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Elon Musk's SpaceX wins a $149 million Pentagon contract to build missile-tracking satellites
Elon Musk's SpaceX has landed a $149 million contract to build missile-tracking satellites for the Pentagon.
SpaceX would build four satellites in its assembly plant in Redmond, Washington, the US Space Development Agency (SDA) said on Monday, per Reuters. The plant is where SpaceX builds satellites for Starlink, a constellation of satellites designed to beam the internet around the world.
This is SpaceX's first government contract to build satellites.
The four satellites would be fitted with a wide-angle infrared missile-tracking sensor supplied by a subcontractor, an SDA official said.
See also: L3Harris, SpaceX win Space Development Agency contracts to build missile-warning satellites
(Score: 2) by quietus on Friday October 09 2020, @02:03PM
U.S. Army General Hap Arnold, 1943
I disagree. ICBMs is a technology from the 50s (and MIRV technology from the 70s), so mass production of the things should by now be quite easy, and cheap. That leads to the next step: a nation state going for nuclear attack is going to launch its nukes along with -- a lot of -- dummies to increase the probability of a "successful" first strike. Think thousands to tens or even hundreds of thousands of ICBM missiles, all fired at once. Coupled with MIRV technology, just a couple dozen of missile tracking satellites will not cut it anymore: you'll need thousands of them.
Whether SpaceX has received an order of 4, or thousands, is immaterial: any enemy [at nation state level] now needs to calculate potentially all of StarLink's satellites as being equiped with missile detection technology.