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“Space is now contested and congested,” said former Air Force
Secretary Deborah Lee James during her “State of the Air Force”
address in September 2016. “It is extremely important to everything
that we do in the military, including precision guidance,
navigation, missile warning, weather, intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance and communication.”
With so much of the Air
Force’s capabilities relying on space assets, defense of these
assets is becoming increasingly important.
So, how does the
Air Force defend its resources in space? One answer to this question
was a proof of concept system started in 2005. At that time the
379th Expeditionary Operation Support Squadron was tasked with
testing the capabilities of a new defensive space control system,
which would protect U.S. Central Command’s satellite networks. The
proof of concept was so successful that the operation remained
active, and is now called Operation Silent Sentry.
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Jan. 30, 2017 - U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Chris Hayes, a Bounty
Hunter crew chief with the 379th Expeditionary Operations Support
Squadron, uses a control to locate a satellite in space at Al Udeid
Air Base, Qatar. Hayes supports Operation Silent Sentry, which
provides defensive space capabilities for the U.S. Central Command
area of responsibility. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Miles
Wilson)
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“The current focus of Silent Sentry is to detect, characterize
and monitor electromagnetic interference on signals of interest
across the area of responsibility,” said Capt. Marcus Losinski,
commander of Operation Silent Sentry.
Since its inception
twelve years ago, Operation Silent Sentry has grown and become an
important asset to not only the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, but
the entire CENTCOM theater. 2nd Lt. Kasey Crowe, a Bounty Hunter
crew commander with the 379th EOSS, explained how the effectiveness
of Operation Silent Sentry has increased through improvements made
by its personnel.
“Just as the battle tempo and rhythm
changes constantly,” said Crowe, “so does a tactical operator’s
perspective on how to be a more effective weapon in a fight. The
Silent Sentry team members are just that, ‘tactical operators’ and
we are always trying to incorporate new tactics, techniques and
procedures that will get us in the fight quicker and provide faster
and more accurate products.”
Recently, the Silent Sentry team
has been improving on several processes to help gain faster
responses to interference, thereby allowing for quicker decisions on
how to resolve the issue. One method that the team has implemented
is called the overwatch concept. This concept allows for the Silent
Sentry team to monitor specific frequencies for known patterns of
interference, rather than observing a large group of frequencies,
and thereby eliminate excess information to process.
“We
have changed how we monitor the spectrum,” said Losinski. “We now
follow an air tasking order based signals priority list. This allows
our weapon systems to be better tuned to catch and geolocate
interference should it come up. That pre-tuning of the system allows
us to get our data quicker and be more responsive.”
The team
has also transitioned from simply responding to interference, to
taking proactive measures to find and anticipate certain patterns of
interference before they surface. By doing this, response times are
decreased dramatically, as well as overall capability.
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Jan. 30, 2017 - U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jeff Schumacher, a Raiders
Deployable Ground Segment-0 crew chief with the 379th Expeditionary
Operations Support Squadron, attaches a low noise amplifier to an
antenna at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar. These antennas are used in
Operation Silent Sentry and help detect and geolocate
electromagnetic interference to signals of interest. (U.S. Air Force
photo by Senior Airman Miles Wilson)
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“When Silent Sentry planning processes can get ahead of
the adversary by properly prioritizing tasking and
proactively optimizing our resource allocation” said Master
Sgt. Daniel Dempsey, the Silent Sentry superintendent, “we
shift the philosophy towards anticipating what may come next
rather than forcing ourselves into a responsive posture. Our
interference detection and refined geolocations process have
been reduced from many hours to just minutes, and we can
characterize that interference eight times faster than
before.”
As the tactics and procedures of the Silent
Sentry team are continuously being improved and worked upon,
so too is the foundation for future teams to further improve
the security of future defensive space control systems.
As Silent
Sentry continues its twelfth year of deployed operations,
its operators will continue to defend space-based
communications, and at the same time refine and shape the
future of the defensive space control mission.
By U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Miles Wilson
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2017
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