considerable information has been gained on the early detection and tracking by OTHR of missiles at their launch and boost phases, it appears that much more work needs to be done before modifications can be introduced to the JORN system to enable it to be configured for this mission. And this is where JFAS comes in.

The radars of the JORN network are an advanced development of the Australian designed Jindalee radar at Alice Springs (JFAS) which is in operational use as well as being a research and development facility used by DSTO and the OTHR SPO for ongoing OTHR improvement.

>From the 1970s, JFAS was supported through a series of contracts, the last of which was a $88.3 million (June 2005 prices) contract awarded in February 2000 to BAE Systems Australia. This contract includes JFAS system maintenance and engineering support services covering upgrades, integration, design and development.

Phase 5 of project JP2025 which is being managed by the OTHR SPO seeks to build on the capabilities of the JORN system delivered in 2003. The specifications that JORN was designed and accepted against were established in the early 1990s. Since that time, the JFAS radar has been in operational service with the RAAF since 1992 and has evolved significantly, though continual R&D efforts by OTHR SPO, DSTO and BAE Systems and operational requirements derived from service use.

This has enabled the identification of technical and operational areas in JORN that could readily be enhanced. Phase 5 will introduce these developments to JORN's QLD and WA radars, and will also progress the integration of the three radars into one national OTHR radar network, improve the distribution of surveillance information to national agencies and undertake further research and development of OTHR technology.

And whether Phase 5 will include missile defence enhancements, possibly in the form of improvements to give it greater range and sensitivity to detect incoming missiles during their early boost phase, was clarified by the then Defence Minister Robert Hill when he told the inaugural 2004 ADM Congress in Canberra: "This project, at a cost of approximately $62 million over a number of years, will further improve the sensitivity of the operational radars and support further research on the capability to address ballistic missile threats. Its principal objective was to see aircraft over large distances. Further upgrades will allow it to see much smaller objects such as missiles."

And missile defence research doesn't stop there. DSTO and the University of Adelaide recently signed an agreement today to establish the Centre of Expertise in Phased Array and Microwave Radar Systems (CEPAMR) within the University's School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Chief Defence Scientist Dr Roger Lough said the Centre of Expertise concept was DSTO's strategic engagement initiative with Australia's science and technology community.

"This will be a unique national capability at the forefront of advanced radar, telecommunications, navigation and electronic warfare applications," Dr. Lough said. "It is about building a niche capability to support Defence and national security."

Research outputs from the centre are expected to have significant long-term benefits for defence applications such as:

* capability development of the phased array radar on airborne platforms as well as radars proposed for future naval platforms

* emerging Ballistic Missile Defence surveillance and tracking requirements

* a potential indigenous air defence radar system for Army applications.

Conclusion
Australia's support for the US missile defence program is likely to progress little beyond the continuation of joint research and development programs with the US on early warning systems. This may eventually lead to the first rate JORN surveillance capability being able to detect ballistic missiles at their early boost phases at considerable distances. If integrated into the US missile defence configuration, such information could be fused with data from satellites and other early warning surveillance systems. After that we are dealing with hypotheticals.

By Tom Muir, Canberra