form, but may include a classified annex. 3. Development and deployment of persistent space-based sensor architecture (a) Findings Congress makes the following findings: (1) The Missile Defense Agency currently operates the Space Tracking and Surveillance System-Demonstration (STSS-D), a two-satellite constellation for testing purposes, which uses sensors capable of detecting visible and infrared light and serves as an experimental space tracker for the ballistic missile defense system. (2) Conceptually developed in 2009, the Precision Tracking Space (PTSS) would have provided the persistent space-based tracking of ballistic missiles, including object characterization and discrimination, and would have also supported homeland, regional, and theater missile defense. (3) Projected to enter orbit in 2018, the Missile Defense Agency and the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University is currently conducting a Space-Based Kill Assessment (SKA) experiment, a network of small sensors hosted on commercial satellites, used to collect the energy signature of the impact between a ballistic missile threat and an interceptor from the ballistic missile defense system. (4) Section 236 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 ( Public Law 113–66 ) required the Secretary of Defense to conduct an evaluation of options and alternatives for future sensor architectures for ballistic missile defense in order to enhance the ballistic missile defense capabilities of the United States. (5) General John Hyten, Commander of the United States Strategic Command, has argued for the deployment of a global space-based sensor system with discrimination capability as a critical component to improving the effectiveness of our deployed interceptors to conduct both the characterization of these new threats … as well as discriminate better and earlier the mid-course element of the threat that exists today , and finally to target against … hypersonic capabilities [and] other capabilities in the boost phase. . (6)