The U.S. Air Force’s space commander wants his service to be part of a proposed new Missile Defense Agency program called the Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS).

The missile agency’s 2011 budget request includes $67 million to begin work on a constellation of satellites to track missiles through the midcourse of their flights, which is challenging because by that point in their flights rockets have dim heat signatures. The missile agency anticipates spending $1.2 billion to develop the system in the coming years, and would base the spacecraft on lessons learned from a pair of demonstration satellites launched in September, called the Space Tracking and Surveillance System.

Air Force Gen. Robert C. Kehler, commander of Air Force Space Command, noted that the missile agency typically develops hardware and turns it over to the military services.

“What I’ve asked the director of MDA is, if PTSS is going to be ours, we want to be part of it now,” Kehler said.

“We don’t get to some point where they turn to us and say, ‘It’s time for you to take this over,’ and we are then figuring out how to do that.”

Kehler made the comments during a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Air Force Association symposium in Orlando, Fla.

The Air Force and Lockheed Martin have been struggling to launch the first in a series of multibillion-dollar missile warning satellites called the Space-based Infrared System.

Kehler said the satellites proposed by the missile agency would perform the same mission as the Space-based Infrared System spacecraft, but he said the readings from the satellites would be pooled: “This is about sharing data,” he said.