Masao Dahlgren, Patrycja Bazylczyk, and Tom Karako
The era of massed air and missile threats is already here. Adversaries are finding and fixing friendly forces and aim to disrupt air defenses’ ability to see and make sense of the battlespace. What is needed is a thicket of sensors—both high- and low-end—to better survive this environment.
As Army doctrine exhorts, air defenders must “account for being under constant observation and all forms of enemy contact.” To date, however, the air and missile defense force structure has remained too heavily reliant on handfuls of exquisite, large-signature surface-based radars.
Proliferation, distribution, and emission control are all needed adaptations in this era. To that end, this report describes what is needed to realize a proliferated, resilient surface-based sensor architecture,
with model-based analysis of asset coverage, engagement geometry, network bandwidth, and other factors. By combining meshed passive sensors with active radar, defenders could better cover difficult regions, conserve radar resources, and discriminate false targets from real ones.
This report is made possible by support from the Sierra Nevada Corporation and by general support to CSIS.
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