L3 Harris has been working in recent years with the Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency on test launching so-called hypersonic ballistic tracking space sensor satellites, HBTSS.
Ed Zoiss, President of Space & Airborne Systems, L3Harris Technologies:
I will say that the Missile Defense Agency back in 2020 had the foresight to know that we needed a new fire control architecture based on these threats.
In 2020, L3Harris was awarded the HBTSS program and essentially that moved fire control from our ground and sea based radar systems because as members of Congress, you just heard talk about earlier today, if you can’t see it, you can’t shoot it down.
So in 2020, we were awarded the contract to really move that fire control element up into the space layer so that we could see it at all times, no matter how it maneuvered. And then in February, it actually was Valentine’s Day last year, February 14th last year, we launched those satellites.
And they’ve been performing incredibly well. And I think that as we’ve listened to testimony by General Collins before Congress, and the performance of those systems has been at least at the specification and in many ways better performance than what we had anticipated.
Read more about the Golden Dome initiative from the team at Threat Status.
