Tracking system latest hope for L.A. aerospace. (Missile Defense -- L.A's Worm in Progress).

THE technology seems impossibly complex and obscure--a satellite tracking system for missiles that's based on severe swings in temperature.

It springs from the controversial "Star Wars" system first proposed by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. And in its embryonic stages of research and development, with its first major test not scheduled until 2007, support for the oddly named missile defense technology, SBIRS Low, has been shaky at best.

But with a renewed focus on the nation's security and a record $355.5 billion defense budget recently signed by President Bush, SBIRS Low, as well as other missile defense projects, have gained renewed importance, especially in Los Angeles.

As envisioned by the Department of Defense, SBIRS Low (which stands for Space Based Infrared System at low altitude) is a satellite-based system consisting of a constellation of 20 to 30 low-flying satellites equipped with infrared sensors. The sensors would be able to track missiles not only right after they are launched but during the roughly 20 minutes in space when they are running "cold"--currently undetectable with state-of-the-art technology. This would allow more time to detect the missile before it hits its target.

The program is expected to receive $293.8 million in 2003 to develop two test satellites, according to the Missile Defense Agency, a unit of the Department of Defense. That's not a lot compared with the $7.4 billion earmarked for the overall missile defense program in Bush's landmark defense budget, but SBIRS Low is projected to run more than $20 billion over 10 years if fully deployed -- and many think it will be.

"This is probably the most visible missile defense program in Southern California," said Amy Russell, a spokeswoman for Raytheon Co., which is a subcontractor on the project.

So far, the effect on local jobs is hard to quantify because the work often involves classified projects that the companies won't talk about. Sometimes, engineers work both on secret military weapons and civilian projects, so it's difficult to determine how much manpower is going specifically to SBIRS Low.

Indeed, the numbers appear small so far. "There's been a lot of publicity about contract awards, but it hasn't shown up in employment data," said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the L.A. County Economic Development Corp.

Born in 1995

But there's the promise of many more jobs. TRW Corp. is in the process of hiring 1,000 new engineers and designers after winning the main SBIRS Low contract and two other satellite contracts this summer at its Redondo Beach facility. Raytheon, the company charged with building the infrared sensors, plans to increase its current El Segundo-based team of 75 employees to 175 by next year "as we ramp up into the program," said company spokesman Pennington Way.

SBIRS Low had its beginnings in 1995 when TRW and Spectrum Astro, a 14-year-old privately held Gilbert, Ariz.-based company with a few engineers in Manhattan Beach, began developing it. Until two months ago, the companies each had $275 million in competing contracts with the Missile Defense Agency to design a production-ready SBIRS Low system and test it on the ground.

TRW had hired Raytheon, Motorola Inc. and Aerojet Corp. for the project. Spectrum Astro teamed up with Northrop Grumman Corp., Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp.

All that changed on Aug. 18 when the Missile Defense Agency gave TRW the prime contract worth $868.7 million for the first cycle of the restructured project. Raytheon was tapped to develop the first set of infrared sensors and compete with Northrop on a contract for sensors after that.

Last week, Spectrum Astro was in the final stage of signing on as a subcontractor to TRW on the project, and would not release any details of the deal, said company spokesman Mike Greenwood.

Northrop, which is expected to complete its acquisition of TRW next month and earlier had purchased Aerojet, is in the "catbird seat" on SBIRS Low, said Paul Nisbet, an analyst for JSA Research, a defense research firm. "Certainly, TRW has won a major contract. They took it away from Northrop and Spectrum Astro, but Northrop is going to get it right back."

Doubts about technology

But despite being funded this year after 9/11-related concerns over national defense, doubt still hangs over the program due to technical problems of the past.

No one has figured out how to build a complex super-refrigeration system that the sensors need to track missiles in space. The Pentagon has canceled contracts and restructured the program during the last three years, as deadlines were missed and costs mushroomed.

SBIRS Low has inspired doubt ever since TRW and Spectrum Astro began its development. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a consortium of researchers that tracks defense issues, has a laundry list of concerns about the technology, among them that the cost would outweigh the security benefits and that the system could be easily fooled by warheads capable of releasing inexpensive heated decoy balloons.

The program has critics in Congress, too, and it had been facing a $55 million budget reduction this year. "But it was very difficult to adjust any ballistic missile system this year due to politics," a congressional source said. "The critics of missile defense didn't muster up enough votes."

"People tend to believe sensors are a good idea, no matter what they are," said David Wright, an MIT physicist and co-director of the scientists' organization. He doubts the claim that multiple satellites of SBIRS Low would be able to better discern decoys, because the satellites rely on infrared technology that can be easily fooled.

John Pike, a defense policy analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, said SBIRS Low would remain in the budget as long as missile defense is part of the Pentagon's overall defense strategy.

"There's a reason they keep working on it' he said. SBIRS Low is so important to the missile defense architecture that peace would have to break out before SBIRS Low would go away."

Nisbet agreed. Missile defense would be "much less accurate" without the surveillance system, he said. Mainly, it wouldn't be able to track missiles during the longest part of their flight when they are in space.

Classified project

Much of the technology is classified, and defense contractors have offered few details. Raytheon was on schedule to meet a 2007 launch deadline for two test satellites, said company spokesman Pennington Way, but he declined to discuss whether engineers had solved a critical refrigeration problem.

To "see" missiles during their extremely cold space segment of flight, sensors themselves must be even colder. For that, they need a cryogenic refrigeration system that can cool to hundreds of degrees below zero, no vibration, and the ability to run for 10 years without maintenance in space.

The way Nisbet figures, the technology is elaborate but viable. He notes that critics have quieted down recently in the wake of breakthroughs in other areas of missile defense.

Although not part of SBIRS Low, successful tests like the one in July when a prototype missile interceptor struck a dummy rocket at 16,000 miles per hour 144 miles above the earth, shows the "progression of what we can do is getting finer and finer," said Nisbet. "it's just a question of how long it will take and how much money."

Although the program will likely reach $20 billion over its lifecycle, he said that number could easily change. "You're trying to establish the cost of something, when you don't know how you're going to get there;' said Nisbet.

Jack Prichett, a spokesperson for TRW, declined to comment on what the overall cost could be.

As a whole, missile defense received $43 million less than what Bush had wanted for 2003, but the funding for the new SBIRS Low contracts has held steady. "We got what was expected," said Prichett.

RELATED ARTICLES: SBIRS Low

A constellation of 20 to 30 low-flying satellites use two kinds of infrared sensors to track enemy missiles not only during launch but during the missiles' difficult-to-track segment of flight through space.

1. Infrared sensors on each satellite detect the booster plumes of missiles during the first three to five minutes after launch.

2. Additional infrared scanners currently being developed would track missiles as they travel cold in space.

3. As they follow the missile, satellites communicate with each other as well as ground stations charged with shooting down the weapons.

Source: Federation of American Scientists Business Journal research.

Sensitive to Hot and Cold

IT'S like trying to watch a flying baseball through a I soda straw.

SBIRS Low, or the Space Based Infrared System, will consist of 20 to 30 satellites in low orbit that could track a ballistic missile not only during lift-off but during the longest and least-visible section of its flight--when it is out of the earth's atmosphere and no longer displaying its telltale boost plume.

Detecting missiles during mid-flight has been one of the main goals of the missile defense program since it was conceived in the early 1980s. If successful, SB IRS Low could quadruple the warning time of an attack against North America and U.S. allies. Earlier warming would allow more chances for knocking down an enemy missile.

In the core of each SBIRS Low satellite would be a set of infrared sensors. One of those, known as the acquisition sensor, would have a wide field of view to scan for bright missile plumes during a missile's boost phase. A second track sensor with a narrow field of view would be capable of locking onto a missile and following it through its space flight until re-entry to the earth's atmosphere. It also would calculate the missile's impact point. That data would be relayed to an intercept system on the ground, which would be assigned to shoot down the missile.

Detecting missiles that have just been launched and still have hot boosters is a relatively easy task compared to detecting them when they are flying cold in free flight--at 15,000 miles per hour--against a cold space background. The SBIRS technology being developed pushes the limits of a kind of infrared surveillance that uses so-called long wavelength infrared technology.

Much of the research is classified, and companies are reluctant to reveal anything about their progress. "Cooling the sensor makes it work better" because the less heat the sensor itself gives off the more easily it can detect the small amount of heat from a missile in cold space, said Pennington Way, a spokesman for Raytheon Co., which, along with Northrop Grumman Corp., is doing much of the work.

The sensors use "cryo cooler" technology that allows detection of a wide range of temperatures giving it potential nonmilitary uses in space exploration and weather satellites, he said.

A planned test launch of two SB IRS Low satellites is scheduled for 2007, Way said. The test would be aimed at "concept validation," he said.

Meeting the 2007 launch date "should not be a problem," for Raytheon engineers, Way said, declining to give details on how successful the technology has been claiming the project is classified.

SBIRS Low would be a crucial layer of the country's many-layered approach to missile defense. The system would increase the odds of detecting and tracking an intercontinental ballistic missile through its 20 minutes or so of space travel. Currently, missiles can only be detected during the first three to five minutes of takeoff or during the final minute as the warhead falls toward its target.

During peacetime, SBIRS Low would monitor ballistic missile tests worldwide and track other orbiting satellites, spacecraft and space debris to help prevent collisions.

The United States currently has a collection of infrared satellites that detect rockets in their boost phase and reports them to the National Command Authority. These satellites were constructed during the 1970s.