Brad Bolstad: Raytheon Helps Advance US Missile Warning, Defense Systems

Brad Bolstad, director of Raytheon‘s space systems business, has said the company works with U.S. agencies to build missile warning and defense systems with new technology such as space-based sensors and ground-based data processing systems.

“Missile warning and defense has changed and cannot rely on decades-old technology,” he wrote in a guest piece for Milsat Magazine. “The threats we face are more complex than ever and evolving every day.”

Bolstad cited the 2019 Missile Defense Review that calls on the U.S. to build use space-based sensors for “limitless geographic flexibility” to detect missile threats.

He said Raytheon is already working on such technology with various partners, including Lockheed Martin’s Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Block 0 missile warning satellite, the Missile Defense Agency’s Space Sensor Layer and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Blackjack satellite.

These programs are aimed at providing rapid and wide missile detection and tracking from space.

Raytheon also collaborates with the Air Force to build a data management tool that would help the military handle floods of satellite data.

Bolstad added the company developed a prototype for the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution Mission Data Processing Application Framework.

“Designing, engineering, testing and producing the world’s most sophisticated missile defense technologies, especially at a program’s inception, are purposeful and create opportunities to learn and test the limits of the system,” Bolstad noted. “Going fast is the new normal and Raytheon’s technology must evolve at that same rate of change.”