Posted on 08/10/2013 3:12:53 PM PDT by LibWhacker
UPDATED 1:45 p.m. EDT
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force is shutting down a key part of its network for tracking satellites and orbital debris, possibly as soon as Oct. 1, according to an Aug. 1 memo obtained by SpaceNews.
Gen. William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command, “has directed that the Air Force Space Surveillance System be closed and all sites vacated” effective Oct. 1, the memo said.
The letter, signed by Austin Frindt, a contracting officer with Air Force Space Command, was addressed to Five Rivers Services of Colorado Springs, Colo., operator of the current Space Fence tracking system. The Space Fence, a planned replacement for which is on hold pending a Pentagon-wide review, is a line of VHF radars stretching across the southern United States.
Deployed in the 1960s, the VHF Space Fence includes three transmitter sites and six receiving stations. It is responsible for approximately 40 percent of all observations performed by the Air Force-run Space Surveillance Network, which includes other ground-and space-based sensor assets, said Brian Weeden, technical adviser at the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to space sustainability.
The memo explained to Five Rivers Services that the Air Force was not exercising its option for a fifth year of a contract to provide management and logistical support for the nine field stations. Lori Thomas, president of Five Rivers Services, declined to comment and referred questions to the Air Force.
‘This is your notice to begin preparing the sites for closure,” the memo said. “A specific list of action items will be provided as soon as it is finalized. A specific date to turn off the mission system has not been established yet, but will be provided to you immediately upon determination.”
Andy Roake, a spokesman for Air Force Space Command, pointed to the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration, in an email Aug. 5.
“In this tough, sequestered budget environment, we’re considering many options, but for FY14, no final decisions have been made,” he said.
Though part of a broader surveillance network, the VHF Space Fence is crucial because it can track objects up to 24,000 kilometers away. Other sensors in the network generally track objects at altitudes lower than a few thousand kilometers, Weeden said.
“The Space Fence is very important as it gives an ‘uncued tracking’ capability,” Weeden said. “Because it’s constantly transmitting, it can detect objects without being tasked to do so. There are some other sensors in the network that can do uncued tracking to some degree, but the Space Fence is rather unique in the sheer size of the detection coverage it has.”
The Space Fence, along with operators at the Joint Space Operations Center, can observe objects down to the size of a basketball and make precise determinations of their characteristics, location and movement. Each month the system is responsible for logging more than 5 million satellite observations, according to an Air Force fact sheet.
In April, Shelton said two of the Space Fence’s receiver sites had been placed in cold storage, one in Glennville, Ga., and one in Hollandale, Miss., reducing the overall accuracy and effectiveness of the system. The change was made as part of the Air Force’s response sequestration.
In July, the Air Force released a request for proposals to operate the aging system beginning in September 2015 — one year after the Five Rivers Services’ contract was set to expire. The request said the Space Fence “has been identified as a critical defense system and, therefore, shall be manned on a 24-hour, 7-days-a-week, 365-days-a-year basis at transmitter sites and 8-hour, 7-days-a-week, 365-days-a-year basis at receiver sites.”
A full-scale development contract for an updated version of the Space Fence had been expected in 2012 or early 2013, but on July 16, Shelton said the multibillion-dollar project is being held up due to a wide-ranging Pentagon review that includes major acquisition programs. The review is examining scenarios under which the Pentagon’s budget is cut by $150 billion, $250 billion and $500 billion during the next decade.
Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Sensors of Moorestown, N.J., and Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems of Tewksbury, Mass., have developed competing designs for the new network of ground-based radars, which would be capable of tracking greater numbers of smaller objects than the current Space Fence.
Shelton said in July that engineers at Eglin Air Force base in Florida were looking for ways to improve the current Space Fence as a contingency plan should the Pentagon elect not to go forward with the next-generation system.
In April, Shelton said one-third of the Space Fence’s receiver sites had been placed into cold storage, reducing the overall accuracy and effectiveness of the system as part of the Air Force’s response to the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.
NWO puppet 0bama is doing a rather seamless job of shutting down our capabilities, and our superpower status along with it in a relatively short period of time. 200+ years of progress deconstructed by one Marxist Muslim gay illegal alien agent of the NWO with a phony biography.
Oh great...now were going to be flooded with illegal aliens from zeta reticuli.
Missile defense agency and the Air Force operate other radars that also pick up everything in orbit. Hate to see the redundancy lost, but we are far from blind.
If I were Kim Jong Un, I’d schedule a satellite launch the day after they finally pull the plug, and send it on a low orbit that passes over the White House and Lake Kickapoo Texas.
My guess is that his is redundant capability. There are lots of ground based sensors that track satellites and space junk.
Fine by me. Take this expenditure out of the defense budget and let Congress vote on whether or not to fund it.
Hold on now. I agree about his marxist/gay/moslem/NWO/illegal alien/puppet status.
But that “seamless job” thing would imply work.
I’ve seen nothing that indicates he works.
How much is the rent?
We're so nice! We're twice as polite as Days Inn.
For whatever is coming, we'll not only leave the light on for ya, we'll leave the windows unlocked and the doors wide open.
Maybe God will protect us, because apparently obama and his sequester just said "No."
Marxist Muslim gay illegal alien agent of the NWO with a phony biography and a fake nobel peace prize
Space Fence is unique, and imho, every cost effective. Other sensors can refine tracks on tasked satellites, but Space Fence (in which I have no personal stake) is a one off. As it said, 40% of all observations come from one relatively inexpensive system, that is already up and running. I’m baffled.
Hmmmm...you know, that sounds crazy enough...it just might work!
HEY FREE REPUBLIC... OBAMA JUST GAVE THE SYRIANS 192 MILLION DOLLARS FOR “HUMANITARIAN AID”. YEAH LIKE WE BELIEVE THAT GARBAGE! NO MONEY FOR FUNDING THIS DEFENSIVE SYSTEM TO MONITOR SATELLITES AND DEFENSIVE SPACE BASED WEAPONS AND ORBITING DEBRIS BUT WE HAVE ANOTHER COOL 192 MILLION DOLLARS TO GIVE TO AL QAEDA AND THE MB! What an great American that obama is. /S/S/S/S/S/S/S/S/S/S/S
True, there is some redundancy. But the old Space Fence does a lot that no other system can. And it's cheap. It doesn't simply protect us from stray chunks of debris. Our enemies could hide offensive elements in those extensive debris fields. My understanding is that only a space fence can keep track of it all.
Another twist... The facility they're shutting down in October provides coverage for the Southern-tier states; i.e., largely Republican states. Oh, that muslim pos in the White House is vicious.
My Dad, Roger Easton, designed the Space Fence. It helped inspire GPS. Grrrr
They need the money for Obama's unfunded ad ad nauseam campaigning and his vacays.
Comrade obama is still looking for more resume enhancements, and a second Pearl Harbor would be a notable inclusion.
We can’t be wasting money on programs like this when the money is needed to pay for more food stamps for illegal aliens, more Obamaphones, free condoms for college girls, free abortions and Obamacare for all the the moochers.
Orbits cover the whole world. The Space fence only acquires satellites that have an orbital inclination greater than about 30 degrees (i.e. tipped with respect to the equator). Still enormously cost effective.
Yes, but "missile defense" radars don't have the wide-spread surveillance capability that this does. This is the system that is most likely to give early warning of a "dinosaur-extinguishing" type object.
Ping.
I hate seeing that muslim jackal in the White House who is posing as our president tearing down the country and dismantling the work of great men like your father, whose shoes he isn't qualified to shine in my opinion. America has lost it's mind to have elected him.
Richard, your father has inspired many advancements in space situational awareness, this system being one of his Crown Jewels. We are working hard to save it, but placing hope in Congress to stop the closure is a long shot at best. Check out the Discovery Channel show “America’s Most Secret Structures”. Hokey in the conspiracy theory, but shows some good shots of Jordan Lake Tx station. The miss information about the system abounds, none of the stories is getting right and the Marketing branches of both the developers of the S-Band replacement are selling a poor replacement.
obama can’t do a false flag emp if there’s evidence it originated in the usa or close by.
Check out my new history of GPS:
Recent follow up:
Space Fence Shutdown Expected To Weaken Orbit Surveillance Network
The U.S. Air Force’s decision to shut down a key component of its Space Surveillance Network will weaken the service’s ability to accurately detect and characterize objects in Earth orbit, experts say.
Well thank God the USAF can still afford gay pride celebrations and drag queen acts for all of their fudge packers.
Part of the “more flexibility” he promised Putin he’d have in his second term.
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
TM Ping.
>>>>Shelton Orders Shutdown of Space Fence (critical decades-old missile defense system axed!)<<<<
Just in time for this:
Beijing’s Latest Missile Can Blast Through Everything
Meet the Dong Feng-12, a ballistic missile designed to dodge everything we can throw at it
If you’re Beijing and you want to take on the world’s biggest air and naval power — that’s the U.S., for those of you in the cheap seats — you don’t try to fight it out on even terms. You still build up your navy, but realistically you’re not going to have a comparable one any time soon. So instead, you acquire lots of other weapons that make it so you don’t have to match America ship for ship.
Other weapons like ballistic missiles. And that’s exactly what China is doing.
Beijing has just deployed its latest ballistic missile, the Dong Feng-12 (DF-12), an 880-pound solid-fuel monster with some tricky countermeasures designed to beat the U.S.’s most modern defenses. Formerly named the M20, the missile recently arrived in the arsenals of the Second Artillery Corps of the People’s Liberation Army, which handles all of China’s nuclear and conventional missiles.
On plus side for the U.S., the DF-12 missiles can’t really travel all that far. They’re likely reverse-engineered from the Russian Iskander-E — perhaps acquired from Ukraine or Belarus — and reportedly match the Iskander-E’s 280-kilometer range. That’s too short to hit the U.S.’s gigantic Kadena air base in Okinawa. But the missiles are within range of Taipei if positioned directly across the Taiwan Strait.
What’s the big deal about that? China has a lot of missiles aimed at Taiwan. More than 1,600 of them. So what’s a few more? Well, these missiles are designed to blast through everything the U.S. can throw in their paths.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/85ce6d407e04
Bump
Thanks.
Greater amounts of money are required to support the growing numbers of so called Americans on food stamps, and other how should I say...”programs”. Programs as mentioned here really must be terminated. They cut into monies the new government establishment feel are required to control the masses.
a key part of its network for tracking satellites and orbital debris
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it is setting us up for an attack, but as the majority of voters said, who cares. I got my obamaphone and ETB card.
But then again, any Nation that consistently elects bastards and traitors like Bill Clinton and Obama by majority vote to lead them cannot expect to survive as a Nation.
And 0bama has specifically said that we will not retaliate if we are attacked with nuclear weapons.
This man and Jarrett and Holder, Reid, Pelosi, McCain, etc., are on a jihad to obliterate America. EMP followed by invasion. Human virus (only) to drop us like flies.
And here, I thought I could be humorous today.
Actually, you give zero waaay too much credit. He couldn’t do any of that if his life depended on it.
He’s just the Manchurian up front puppet. Jarrett, axel and others do all the dirty work in the background he doesn’t even sign off. Val/jar even does that.We have been played forever with no end in sight.
Let’s hope Rush will pick this one up tomorrow or Tuesday.
That is barry fagtero alright! Perfect picture of the perfect fool.
Other than the location, he loved every minute of it.
Not just sad, but pathetic that the perfumed princes in the Pentagon care more for their own career than the country they are defending.
Look at pages 20-21 of
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/content_images/MR8988.pdf
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