From the Pied Piper Infrared Reconnaissance Subsystem to the Missile Defense Alarm System: Space-Based Early Warning Research and Development, 1955-1970

摘要

In the 1970s, infrared early warning satellites became as much a mainstay of U.S. defense posture as ground-based radars. During the 1950s and 1960s, however, development of a satellite system capable of detecting and tracking the heat signatures from intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or other rockets posed daunting technical challenges. If they were to provide the basis for ensuring that the United States would have sufficient time to respond with a nuclear counterattack, infrared early-warning satellites required greater reliability than Corona photographic reconnaissance satellites. Innovative conceptual work by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and its industrial contractors in the 1950s led to evolutionary development of the technology. From a scientific perspective, program participants faced a distinct lack of data on the infrared characteristics of the space environment. From an engineering perspective, they lacked extremely sensitive detectors capable of operating at longer wavelengths without cryogenic cooling. Despite disheartening setbacks, scientists and engineers managed in the 1960s to demonstrate the feasibility of space-based infrared early warning. This paper traces those trials and triumphs, beginning with the conceptual work of a few individual proponents at RAND Corporation, Lockheed Corporation, Aerojet Engineering Corporation, and elsewhere. From that work Lockheed drafted a development proposal for USAF Weapon System 117L (WS-117L) Subsystem G, the infrared detection and surveillance portion of the Advanced Reconnaissance System that Lockheed planners dubbed Pied Piper. By 1959, Subsystem G had become a separate satellite program identified as the Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS). During the decade of the 1960s, MIDAS underwent various designation changes, such as Program 461 and the Research Test Series (RTS). Although MIDAS satellites proved that ICBM launches could be detected reliably from an orbital altitude of 2,000 miles, the USAF opted in 1966 to pursue a different course for the follow-on Defense Support Program (DSP). From 1970 to the present day, DSP has provided highly reliable, real-time early warning from geosynchronous orbit.