Documents / Official release
This Defense Intelligence Reference Document was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office in fiscal year 2010 as part of the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications program. It reviews how air flows around objects at subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic speeds, covering shock waves, wakes and ionization. It then compares ways to detect and track hypersonic vehicles, including radar, optical, infrared, LIDAR, infrasound and seismic methods. The report makes four recommendations, among them building a database of aircraft wake signatures and developing novel detectors.
From the source:Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 11/20/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD surveys how hypersonic vehicles may be detected and tracked by exploiting the physical effects they create in flight, especially shock waves, ionized gas, hot surfaces, and turbulent atmospheric wakes. The report reviews a broad set of detection methods, including radar, infrared sensing, optical imaging, LIDAR, passive radio reflection, infrasound, and seismic techniques, and argues that the most effective systems will likely combine multiple sensor types, because each captures different features of a high-speed vehicle’s passage through the atmosphere. It presents radar and infrared sensing as the strongest existing tools for operational detection, while giving particular attention to wake-based methods such as LIDAR and passive radio techniques for improving tracking, identification, and discrimination of future hypersonic aircraft. The paper identifies hypersonic vehicles as an evolving surveillance problem in which future progress will depend on better multi-sensor integration, improved wake characterization, and novel signature-exploitation techniques.
“Lockheed”1 page
UNCLASSIFIED/fFOR. QFFIEl.t.L: Uii QD:I! X Commercial and Governmental IR Systems There is a long history in the United States of the usage of IR detectors to sense launches and to track the trajectory of ICBMs. 21 ARPA initiated studies of the possible use of IR detection of aircraft and missiles in the 1950s. Under their Defense Support Program (DSP), Joseph Knopaw studied the possible use of IR detectors in satellites to detect missiles and the hot exhaust plumes of ICBMs. Rand Corporation subm itted a report in 1955 that outlined the detection of ICBM launches from satellites in Earth orbit. In 1956, the U.S. Air Force chose Lockheed as the lead designer with Joseph Knopaw as the project manager for Subsystem G, ICBM Attack Alarm System (WS-117L) . By 1958, control of the Air Force system shifted to ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) as the MIDAS missile defense alarm system. The satellite IR detection system could alert the Strategic Air Command of possible Soviet missile launches 15 minutes earlier than the DEW system could . The first successful satellite launch occurred in 1960 with a 300 -mile orbit. In 1963, MIDAS 9 with a 2,250-mile polar orbit succeeded in detecting nine missile launches using an 8-inch concentric telescope and an Aerojet-General IR detector. In 1964, the Air Force launched the RJS-2 satellites into geosynchronous orbit over the equator. The MIDAS system was renamed the Defense Support Program in 1969 and an agreement between the United States and Australia provided communication to the constellation of MIDAS satellites from the Overseas Ground Station (OGS) in Australia and the Continental Ground Station (CGS) at the Buckley Air National Guard Station in the United States. Four Phase 1 Integrated Missile Early Warning Satellites (!MEWS) were launched between 1970 and 1973 followed by Phase 2 satellites from 1975 to 1977, the Multi-Orbit Satellite/Performance Improvement Modification (MOS/PIM) models from 1979 to 1984, two Sensor Evolutionary Development (SED) satellites from 1984 to 1987, and DSP-1 satellites since 1989. The DSP satellites are designed for the global monitoring of ICBMs, SLBMs, and tactical missiles. Their operating life is 5 to 7 years, and they weigh approximately 5,000 lbs. With 6,000 IR telescopic detectors, these satellites monitor IR emissions between 2. 7 and 4.3 microns. The 23rd, and last, DSP satellite was launched in November 2007. The DSP system is capable of monitoring more than ICBMs. In 1972, the system detected a large meteor passing over several western states 94 km above the Earth. This meteor, moving at 18 km/s, was on a trajectory over Salt Lake City that would have done significant damage if it had impacted the Earth. In 1991, DSP satellites detected the launch of 88 Iraqi SCUD missiles. The DSP system is currently controlled under the ALERT (attack and launch early report to theater) system under the ALERT Control Center located at Shriever Air Force Base in Colorado . The current operational inventory is classified . Other commercial IR detection equipment includes the Lucid Dimensions Spherical Detection System (SDS) using a 3D spherical sensor array. 22 This system is designed to track ba llistic missiles, aircraft, and vehicles. Developed under an SBIR, this system can be mounted on ground-based vehicles, ships, or aircraft. LIDAR LIDAR, or " light detection and ranging," uses pulses of laser light directed toward a target. Reflected light is detected and, through the time of flight of the laser beam, the distance to the target can be computed. While LIDAR systems are similar in function to RADAR systems, the highly directional nature of the laser beam permits a very accurate determination of target distance. As an example, reflected panels left on the moon's surface by the Apollo astronauts are now used to accurately monitor the distance from the Earth to the moon using UNCLASSIFIED//FQA: QlililEl.t.L: W&li ONL'l 23
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Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 46 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.