<p>At present, the United States of America and its allies have no
significant defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs. In this
paper, the systems engineering process is applied to the United States'
problem with defense against ICBMs. The need for a system that negates
this problem is first considered. The need is established. Thus, analysis of
the system's feasibility is required. The optimal system chosen to satisfy the
need is Global Protection Against Limited Strike~ GPALS. The component
of GPALS that will be studied is Brilliant Eyes. Brilliant Eyes is a
constellation of satellites that detects and tracks ballistic missiles. The
requirements for Brilliant Eyes are set to ensure that the need is achieved.
A conceptual design for Brilliant Eyes is performed to analyze trade-offs in
satellite configurations. The optimal configuration is obtained. From the
conceptual design, a preliminary design is developed. The minimum number
of satellites required for the configuration is determined in the preliminary
design. In addition, the antenna dimensions and power requirements which
provide optimal satellite communications are also obtained in the
preliminary design. From the preliminary design, the optimal number of
satellites for the Brilliant Eyes constellation is 56. Also from the preliminary
design, each ground station supporting the constellation has an antenna
diameter of 5.7 m with a transmitting power of 27.8 dBW. Each downlink
antenna on the Brilliant Eyes satellite is 0.03 m in diameter with a
transmitting power of 20 dBW. The crosslink antennas on the satellites are
0.7 m in diameter with a transmitting power of 0 dBW or 1 W. / Master of Science
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/46336 |
| Date | 23 December 2009 |
| Creators | Hammett, David P. |
| Contributors | Systems Engineering, Pratt, Timothy J., Blanchard, Benjamin S. Jr., Jones, Stephen J. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master's project |
| Format | BTD, application/pdf |
| Relation | LD5655.V851_1992.H355.pdf |
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