Increments 2 and 3 of the Next-Generation Operational Control System, dubbed OCX, were supposed to be delivered in January, but technical discoveries during testing delayed the effort and caused the program to re-evaluate its schedule.

According to a June 8 Government Accountability Office report, prime contractor Raytheon’s delivery delay will push the initial capability date to next spring. A spokeswoman for Space Systems Command, the Space Force’s acquisition arm, told C4ISRNET in a June 8 email the service is awaiting approval of the new schedule.

Raytheon has incurred $123 million in additional costs as a result of the delays, SSC said, citing a Materiel Inspection and Receiving Report the company filed with the Defense Department.

The program is at risk of further delays due to “funding challenges,” GAO said. In fiscal 2023 Congress cut $75 million from OCX that was meant to be used to pay for more contractor support for Blocks 1 and 2. The service’s fiscal 2024 budget includes $200 million for the effort.

The Space Force’s constellation of GPS satellites provides navigation support to military and civilian users. It features older spacecraft as well as newer ones, and the most recent version, GPS III, is more accurate and resistant to adversary jamming attempts.

OCX was designed to operate the entire GPS fleet — old and new. The first capability increment was delivered in 2017, and brought some hardware, software and cybersecurity improvements. The system, dubbed Block 0, can support GPS III launches, but doesn’t have the ability to operate the in-orbit satellites. Blocks 2 and 3 will bring that ability along with better performance and protections against cyber threats.

Schedule uncertainty

Schedule uncertainty has been a persistent challenge for OCX, which was supposed to be fielded in 2016.

The program’s 2012 cost estimate of $3.7 billion has been revised several times, growing to $4.3 billion in 2015 and $6.2 billion in 2018. The first cost increase triggered what’s known as a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach, requiring the Defense Department to develop a new cost and schedule baseline in 2016.

Speaking earlier this year, Space Force acquisition executive Frank Calvelli called it one of the service’s “long-standing troubled programs.”

GAO’s report sheds some light on its most recent challenges, caused largely by “overlapping efforts” to test various satellite capabilities and integrate software.

“Because of the risk that not all requirements would be complete by delivery, the program modified the schedule to allow more time for software testing and addressing deficiencies, as well as developing technical manuals and training operators,” the report states.

To mitigate that risk, the program is honing in on critical software deficiencies and plans to award Raytheon a contract modification to address continued deficiencies, according to GAO.

Beyond testing, SSC is concerned about the strain on GPS operators during the period between system delivery later this year and initial operations next spring.

“During this time, the operators need to complete training and assist with transition activities, while controlling the GPS constellation using the existing system,” GAO said. “Space Force officials stated that they are training operators on the current system and are working with the program office to schedule events. But, they told us that they remain concerned about the ability of trained operators to support the OCX events as scheduled.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, led five other House Democrats and two House Republicans from his state in a letter asking the Biden administration to place the headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The letter, addressed to President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman, touted the Air Force and NASA installations that Ohio already hosts. These include the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, the National Space Intelligence Center, and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

“These facilities support key space-related operations, including innovation in space components and technology,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, which Brown highlighted on Twitter. “Co-locating the U.S. Space Command headquarters with these assets will generate incredible potential for cross-functional collaboration that will greatly enhance the efficiency and the effectiveness of the organization.”

The letter’s other signatories are Ohio’s Democratic Reps. Marcy Kaptur, Joyce Beatty, Shontel Brown, Emilia Sykes and Greg Landsman as well as Republican Reps. David Joyce and Max Miller. The nine other Republicans in Ohio’s congressional delegation did not sign the letter.

Two years ago, during the final days of the Trump administration, the Air Force announced Huntsville, Alabama — the site of the Army’s Redstone Arsenal and home to the Missile Defense Agency — would serve as the new location for Space Command headquarters, moving it from Colorado Springs.

The decision infuriated Colorado’s congressional delegation, who asked the Air Force to review the decision. Several Colorado Democrats argued it was an act of political retaliation because Biden won the swing state in the 2020 election.

A May 2022 report by the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General found the Air Force followed all relevant laws and policies when selecting Huntsville. But the report also found the rules themselves may have been flawed, resulting in a less than optimal decision.

A separate June 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office found the Air Force did not follow best practices when making the basing decision.

Kendall is reviewing both reports’ findings, but the final basing decision for Space Command headquarters is long overdue.

NBC News reported last month that the Biden administration may halt plans to move the headquarters to Alabama in part because of the state’s new law making abortion a felony punishable up to 99 years in prison for physicians.

Further complicating matters, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has placed a blanket hold on Senate confirmations for hundreds of military promotions over the Pentagon’s policy providing leave time and stipends for troops and their family members to travel across state lines in order to receive abortion services.

The Defense Department enacted the policy in February after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, thereby allowing states to enact anti-abortion laws.

The U.S. Embassy in Guinea contacted the combatant command in late May to help identify the origin of a chemical spill that was impacting its fishing industry. AFRICOM reached out to the office, which then turned to its pool of commercial surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking companies who used data garnered from satellites to identify the source.

“With commercial SRT data, we actually [narrowed] down that culprit from 350 ships down to five,” Col. Richard Kniseley said. “And we think we’ve already found out who that culprit was.”

Kniseley is the senior materiel leader for commercial space within the U.S. Space Force’s acquisition hub, Space Systems Command. He leads the nascent Commercial Space Office, which it established in April to bring together a number of the service’s initiatives aimed at partnering with companies and helping military users better leverage commercial space capabilities.

During a June 6 briefing at the opening of his office’s new Chantilly, Virginia, headquarters — dubbed the Commercial Space Marketplace for Innovation and Collaboration — Kniseley told reporters he wants to expand the marketplace concept that allowed his team to quickly respond to Africa Command’s tasking to other mission areas.

The service has already established a Space Domain Awareness Marketplace, which works with U.S. Space Command’s Joint Commercial Integration Office to provide space observation data to operators and allies. Future marketplaces, according to Kniseley and other Space Systems Command officials, could include missions like overhead persistent infrared, weather and alternate positioning, navigation and timing capabilities that could augment the Space Force’s GPS constellation.

While these commercial marketplaces are just one way the Commercial Space Office is looking to better leverage industry systems, SSC Commander Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein said in a speech at the new headquarters they’re a key part of the push to support operators and international allies by linking them to the capabilities they need on rapid timelines.

“When we connect our partnerships into an operational environment, the opportunities are endless,” he said.

Commercial first

While the Space Force operates its own satellite fleets in many of these mission areas, the service is trying to change its mindset from a build-first approach that is heavily reliant on military-owned systems to a buy-first posture that emphasizes the many commercial products already available.

The creation of the Commercial Space Office, according to Guetlein, reflects that shift and aims to provide the acquisition structure and leadership to support it. Kniseley’s role, he noted, is the first time Space Systems Command has had a senior materiel leader focused on commercial space acquisition.

“He is a board-selected individual by the United States Space Force to lead our guardians in what I believe is going to be one of the key missions going forward,” Guetlein said. “That was our commitment to getting that started.”

As SSC establishes its organizational infrastructure for commercial acquisition, it’s also working with Space Force and Defense Department leaders to create a more stable funding source for the effort.

Within its annual budget, which grew to $30 billion in fiscal 2024, the service allocates about $4 billion on commercial capabilities, Guetlein said.

“That’s a sizeable amount of money. When we look at how much it could be, it’s just a drop,” he said.

That commercial funding is tucked within program offices rather than consolidated under one budget line, which can make it hard for the service and industry to see what commercial services and systems the Space Force is buying. Creating a single program element for commercial capabilities would help the companies SSC works with “see where we are serious about getting after that partnership,” Guetlein said.

When it comes to working with combatant commanders, SSC is also crafting a business model that it expects will make it easier for military users to get the space capabilities they need, he said.

Millennium Space Systems and Raytheon Technologies are already on contract to develop sensor prototypes for the satellites, which will reside in medium Earth orbit — between 1,200 miles and 22,000 miles above the planet. According to the program’s senior materiel leader, selecting L3Harris to design a third sensor as part of the program’s first phase, or “Epoch,” broadens the Space Force’s industry team, giving the service more options as the constellation grows.

“Adding a third vendor reduces risk and non-recurring engineering not only for Epoch 1, but for future Epochs as well,” Col. Heather Bogstie said in a June 5 statement. “Having another payload option opens the trade space and allows us to take advantage of all industry has to offer as we deliver high-quality capability to the warfighter.”

The program is one component of the Space Force’s plan to strengthen its missile-warning and -tracking capabilities against growing threats from China and Russia by launching satellites to medium and low Earth orbit, or up to 1,200 miles above the planet.

Today, missile warning spacecraft mostly reside in geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles away. Satellites located at medium Earth orbit — between the low and geosynchronous Earth orbits — can observe large areas without requiring the same level of complexity from sensors positioned farther from the planet.

The first spacecraft are slated to launch in 2026, and the Space Force expects to have four medium-Earth orbit satellites on orbit by 2028 with a goal of fielding technology upgrades on a three-year cycle.

The service requested $538 million for medium-Earth orbit tracking satellites in fiscal 2024 to support Epoch 1. According to budget documents, the Space Force expects it will need $3.5 billion for the effort from FY24 through FY28.

The budget documents indicate the service plans to buy six satellites from Millennium, a Boeing subsidiary, and three from Raytheon for the program’s first phase. According to the June 5 news release, the service may buy up to three L3Harris satellites in Epoch 1.

Col. Brian Denaro, Space Systems Command’s program executive officer for space sensing, told C4ISRNET in April the service will review each company’s final designs this fall, and at that point will determine whether to add a third sensor to the mix for Epoch 1.

He noted the Space Force hasn’t solidified how many satellites it will include in Epoch 1, partly because it’s still evaluating options.

“It really depends on what altitude they’re at, what technology you have, the size of their sensor,” he said. “I would say that each vendor comes in with a different way to solve the problem, which creates an interesting opportunity for us to look at all the trades that go across those various solutions.”

The images and other readings gathered from afar were critical to grasping the situation in Eastern Europe at the time, and their continued dissemination, including through the press, aids public understanding of the war.

Among those involved in the capture and distribution of such information is Maxar Technologies, which provides satellite imagery to the Defense Department and intelligence community, among other national security pursuits.

In February 2023, for example, the Colorado-based company won an additional round of work on the U.S. Army’s One World Terrain, which compiles extremely accurate virtual maps of territory across the globe for military purposes. It’s considered a key piece of the service’s Synthetic Training Environment, an immersive training-and-rehearsal tool. The company is also involved with Project Maven, launched by the Pentagon in 2017 to detect targets of interest in footage captured by uncrewed systems.

C4ISRNET reporters interviewed two Maxar executives — Tony Frazier, executive vice president and general manager of public sector earth intelligence, and Jennifer Krischer, vice president and general manager of intelligence programs — on the sidelines of the GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis.

Portions of the interview below, conducted May 23, have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Where do you see the future of One World Terrain and, by extension, the Synthetic Training Environment going? What does that look like?

Frazier: We started with a focus of helping the Army modernize its training with geospecific data, with a goal of being able to provide soldiers as realistic an experience as possible.

Lt. Gen. Maria Gervais, she was the first cross-functional team lead for the Synthetic Training Environment. Her vision at the time was: If we can have reps and sets with hundreds of experiences in the virtual environment, then we can help soldiers be safe when they actually deploy.

That has continued to be the core focus of the program. That being said, as we exposed the data to different parts of the community, there was insatiable demand from the operational users to apply it to current missions. Whether it was in support of the Afghan drawdown, there was data that we provided over Ukraine — using it for operational mission-planning was very prominent.

Even the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, there was a reference to One World Terrain, and I think it did a nice job of highlighting the variety of use cases that had been proven out.

So what we’re seeing is, as we build out more complete, global coverage of that capability, being able to use it as a reference layer to integrate other data sources against it, and have all those data sources inherit the same accuracy, that foundation really enables a form of sensor fusion that we haven’t been able to see at scale.

One example that we are demonstrating is how we can apply 3D geo-registration software that uses that reference as a way to take — whether it’s space-based, or airborne, or even an unmanned surface vehicle — a sensor feed and use the terrain as a source of registration to tie that down, both in terms of the right location and the right orientation, so that you’re able to inherit the same accuracy as that base.

Think about a realtime feed from a drone. That would then allow you to be able to know exactly within this type of radius where that pixel is. That, I think, is probably one of the more breakthrough opportunities, in terms of taking it fully operational.

Q: How has the conflict in Ukraine shaped or factored into Maxar’s business? What is that consumption like — is there an increased need for satellite imagery or your other products?

Frazier: We support a global mission, and we’ve been providing these capabilities for decades. And you can look at every major event, and Maxar has played a role in that, in some capacity.

I think what’s unique about Ukraine was that at all phases, the crisis leading to conflict, we were able to, through different channels, expose our capability in a way that was helpful to the mission.

The focus of the Defense Department now is integrated deterrence — the role that commercial was able to play to bring transparency to what was happening, with troop buildup and, as it pivoted to conflict, what was happening on the ground.

The combination of what was exposed through the media, through our partnerships there, along with the fact that the intelligence community, Defense Department, allies and partners were all able to access current imagery over those areas, just allowed a level of interoperability and mission planning that, I think, has helped support the mission, but also helped a lot of decision makers think through ways that can be applied, more broadly.

NATO hunger for info driving deals for commercial satellite imagery

I know you recently covered the Global Information Dominance Experiments series.

One of the things that’s helped us do is have conversations with different stakeholders across the community, who have been looking at how do I take the increased commercial collection, some of the innovation that’s happening with applied machine learning, so computer vision, to be able to interpret imagery quickly, the types of technology I referenced earlier with our 3D, where we can georeference that data on quick timelines, and then how can that support different forms of experimentation. That is demonstrating how new use cases for how commercial can be applied to the here-and-now missions.

We’ve supported Project Convergence and Scarlet Dragon; those were examples of exercises and experimentation that we supported with commercial capabilities. I think we’re seeing that there’s a lot of interest.

Q: The big news at GEOINT yesterday was Project Maven, with Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth talking about its transition to a program of record. How do you envision Maxar taking part in Project Maven, and what do you hope to contribute?

Krischer: We’re already contributing to Project Maven.

We are generating algorithms around both electro-optical and our synthetic aperture radar imaging capabilities. So object detection, using those different modalities.

We also have been working with Project Maven for years now on providing low-latency imagery so that we can run the algorithms against the imagery in a sensor-to-shooter methodology that really resonates with the warfighter. So we’ve already been doing these things.

We envision the future of Maven as being: How do you bring the vast computer-vision algorithms sets to bear on the different missions, whether it be the intel analyst or the warfighter in the field, and how do you enable the warfighter to do these things?

We’re working kind of hand-in-hand to understand what it needs to be and helping shape the future, so that it’s not vendor-locked, it’s really meeting the users where they need the information.

Frazier: In our conversations, the intent is to enable geospatial AI at scale. And, as a result, as these capabilities get more mature, you want to be able to take advantage of all the collection that’s happening across the constellation.

For the U.S. government, the constellation includes commercial as a part of that. That’s why EOCL is electro-optical commercial layer. With the contracts that were awarded to us, and Planet and BlackSky, and then what’s being done now to add other modalities, like radar and radio-frequency sensing and the like, the goal is to create an architecture where you can quickly run the algorithms against that source to then get the information out to those users.

Geospatial-intelligence agency making strides on Project Maven AI

We’ve had a lot of use of our existing systems to apply computer vision against the imagery that we’re hosting and disseminating now, across the community, and now it’s about how do we actually do this at scale, have more machine-to-machine exploitation at scale. The last couple of decades have been focused on how humans visualize imagery.

Q: With Project Maven, and with a lot of these things like Joint All-Domain Command and Control, there’s just an incredible amount of collection and data that has to be sorted through. So you can’t ignore the AI or ML portion on your side, right? That has to be baked in, basically?

Krischer: Absolutely.

Frazier: Correct.

Q: Is there a need for a One Space Terrain? Maybe with a more artful name?

Frazier: I can see that happening.

You heard the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, his comments, about how they’re supporting the lunar mission. And I think, yeah, we need to have an accurate representation of all domains, where we expect to safely navigate, to be able to mitigate threats, et cetera.

“We continue to work with a range of global partners to ensure Ukraine has the satellite and communication capabilities they need,” the U.S. Department of Defense said in a June 1 statement. “Satellite communications constitute a vital layer in Ukraine’s overall communications network and the department contracts with Starlink for services of this type.”

The Pentagon did not disclose the details of the buy — including cost, contract timing or the length of service — citing operational security concerns. Bloomberg first reported the existence of the contract.

“Due to the critical nature of these systems — we do not have additional information regarding specific capabilities, contracts or partners to provide at this time,” DoD said.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, has been providing Ukraine with Starlink terminals since 2022, following Russia’s invasion of the country. Musk indicated last October SpaceX would no longer be able to fund Ukraine’s use of the satellites, which he said at the time had cost the company $80 million since the start of the war. He later walked back those comments, and the Pentagon confirmed it was in discussion with the company about securing funding for the service.

Along with the cost of providing Starlink services to Ukraine, SpaceX officials have expressed concerns about the country’s “weaponization” of the capability. Ukraine’s use of Starlink for battlefield connectivity and coordinating strikes has been widely reported.

“It was never intended to be weaponized,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Feb. 8 at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC. “The Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement.”

SpaceX announced in December it would create a new national security-focused business unit called Starshield designed to build on its launch and satellite communications offerings and introduce new capabilities like Earth observation.

The company is one of three firms on contract with the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that develops and operates spy satellites, to provide imagery over the next 10 years through its Electro-Optical Commercial layer program, or EOCL.

Maxar’s contract, awarded in 2022 and valued at more than $3 billion, is largely focused on providing imagery of the Earth but it includes a provision to experiment with using its satellites to provide “non-Earth” data, which includes high-resolution imagery of the space environment.

Tony Frazier, Maxar’s executive vice president and general manager for public sector Earth intelligence, said the company is doing “a limited collection” of this type of imagery, and is discussing with the Pentagon how its satellites could be used for this mission.

“Part of what we’re doing is we’re educating them on that and making sure they’re taking full advantage of that investment, but then also making them aware of additional capabilities that we’re adding that currently aren’t supported through the program,” Frazier told C4ISRNET in a May 23 interview at the GEOINT Conference in St. Louis. “An example that has been super interesting and has kind of led to new conversations with the Department of Defense is around what we’re doing with non-Earth imaging.”

Frazier characterized Maxar’s work in this area as being in the “study and evaluation phase,” adding that it could inform future requirements. He said that while Maxar builds its satellites “with a sense of enduring missions in mind,” it also considered the possibility that they could be used in new ways, especially as the government looks to protect satellites from new threats in space.

“It’s a way that we can actually get more utility out of the constellation,” he said.

Improving domain awareness

Satellites that observe activity in orbit contribute to what DoD calls space domain awareness. The mission is a high priority for U.S. Space Command and the Space Force as they grow increasingly concerned about congestion and debris in low Earth orbit, located about 1,200 miles above the planet, and aggression from adversaries like Russia and China.

The Space Force uses a mix of ground-based and in-space sensors to conduct the space domain awareness mission. Its fleet of radars, known as the Space Surveillance Network, observe space from the ground and feed data into command and control systems that catalog space objects.

The service also has sensors in orbit that provide domain awareness and, in partnership with the National Reconnaissance Office, will launch its newest space observation satellites this summer, dubbed Silent Barker.

SPACECOM provides the data collected by those sensors to government, civil and commercial agencies.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyses satellite imagery and turns it into usable data, also coordinates with the service and SPACECOM on intelligence it receives about in-space objects and activities.

NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth told reporters during a May 22 briefing his team is considering how it might grow those partnerships and is considering making room for more Space Force operators to serve within the agency.

“I’m really excited about where we might take the relationship,” he said. “I’ve asked the team to explore whether we have the right number of Space Force billets in our own team. And I sense that this year will be a year of definition as to our official relationship with the Space Force.”

NRO Director Chris Scolese, said during a speech at the conference that the agency is working with the Space Force to make sure the commercial satellite imagery it collects is “available as broadly as possible.”

The two Koreas, technically in a state of war, have no military reconnaissance satellites of their own and both are eager to possess them. The South Korean launch Thursday will likely assist its efforts to develop a space-based surveillance system.

The domestically built three-stage Nuri rocket lifted off from a launch facility on a southern island with a payload of eight satellites, including a main commercial-grade satellite whose mission is to verify radar imaging technology and observe cosmic radiation in a near-Earth orbit.

Science Minister Lee Jong Ho later told a televised news conference that the launch was successful, saying it proved the rocket’s reliability and South Korea’s potential to operate various satellites and explore space.

Lee said seven of the eight satellites including the main one were successfully released from the rocket. He said more time is required to confirm the release of the eighth satellite.

“Today, we confirmed that dreams can come true,” South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol wrote on Facebook. “I hope our future generations have a great dream and challenge while looking at the Nuri rocket soaring into space.”

The launch boosted South Korea’s hopes of catching up with Asian neighbors such as China, Japan and India in a regional space race. Lee, the science minister, said South Korea plans to conduct three more Nuri rocket launches by 2027 and will seek to develop more advanced launch vehicles.

The launch was initially scheduled for Wednesday but was postponed at the last minute due to a technical problem.

Last year, South Korea used a Nuri rocket to place a “performance verification satellite” in orbit, becoming the world’s 10th nation to send a satellite into space with its own technology. But that launch was primarily designed to test the rocket.

Many experts say Thursday’s launch will also help South Korea accumulate technologies and knowhow to operate military spy satellites and build long-range missiles.

South Korea is expected to launch its first spy satellite later this year. It currently relies on U.S. spy satellites to monitor North Korean facilities.

Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute, noted that the satellite launched Thursday is designed to be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit, which is typically used for reconnaissance satellites.

South Korea already has missiles capable of reaching all of North Korea. But experts say it needs longer-range missiles to prepare for future security threats from potential adversaries China and Russia.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula remain high following North Korea’s barrage of missiles tests since the beginning of last year. Some of the tests demonstrated its potential ability to launch nuclear strikes on the mainland U.S. and South Korea and Japan.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seeking to develop more sophisticated weapons systems, including a spy satellite, to cope with what he calls intensifying U.S. and South Korean hostilities. Analysts say Kim wants to use an expanded weapons arsenal to win greater concessions from Washington in future dealings.

“North Korea must be so concerned about the South Korean satellite launch Thursday because much of Kim Jong Un’s interest now is in possessing a spy satellite,” said Moon Seong Mook, an analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. “He has a strong desire to launch a spy satellite before South Korea does.”

Recent commercial satellite imagery of North Korea’s main launch center in the northwest shows activities that suggest “a new level of urgency in making the site ready to accommodate satellite launches,” 38 North, a North Korea-focused website, said Wednesday. It said the images indicate progress on a new launch pad is moving forward “at a remarkable pace.”

Last week, Kim examined a finished spy satellite and approved a plan for its launch during a visit to the country’s aerospace agency.

The spy satellite disclosed in North Korean state media doesn’t appear sophisticated enough to produce high-resolution imagery. But Lee, the expert at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, said it is likely to be capable of monitoring deployment of U.S. strategic assets such as an aircraft carrier and the movements of South Korean warships and fighter jets.

The company is under contract to build two Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Polar satellites that will provide coverage of the northern hemisphere, the most difficult area to observe from space. The Space Force plans to launch the first satellite in 2028.

“Northrop Grumman is on an accelerated path to delivering an early-warning missile system capable of surviving attacks from space, ground or cyber elements,” Alex Fax, Northrop’s vice president for the polar program, said in a May 24 statement. “NGP satellites will maintain a direct line of communication back to the continental United States, limiting dependency on overseas ground station sites.”

The milestone, called a preliminary design review, keeps the company on track for a possible production contract next spring or summer, according to a company spokesperson. The Space Force awarded the company $2.37 billion development contract in 2020.

Northrop’s sensor payload for the polar satellites is designed to detect infrared heat signatures from incoming missiles. They will also carry a communications payload that allows them to send tracking data to operators on the ground.

The payloads will fly on the company’s Eagle-3 spacecraft, which is designed for complex, strategic payloads like missile warning sensors.

The NGP effort is part of the Space Force’s broader Next-Gen Overhead Infrared program, which includes two Lockheed Martin-built satellites destined for geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles above Earth’s surface. The service had planned to build and launch three GEO spacecraft, but it cut one satellite from the mix in its fiscal 2024 budget.

The service is seeking $1 billion for the polar segment of the program in fiscal 2024 and expects to need another $2.2 billion between FY25 and FY28, which the first satellite launches. That funding would support the program’s critical design review and early preparation for production, assembly and test.

Satellite imagery is a resource of growing importance, with governments and private citizens relying on it to keep tabs on their respective surroundings. Overhead photos were used to expose Russia’s materiel buildup ahead of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and, more recently, have shown the scale of destruction in Eastern Europe.

The imagery arrangements at NATO plug a hole where there is insufficient collection from the “normal airborne assets that we’ve known and loved,” Paul Bowman, who leads the ISR cell for NATO’s Battlefield Information Collection and Exploitation Systems, said May 22 at the GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis.

The U.S. and U.K. are leading contributors to NATO joint ISR, with “everybody else” tailing, Bowman said.

NRO partners with commercial space firms on signal detection tech

“When we’ve run NATO joint ISR exercises over the past five years, we consistently find that there’s not enough collection to really sustain the number of people that are willing to produce geospatial intelligence out of that collection,” he said. “What does that point to? That points to commercial capabilities.”

Bowman did not disclose with whom the deals were struck, nor did he specify their respective price. U.S. leaders in satellite imagery, however, include Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies. NATO’s website describes the proliferation of commercial satellite imagery as both a risk and a boon — while Russia or China can benefit, too, private players offer the alliance “cost-effective and scalable solutions that meet” demand.

NATO earlier this year launched the Alliance Persistent Surveillance from Space initiative, or APSS, meant to streamline the process of gathering and disseminating reams of data collected from space for use in the alliance. It banks on existing and planned space assets from friendly countries to establish a virtual constellation known as Aquila.

“We need persistence, we need collection,” Bowman said. “But we need collection that is technically shareable.”

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, along with other government space organizations, is developing what it calls a Lunar Reference Frame — essentially, the mapping infrastructure that would support a GPS-like capability for the moon.

“Today, we’re working NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command to develop a lunar geodetic system that will guide future visitors around the moon’s surface as accurately and safely as GPS does on Earth,” NGA Director Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth said May 22 at the GEOINT Conference in St. Louis.

The Lunar Reference Frame will serve a similar function as the World Geodetic System, which undergirds navigation capabilities like GPS, providing precise and accurate latitude, longitude and timing data. NGA maintains that system, dubbed WGS 84.

The push to develop a navigation framework comes as the U.S. and other countries — along with commercial companies — plan missions and envision a future economy on the moon.

The U.S. Department of Defense has also made a notable shift in its posture toward operations around the moon, from viewing potential threats in deep space as a far-off future to anticipating that those concerns could present much sooner. In recent years, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have initiated a number of programs that explore satellite sensing and logistics in a lunar environment.

Whitworth noted that while the current focus is on a moon-based system, he expects NGA will eventually develop similar navigation frames for other planets and said the agency is building its workforce to support those future needs.

“We’re working on growing and training the next generation of scientists and bringing geodesy and geomatics skill sets back to the U.S.,” he said.

James Griffith, director of the agency’s Source and Operations Management Directorate, told reporters during a May 22 briefing that while the NGA serves as the lead DoD agency for the Lunar Reference Frame, many other organizations have a stake in the effort.

“NGA brings expertise to the community in how to build a reference frame and in the geodetic sciences. Our role is to lead in that regard,” he said. “There are others out there within the department and elsewhere who say, ‘This is what we need the reference frame to do.’”

While the agency has crafted a navigation framework before, the challenge in developing the lunar system will be understanding how to collect data in the moon environment.

“The moon as a planetary object operates very differently than the Earth,” he said. “We know the types of data we need, but we don’t necessarily know how to collect it in that type of an environment because our tools aren’t built for that. And so, we have a lot of exploratory work to do between now and actually developing a final reference frame.”

As for a timeline for delivering the capability, Griffith said NGA is working with its partners to prioritize their needs and set a schedule. He noted that the agency is partnered particularly close with NASA, which plans to launch a crewed test flight to the moon in 2024 in preparation for its next moon mission, Artemis III, in 2025.

“I can’t promise you that we will be in a place where we’re completing the work in time for the Artemis launch,” he said. “We are certainly working very closely with NASA on what the solution looks like and how it will be rolled out.”

Northrop is on track to deliver the Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability by early 2026, a ground-based system to be stationed in Australia. The radar will provide all-weather, 24/7 observation of objects in geosynchronous orbit, around 22,000 miles above Earth.

The Space Force said in a May 16 notice it is “imperative” that the second and third DARC radars follow in quick succession, with site two established in the United Kingdom by 2027 and site three in the U.S. by 2028. With those rapid timelines in mind, the service is surveying the industrial base to determine if other companies can meet that schedule.

It’s not immediately clear what firms will respond to the Space Force’s market research, but prior to awarding Northrop a $341 million contract to build the first radar site, the service and the Air Force Research Laboratory established a broad base of industry and academic partners to mature various supporting technologies.

Those partners include John Hopkins University’s Applied Physics laboratory — which received a $54 million contract to build a prototype radar — L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Georgia Tech Applied Research Corporation and Centauri, a space and intelligence company purchased in 2020 by Texas-based engineering firm KBR.

The Space Force expects to spend nearly $844 million to build all three DARC sites and included $214 million for DARC in its fiscal 2024 budget. The bulk of that request will support efforts to field the first radar.

Frank Calvelli, the Space Force’s top acquisition official, said during an April 26 House Armed Services Committee hearing that DARC is progressing well through testing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

“We proved out the concept that DARC can actually work,” he said.

Tracking activity in space, and particularly in geosynchronous orbit, has been a growing priority for the Space Force as adversaries like Russia and China have shown signs of possible aggression in the regime. In 2020, then-Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond revealed that two Russian satellites were trailing a U.S. spy satellite and called the behavior “unusual and disturbing.”

The service uses a mix of ground radars and in-space sensors to conduct this mission. DARC will join the most recent ground-based capability known as Space Fence, which was built by Lockheed Martin and became operational in 2020. The radar, located at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, significantly increased the number of objects the service can see from Earth.

Later this summer, the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office expect to launch the newest space observation satellites, dubbed Silent Barker. Much of the details about the program are classified, but its mission is to surveil areas of GEO that the service can’t observe with its existing radar network.

Two spacecraft will fly in the first launch, and NRO Director Steve Scolese told reporters April 18 at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Co., the constellation will eventually include more satellites.

MELBOURNE, Australia — A satellite image obtained by Defense News shows what appears to be a WZ-8 supersonic reconnaissance drone parked outside one of two newly built hangars at China’s Lu’an Airbase.

China is continuing to revamp a bomber base that was identified in recently leaked U.S documents as hosting a new supersonic reconnaissance drone.

The satellite image, provided to Defense News by Planet Labs, shows Lu’an Airbase in China’s Anhui province. The previously unoccupied base is undergoing an upgrade, with construction beginning sometime between April 2018 and early 2019. Improvements include the resurfacing of the 3,200-meter (3,500-yard) runway, the widening of taxiways, and the construction of 20 bomber-sized aircraft shelters and two hangars to replace open aircraft parking bays.

China also built munitions checkout facilities on base, according to Decker Eveleth, a student at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey who reviewed the satellite photo given to Defense News. Eveleth explained that such checkout facilities are used to inspect munitions before they’re loaded onto aircraft for use.

These buildings are usually found at bases for bombers and ground-launched missiles, Eveleth added, and tend to be “long, tall buildings with doors at both ends,” with missiles usually fixed to a rail for inspection at various stations for examining various components.

Lu’an Airbase is home to the 29th Air Regiment of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s 10th Bomber Division, according to Andreas Rupprecht, who has authored several books on Chinese military aviation and the industry.

He told Defense News that the unit currently flies the Xi’an H-6K and H-6M bombers. The latter is the primary launch platform of the WZ-8, carrying the supersonic drone on an hardpoint on its fuselage underside and releasing it from a high altitude.

The WZ-8 was also seen on a satellite photo taken in December 2022, while another from early April 2023 showed continued progress in widening the aircraft taxiways leading to the base’s underground aircraft facilities south of the runway.

Using Google Earth’s measuring tool, Defense News assesses that the new taxiways are approximately 25 meters (82 feet) wide, compared to 14 meters (46 feet) previously. However, the underground facilities, which run underneath nearby hills, have yet to be widened.

The presence of WZ-8s at the base was noted in a document ostensibly from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and leaked online through the social media platform Discord. A member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is accused of leaking the highly classified information.

Defense News has been unable to verify the veracity of the document. Aric Toler, a researcher with investigative journalism group Bellingcat who has written extensively on the Discord leaks, told Defense News he had not seen the document before.

The published document showed two WZ-8s at the base, which it called “Liuan,” and claimed the imagery was taken during a reconnaissance satellite pass on Aug. 9, 2022.

One of the drones was outside the same hangar as that seen on the satellite photo provided to Defense News, while the other was being towed along the runway.

The document also outlined possible mission flight profiles of the WZ-8, suggesting that it could perform reconnaissance missions over South Korea and Taiwan with a daylight sensor suite including a synthetic aperture radar and electro-optical sensor while flying at Mach 3 at an altitude of 100,000 feet.

It also suggests the drones could recover at China’s coastal airfields following the completion of their missions, landing at bases such as Dashuibo in Wendeng on the Shandong Peninsula or Huian, which is west of Taiwan.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’a leader examined a finished military spy satellite, which his country is expected to launch soon, during a visit to an aerospace facility where he described space-based reconnaissance as crucial for countering the U.S. and South Korea.

Kim Jong Un during Tuesday’s visit approved an unspecified “future action plan” in preparations for launching the satellite, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday. North Korea hasn’t disclosed a target date for the launch, which some analysts say may be in the next few weeks.

That launch would use long-range missile technology banned by past U.N. Security Council resolutions, although previous missile and rockets tests have demonstrated North Korea’s ability to deliver a satellite into space.

There are more questions, however, about the satellite’s capability. Some South Korean analysts say the satellite shown in North Korean state media photos appears too small and crudely designed to support high-resolution imagery. Photos that North Korean media released from past missile launches were low resolution.

Photos released by the Rodong Sinmun newspaper of Tuesday’s visit showed Kim and his daughter — dressed in white lab coats — talking with scientists near an object that looked like the main component of a satellite. The newspaper did not identify the object, which was surrounded by a perimeter of red tape.

KCNA said the satellite was deemed ready to be loaded onto a rocket after scientists examined the device’s assembly and put it through tests to confirm whether it would withstand the environment of space.

South Korea’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said North Korea has yet to inform international maritime and telecommunication authorities of any launch plans. It said a North Korean satellite launch would violate various U.N. Security Council resolutions banning the North from any launches involving ballistic technologies and “threaten regional peace and stability.”

“The announcing of the satellite launch plan shows yet again that the North Korean regime is preoccupied with continuing its illegal provocations while ignoring the plight of its people,” the ministry said in a statement, in referring to North Korea’s broken economy and deepening international isolation.

The visit was Kim’s first public appearance in about a month, following a previous visit to the aerospace center on April 18 as state media announced that the satellite had been built.

Kim said acquiring a spy satellite would be crucial for his efforts to bolster the country’s defense as “U.S. imperialists and [South] Korean puppet villains escalate their confrontational moves” against the North, KCNA said.

He was apparently referring to the expansion of joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea, and the allies’ discussions on strengthening their nuclear deterrence strategies to cope with threats from North Korea, which has test-fired about 100 missiles since the start of 2022.

The next step in North Korea’s launch preparations, or the “future action plan” state media mentioned, could be installing the satellite on what would likely be a three-stage space rocket, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies.

Depending on how North Korean preparations go, the launch could be conducted as early as mid-June, although Pyongyang might also time the event to major state anniversaries that fall in July, September or October, the professor said.

Recent commercial satellite images indicate rapid construction activities at North Korea’s northwest rocket launch facility, where the country last conducted a satellite launch in 2016, the North Korea-focused 38 North website said Monday. The activities include construction on the facility’s main satellite launch pad and possible efforts to establish a new launch pad at the edge of the site near the sea, 38 North said in its report.

Spy satellites are among a slew of advanced weapons systems Kim Jong Un has vowed to develop. Others on his wish list include solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-powered submariners, hypersonic missiles and multiwarhead missiles.

North Korea testing new ICBMs, US says, warns more coming

North Korea has tested some of those weapons in recent months, including its first flight-test of a solid-fuel ICBM last month, but experts say the North may need more time and technological breakthroughs to make those systems functional.

In response to North Korean plans to launch a military spy satellite, Japan’s military last month ordered troops to activate missile interceptors and get ready to shoot down fragments from the satellite that may fall on Japanese territory.

North Korea placed its first and second Earth observation satellites into orbit in 2012 and 2016, but foreign experts say neither transmitted imagery back to North Korea. The U.N. Security Council issued sanctions over those launches.

North Korea has avoided new Security Council sanctions for its recent ballistic tests in 2022 and this year as Moscow and Beijing continue to block U.S.-led efforts to dial up pressure on Pyongyang, underscoring a divide between the council’s permanent members that deepened over Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Maj. Gen. Shawn Bratton, head of Space Training and Readiness Command, said the service has identified gaps in the digital infrastructure that will allow STARCOM to train and test cyber, electromagnetic and orbital warfare in a single virtual environment and in the ground and space-based sensing capabilities to observe sensitive in-orbit test activity for long periods of time.

“We’ve got lots of sensors that work for the operational command now doing space domain awareness, but when you’re conducting a sensitive test activity, the ability to stare into space for hours, days or longer will mean we have to have some dedicated sensors for test activities,” Bratton said during a virtual May 10 Mitchell Institute event.

STARCOM officials will meet with industry representatives in late June to discuss these capability gaps and update companies on plans to develop a National Space Test and Training Complex.

The NSTTC is one component of the service’s operational test and training infrastructure, providing the simulated and in-orbit capabilities it needs to make train its force and making sure the satellites and ground systems it develops work as designed.

“It’s not a physical piece of real estate that we own,” Bratton said of the range. “It’s really the sensors that we need to observe activity, to make sure we’re being safe and professional. . . . And then the infrastructure that ties it all together for command and control and gathering data.”

The Space Force requested about $340 million for operational test and training infrastructure in its fiscal 2024 budget. That includes funding to develop the NSTTC and for training equipment like simulators.

As STARCOM refines its long-term capability needs for the NSTTC, the command is already conducting live and virtual exercises within existing range environments.

In September, it hosted its first “Black Skies” electromagnetic warfare training event and the command is planning a similar orbital warfare exercises this summer called “Red Skies.” Next year, STARCOM will host a “Blue Skies” event geared toward training cyber operators. The command recently conducted a second Black Skies exercise and is planning its third for this fall.

Bratton said that while the Space Force’s electronic warfare operators are “pros” at running their systems, Black Skies has focused on command and control and operating several systems at once. It’s also helped train operators for the intelligence portion of their mission.

“There are always lessons learned on the intel side on, how do we think about targeting, our understanding of the adversary, our ability to move information rapidly across the enterprise . . . between offensive and defensive capabilities,” he said.

As for STARCOM’s participation in joint training exercises and its support of the other military services, Bratton said, “the demand level is high and the Space Force is small,” but the command is doing what it can to provide space inputs for those events.

The $7.3 billion merger offer, launched in November 2021, has most recently been stalled by a Competition and Markets Authority investigation into whether the tie-up would adversely impact competition in the fast growing supply of satellite connectivity for wi-fi on flights.

Both companies have significant activities in the defense and security sectors in Britain.

The British government approved the deal last year but progress towards finalizing the acquisition had been halted by the CMA’s intervention.

In a statement the CMA said it had concluded that “while Viasat and Inmarsat compete closely – specifically in the supply of satellite connectivity for wifi on flights – the deal does not substantially reduce competition for services provided on flights used by U.K. customers.”

The approval is not the final hurdle, but is an important milestone in Viasat’s quest to acquire the British-based satellite communications company.

The European Commission has launched its own investigation into the impact of the proposed merger on broadband services on airliners. It is expected to report on its findings by the end of June.

U.S. government approvals are also pending.

Viasat is a leading supplier of secure satellite communications and other services to the civil sector and various U.S. government departments, including the Pentagon.

In the U.K. the company is best known for data assurance and encryption services for government and defense.

Inmarsat provides satellite-based communications services to aviation, shipping and government agencies, including the U.K. Ministry of Defence.

Gen. Bryan Fenton told attendees of SOF Week, a special operations force-focused event taking place May 8-11 in Florida, that recruiting for positions such as data scientists, data stewards, cyber and space experts, and technologists is nonnegotiable.

“Data — not to be too trite here — data is the oil, the oxygen we all need to have a decisive advantage,” Fenton said Tuesday.

The command is “harnessing data like never before,” Fenton added. As an example, he said that in a recent mission targeting a senior leader of the Islamic State group, special operations teams navigated “near-peer air defense” and integrated cyber defense capabilities.

“Unfamiliar to us in the past, but becoming the norm in the future,” he explained.

Natural language processing, data-driven processing, artificial intelligence and collaborative autonomy — the latter of which teams human operators with robotic technology and data — are giving commanders ways to track vehicle maintenance and the readiness of equipment and personnel, Fenton said. The general himself has a so-called digital dashboard that summarizes much of what is happening across his command for regular checkups.

Furthermore, the command aims to use space and cyber assets to better inform mission planning in the various counterterrorism, integrated deterrence and irregular warfare missions it faces, Fenton said.

In a subsequent presentation, Jim Smith, an acquisition executive with the command, said the organization uses a software-designed approach for electronic gear in nearly all new acquisitions. Part of that is to avoid electronic fratricide, where one piece of equipment’s signal interferes with another, effectively canceling out the utility of both pieces of technology.

One example in which data improves operations, Smith said, is a program meant to provide a mission command system and a common-operating picture for leaders in the field so they receive continuous, real-time updates shared across a formation.

Smith also said there are efforts underway to include special operations-specific space-based payloads on satellites.

Fenton said incorporating such features gives Special Operations command an outsized advantage across its various missions. At SOCOM, he added, leaders are using data to see how their teammates are doing, as well as evaluating how to manage the command’s budget and what types of equipment is required for future missions.

By using “algorithmic approaches” to assess itself, SOCOM can solve a lot of challenges, he said.

The Space Test Program office, which will manage the STEP 2.0 contract, announced May 8 it released a draft solicitation for the effort. Lt. Col. Jonathan Shea, the office’s director, told reporters during a briefing the same day that contractors selected for the program will be eligible to compete over a 10-year period to build satellites, integrate experimental payloads and provide support from the ground.

Shea’s office, dubbed STP, works with companies, universities and government agencies to find rides to space for approved technology demonstration projects, which usually means identifying an upcoming mission that has availability for more satellites.

While in the past organizations would typically propose payloads that were already matched with satellites, Shea said that in recent years more of those experiments have featured sensors or other equipment “on their own” without an associated spacecraft.

Creating a contract mechanism that provides a flight-proven satellite bus for those payloads is a way to “ensure that we’re able to do this for years to come,” he said.

“That’s the theory that we’re trusting and putting into play here,” Shea said.

Early next year, after the service selects its STEP 2.0 providers, the program will likely award an initial task order. Shea said the program has identified two experiments that would likely fly on the mission, Space Test Program-8, sometime in 2025.

Experiment review board

The STP office partners closely with the Defense Department’s Space Experiments Review Board to identify and vet projects proposed by its commercial, government and university partners – and the annual meeting where that happens is taking place May 9 through 11.

The board will consider more than 60 projects during this year’s meeting and will prioritize and rank the proposals based on relevance and importance. The STP office will then match the experiments with a launch mission that has availability for more satellites.

Col. Eric Nelson, director of the capability delivery directorate in the Air Force’s space acquisition office, told reporters in the same May 8 briefing that the process plays an important role in ensuring that “worthy experiments” aimed at demonstrating technology that could benefit the department find a ride to space.

Shea said the goal is to find a spot for all proposed projects, but when they launch depends on their unique needs and how much space STP can find on future missions.

Funding is also a factor in how many experiments the program can launch. The Space Force requested about $30 million for the program in its fiscal 2024 budget, which is a $5 million increase from what Congress enacted last year. That funding level will only pay for 10 to 15 experiments to launch, according to Col. Joseph Roth, director of the service’s Innovation and Prototyping Acquisition Delta.

“I would say it’s been a challenge, fiscally, to get those payloads on,” he said during the same briefing.

Shea noted that as commercial launch rates increase, projects that can’t find a ride through STP have more opportunities to work with launch providers to find space on their missions for their payloads. Though the service would prefer to have the means to facilitate that process, he said it does offer more avenues for experiments to get to orbit.

The company, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, expects to launch another 8,000 Starlink spacecraft in the next three years — and it’s not the only satellite manufacturer eyeing large fleets of small space vehicles in low Earth orbit, roughly 1,200 miles above the planet’s surface.

Other companies with ambitions in LEO include Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, which expects its Project Kuiper constellation to feature more than 1,500 communication satellites by 2026, and OneWeb, a London-based firm that has already launched more than 600 spacecraft to its satellite internet constellation as of late March.

On the government side, the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency expects its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture will include hundreds of spacecraft providing low-latency communication and missile tracking capabilities. Space Systems Command, the service’s primary acquisition arm, is considering how it might adopt this model for other mission areas.

The rise of proliferated satellite constellations creates a need for more rockets, and in the last few years, a number of new entrants have ventured into the launch scene — including Firefly Aerospace, Relativity Space and ABL Space Systems — and more established companies like SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman have revealed plans to upgrade or build new launch vehicles.

Underpinning the swell of commercial and military activity in orbit and the demand for rockets to support it is a launch range infrastructure that is largely managed by the Space Force.

The service operates the two busiest spaceports in the U.S. — the Eastern Range at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and the Western Range at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The complexes, which just a decade ago were flying only a handful of missions each year, provided payload processing and support for 73 missions in 2022.

The service expects to surpass 130 launches this year — a number officials say could triple in the near future.

Randy Kendall, vice president of launch and architecture operations at Aerospace Corp. — a space-focused federally funded research and development center based in El Segundo, California — said the alignment between government and commercial requirements, the capital from billionaires like Musk and Bezos and technological advances that are driving down the cost to orbit likely means that launch demand continue into the foreseeable future.

And with that sustained demand, he said, comes increased strain on the Space Force’s launch infrastructure.

“As that total pace of launch grows, obviously the major theme is congestion,” Kendall told C4ISRNET in an interview. “Congestion on the schedule, getting a range date, congestion in the airspace traffic on and around the spaceport. . . . It’s really putting a strain on the infrastructure.”

Spaceport of the future

The Space Force’s launch enterprise has been anticipating this kind of growth, and the resulting congestion, for several years. In 2017, when the service was still part of the Air Force, it launched a campaign called “Drive to 48″ that set a goal of preparing its ranges to support 48 launches a year by the early 2020s. It hit that target for the first time last year with 57 missions.

In 2018, then-commander of Air Force Space Command Gen. Jay Raymond convened a task force to study what a “Range of the Future” might look like for the service. That work turned into a strategy targeting the architecture, infrastructure, policy, operations and business model shifts required to contend with commercial launch demand.

Since then, the service has made progress to reduce the strain on its ranges and ensure it can adjust to that growth — streamlining its launch processes, crafting roadmaps for infrastructure improvements and implementing automated safety requirements for launch providers that reduce the amount of personnel and ground-based radars required at its ranges.

Col. Mark Shoemaker, vice commander for operations at Space Launch Delta 45 at Cape Canaveral, said the efforts have changed the way the service views its launch enterprise; no longer just a collection of instrumentation and telemetry, the Space Force wants to run its ranges more like airports (or spaceports) that provide a service to its customers.

“We spent a lot of time and effort, not on buying new equipment but looking at just the way we make decisions and the ‘why’ behind the policies that we had in place,” Shoemaker told C4ISRNET in an interview. “Really what it did was change the mental model and get us ready for the increase in launch.”

Legislative hurdles

Col. James Horne, deputy director of Space Systems Command’s Assured Access to Space Directorate, told C4ISRNET the idea is for these spaceports to create “an environment where we have unlimited ability to support whatever the commercial launch industry brings to us.” Under a spaceport model, the Space Force units, or deltas, that manage launch ranges would function as airport authorities, providing a suite of services that companies can draw from based on their needs.

The service is still trying to close the gap between perceiving its ranges as spaceports and actually operating them that way, and is looking to the fiscal 2024 legislative cycle as a chance to address some of the policy and funding challenges that are impeding that shift, Horne said.

The service’s fiscal 2024 budget includes $1.3 billion over the next five years for infrastructure projects at the Cape and Vandenberg meant to increase the number of launches they can conduct. It also asked Congress — as part of a batch of legislative proposals the White House sent to lawmakers in mid-April — to consider changes to the law that would allow it to operate its ranges more like a port authority.

Under the Commercial Space Launch Act, signed in 1984, the service can charge companies for marginal costs like electricity at a launch pad, but it can’t impose fees for overhead infrastructure. The law also restricts the Space Force from accepting in-kind contributions from commercial companies to upgrade its ranges, a practice that is standard at port authorities.

These policy issues, according to Aerospace Corps’ Kendall, are the biggest constraints on the service’s ability to create more capacity at its ranges.

“If that policy would change, that’d be a huge enabler to be able to get to higher commercial launch rates,” he said.

Making space for more companies

As the Space Force awaits these policy changes and new funding streams, it’s working with companies to expand its launch cadence within the existing parameters and reduce any paint points that contribute to backlog or scheduling issues.

At Cape Canaveral, the busier of the Space Force’s two launch hubs, the range team is partnering with NASA’s neighboring Kennedy Space Center to find space for more companies to secure launch facilities.

Shoemaker said the service has “good cooperation” with the agency, but is running out of land and options to grow its footprint. The number of pads the range could add depends on a number of factors, including the size of a company’s rocket, but he said it’s likely in the “low single digits.”

The Vandenberg complex, which sits on 100,000 acres of land along California’s central coast, faces a different challenge. Col. Robert Long, who oversees the range as commander of Space Launch Delta 30, told C4ISRNET that while the base has plenty of land, there are environmental constraints that make expansion difficult.

“Much of that is undisturbed ground. So if you’re going to build infrastructure, there are certain policies and processes that are in place,” he said.

Vandenberg also serves as a major test range for Defense Department missile programs, including the Air Force’s new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, which could fly for the first time this year. Long said balancing the needs of the testing community while also meeting demand for more launch is a challenge.

Both ranges are also looking to reduce congestion in the launch process, particularly in the area of payload processing. Before a satellite is ready to lift off, all of the hardware and equipment that it’s carrying must be prepared and validated. The increase in launch rates means more satellites need to be processed — especially for missions carrying multiple spacecraft and payloads — and when there’s not enough capacity to do that, it creates a backlog.

“It’s become one of our true bottlenecks going forward that we’re really focused on trying to throw as many tools at as we can to help remedy,” Horne said.

The service has identified space at both ranges where they can host more processing facilities and are working with companies to determine whether there’s interest in performing that work. Cape Canaveral is in discussions with several companies and Vandenberg is in the initial outreach stage.

Expanding spaceport access

Horne said that from an enterprise perspective, the service is looking at options to expand the number of federal spaceports that companies can access. Today, the U.S. hosts 20 spaceports, six of which are federally run. Only four of those installations, including Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral, can support vertical launch, which is the predominant need.

The Space Force isn’t likely to be operating more ports in the near future – Horne said the service is focused on its existing ranges “for now” — but instead is deepening its partnerships with the other ranges.

“We are reaching out to them . . . cross-talking, sharing common challenges,” he said. “And if we have had a challenge that we have overcome, [we’re] sharing that with those spaceports.”

To further help strengthen those partnerships and better understand the challenges that come with greater commercial launch demand, the Federal Aviation Administration formed a National Spaceport Interagency Working Group.

The group — which includes representatives from the Space Force, the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA and the departments of Commerce and State — is crafting a national strategy that aims to make U.S. spaceports more resilient and standardized. Horne said the panel has completed a rough draft of the report and expects a final version by the end of this year or early next.

“We see a need to probably expand the number of spaceports and access points we have, and so the strategy is about the national means to enable that to happen at scale and quickly and to ensure interoperability and the right policy mechanisms to encourage the growth of spaceports nationwide,” he said. “We know that it’s important for industry. It’s also important for resiliency from a national security perspective.”

Bentivegna will become the second person to hold the title of Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force since the newest branch of the U.S. Armed Forces was created in December 2019.

His selection brings to the Pentagon a career space operator with a wealth of experience as a command chief across the military space enterprise, as the Space Force looks to grow to nearly 15,000 employees and a $30 billion budget in fiscal 2024.

“We have run really fast to develop the service and shape what it’s going to be,” he said in a press release Monday. “We have charted a vision for the future, and I want to deliver that vision to our guardians and the joint force. … I am humbled that I get to be the one to champion these efforts for them in the future.”

Bentivegna currently serves as the senior enlisted adviser to Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, the service’s chief operations officer. He also manages the corps of enlisted space systems operators, or those who help fly military satellites, operate offensive and defensive weapons in orbit and track missile launches around the globe.

In his new job, he will oversee the health and well-being of Space Force guardians and further shape the enlisted force’s burgeoning role in military space operations. He’ll also advise Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, the service’s top officer, on matters from pay to deployments.

Saltzman chose his new enlisted counterpart over four other candidates on May 5, after a four-day series of evaluations and interviews. Any Space Force chief master sergeant who had spent at least 22 years in the military and three years as a chief could apply, the service said.

“I needed someone that would bring a perspective on our future that was articulated differently from mine … someone who could (and would) challenge my assumptions, and ensure that important issues were evaluated from multiple angles,” Saltzman said in the release.

Bentivegna joined the Air Force in 1994 and transferred into the Space Force in 2020, according to his official biography.

Before coming to work at the Pentagon last June, he served as the senior enlisted leader at the Colorado-based Space Operations Command, a branch of the Space Force that prepares guardians to perform their missions at units around the world.

It is separate from the Pentagon’s U.S. Space Command, which handles the day-to-day work of wielding and protecting those military space assets in combat.

Bentivegna recently held other roles at Space Operations Command, the National Reconnaissance Office and the 50th Space Wing — which handles a range of navigation, communications and surveillance satellites. He has earned some of the military’s most prestigious awards, including the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit and Defense Meritorious Service Medal.

He is set to replace Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force Roger Towberman, who spearheaded the Space Force’s push to craft a unique service culture separate of the Air Force, from which it sprang. Those efforts entailed rolling out a new rank system, uniforms and insignia, a workforce management plan and more.

It’s unclear when Towberman is set to leave his post after more than 30 years in the military.

The Commercial Space Office, led by Col. Richard Kniseley, will replace the Commercial Services Office, which was established just a year ago. The organization will bring together several other initiatives, including SpaceWERX — the service’s technology hub — and Space Systems Command’s Front Door, an online portal companies can use to connect with the acquisition community.

The office will also lead the Space Force’s efforts to create a Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve to leverage companies’ space capabilities in a crisis. In an April 18 interview at the Space Symposium here, Kniseley told C4ISRNET he’s working to craft a framework for the program by this summer.

“We have got to get these capabilities integrated in peacetime so that the warfighter has a chance to use it, so that we can integrate them into exercises and wargames to really make it part of the architecture,” Knisely said.

In the same wide-ranging interview, Kniseley discussed his plans to expand the Space Domain Awareness marketplace — which allows companies to compete for space data contracts — to other mission areas and laid out his priorities for the new office.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When was the Commercial Space Office created and where will it be headquartered?

It was officially stood up [in April], and I’ve already started aligning the processes and the offices. The actual headquarters for the Commercial Space Office will be in Chantilly, Va.

In fact, in June, we’re opening up our Commercial Collaboration Center in Chantilly, and it’s this perfect sweet spot to have it because it’s right next to the National Reconnaissance Office. It’s right near the Space Development Agency, you have NASA nearby along with other mission partners. But also it’s in a good sweet spot of industry as well.

Just having it out there is going to be a benefit to all of us because at the end of the day, I look at this commercial space office as a collaboration amongst everybody. And we were already building those relationships with NRO as well as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency — understanding what contracts they had available so that we’re not recreating contracts, but we could tap into those other areas with the appropriate funding and the requirement from the warfighter.

What are your initial priorities in the Commercial Space Office?

Some of them are a little early on, but from a strategic standpoint, transitioning the Commercial Satellite Communications Office away from the Defense Information Systems Agency. Right now, organizationally, it is under the Space Force, but we are still utilizing DISA for contracting. To make this office work, we’re standing up a working capital fund, which we are anticipating by the end of September.

That’s going to allow us to really get after those other mission areas going forward. What we’re doing with DISA is anything that is ongoing or if they were already in source selection, we’re letting those go through. But soon new procurements, those will be actually coming through the Commercial Space Office contract.

When it comes down to the commercial space office, the biggest thing I want to do is make deliberate investment in commercial that’s just really going to get after what the warfighter needs. Because the feedback I’ve gotten from the commercial entities is they want to get involved. They want to be good partners. It’s really all about a partnership. And the way to do that is to really show that you’re deliberate in building that. The best way to do it is through investments. So, aligning contracts and aligning the right funding to do this.

How will your efforts be funded? Will that come from the program offices you’re working with?

I look at my office to do a lot of the execution. I will be looking at the program executive offices — and I think this is even coming down from Space Force leadership — to look at their mission areas to really understand . . . how mature is the market right now? And also figuring out what are those inherently government missions or capabilities that need to be built in house and what can commercial take on today?

The way I look at it, especially with this conflict that’s coming [with China], we have got to get these capabilities integrated during peacetime so that the warfighter has a chance to use it, so that we can integrate them into exercises and war games to really make it a part of the architecture. You don’t want to try and do that while you’re in conflict. This is the time to do it so that if a crisis, heaven forbid, ever kicks up, you know it’s there and you know how to use it. And it becomes almost part of your lexicon.

The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit works closely with companies and program offices to help get commercial technology to the warfighter. How will your office collaborate with DIU?

We talk constantly on many different issues. I’ve been working with them on their hybrid space architecture, and some of the companies that are a part of that capability. And really, I see so much utility in some of the capabilities that can help us get after so many things that we’re trying to do. So I’m working on one effort right now to get them hooked up to the Naval Research Lab testbed, so that we can really prove out that capability. And then I think a lot of these are going to migrate to a live demo.

So, you would be connecting DIU’s hybrid space architecture with the NRL testbed?

I’m connecting certain pieces of it.

How is your office engaging with companies? And what feedback do you hear from them about impediments to working with DoD?

As I grow out the Commercial Space Office, one thing that we’ve done extremely well in my mind in the Space Force and definitely in Space Systems Command is to have industry engagements. We had 11 last year, which is huge.

We started with space-to-space communications in February of ‘22, and we had one almost once a month. That’s where we’ve been having a lot of conversation about our mission areas and posing our problems to them and, through a reverse industry day model, getting their feedback.

I plan to continue those. We mentioned the [artificial intelligence/machine learning] day in May. We’re going to do alternate positioning, navigation and timing in June. I think there’s gonna be a weather one because I see that as a big area that, why wouldn’t we go commercial?

Where I see industry getting frustrated is that there’s been talk, but they want to see action. They want to see deliberate integration and funding in commercial and getting those capabilities to the warfighter. So that is definitely what I’m going to challenge my team on and that’s where I see success — contracts and funding and capability delivery.

Where is some of this commercial integration happening already within the Space Force?

We talked about the success of the commercial SATCOM office. I mean, that’s about $1 billion dollars per year that executes through that office. I would like to do more with the Space Domain Awareness (SDA) marketplace, which is going to come under my office. There’s areas that I’ve got in my head of making it more of an investment in commercial while still ingraining that character and the discipline that we want out of the companies.

The work that’s being done with [U.S. Space Command’s] Joint Commercial Integration Office (JCO), that is actual operators utilizing that commercial capability — that is huge right there. That commercial capability is being brought in to utilize by operators and our allies alike.

I want to create other marketplaces for other areas so that I can almost replicate that SDA model and get it out to the JCO and start doing that type of stuff. If the warfighter has a requirement, I can throw it into that marketplace and have the competition there and then quickly get that capability out.

The reorganization of Lockheed Martin Space, which previous had five business lines, will better enable the Bethesda, Maryland-based company to “deliver 21st Century capabilities and pursue innovation, exploration and discovery missions.” it said in a statement.

“With an eye toward the future and building on our current business momentum, these changes position us to deliver end-to-end solutions for today’s mission demands and well into the future,” Robert Lightfoot, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space, said in the May 4 statement.

The national security space business will be led by Vice President and General Manager Maria Demaree, who previously led the company’s internal Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts.

Ranked the largest defense firm in the most recent Defense News Top 100 list, Lockheed is the prime contractor on U.S. Space Force programs across several mission areas, including GPS, missile warning and tracking and narrowband satellite communications.

The company recently established an innovation hub focused on rapid capability development called Ignite, and under the realignment it will also create a “Product Center” aimed at making the company’s systems more affordable. Former head of Lockheed’s space operations, Mike Patton, will lead the product center.

The service said May 2 it awarded $30 million to both teams to develop designs to compete for the Ground Resilient Integration and Framework for Operational Nuclear Command, Control and Communication system. GRIFFON will operate a future fleet of Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications spacecraft designed to withstand a nuclear attack.

The industry groups, which include traditional defense contractors and software companies, will demonstrate prototypes within 18 months. The Space Force said in a statement the teams will design software applications that integrate into a “cyber-resilient architecture” and will work closely with the operators who will ultimately use the capability — an approach aimed at delivering updates at a rapid pace.

“Software is never complete, so acquiring it modularly gives us flexibility for iterative agile updates that are responsive to user needs,” GRIFFON Materiel Leader Lt. Col. Laila Barasha said in the statement. “Industry teams focused on innovation will be able to develop and deliver the ground capability faster for future generations of warfighters.”

The service’s fiscal 2024 budget request includes $216 million for the effort. That funding supports the ground system prototyping activity as well as the creation of a classified development environment.

Fielding satellite ground systems like GRIFFON on time is a priority for the Space Force, which has struggled in the past to keep software-heavy programs on schedule and within original cost estimates.

Perhaps the most notable recent example of this is the Next-Generation Operational Control Segment, or OCX, which will operate GPS satellites. The service was supposed to field the Raytheon-built capability in 2016, but software development issues have delayed that target several times. OCX is now under review as the Space Force sets a new timeline for completing the effort.

The service’s acquisition executive, Frank Calvelli, issued a memo to the service’s development workforce last October, highlighting timely delivery of these capabilities as one of his nine tenets, or guideposts, for improving the Space Force’s acquisition system.

In a May 2 hearing, Calvelli told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee his plan for smoother delivery of ground capabilities involves developing programs in segments, rather than as large, complex systems.

“We need to get away from building very large software developments and break things up into more manageable pieces that can be more quickly done,” Calvelli said. “I think when the government tries to build large, monolithic software systems, we tend to struggle with that.”

He added that the use of cloud computing environments, which provide a backbone for connecting systems and taking advantage of commercial software applications, could help with the effort.

So far, according to officials, the arrangement has worked.

Space Force Col. Brian Denaro, Space Systems Command’s program executive officer for space sensing, and Army Col. Alex Rasmussen, program manager for the Space Development Agency’s second tranche of missile tracking satellites, told C4ISRNET that without regular collaboration with their respective teams and their counterparts at the Missile Defense Agency, they would likely have faced unexpected development challenges.

Within the combined program office construct, the agencies meet weekly through an integration working group to share technical information. They also convene quarterly “summits” to troubleshoot any challenges they’re facing and prioritize and assign tasks for the working group.

“There are absolutely things we would be missing,” Denaro said in an interview this month at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo. “Those groups have ferreted those things out and helped us get after them.”

The Pentagon’s space acquisition offices have struggled in the past to agree on their roles and align their work to avoid duplication — particularly within the space-based missile warning mission area. Lawmakers and watchdogs including the Government Accountability Office have criticized the department’s lack of coordination, particularly between the Missile Defense Agency and the Space Development Agency, which are developing sensors to track hypersonic missiles.

Last year, the Space Force’s program integration council — which includes officials from Space Systems Command, the National Reconnaissance Office, MDA and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office — approved a strategy for the Defense Department’s future space-based missile warning satellites and ground systems.

The strategy calls for a new approach to detecting and tracking missile threats from space, a mission the Space Force has traditionally conducted from geosynchronous orbit, roughly 22,000 miles above Earth. As Russia and China develop hypersonic missiles that can maneuver and travel at Mach 5 or faster, the strategy calls for improving U.S. defenses against those weapons by launching smaller satellites to more diverse orbits.

It also endorsed the creation of the combined program office and clarified responsibility for various elements of the architecture.

Under the strategy, the Space Development Agency is responsible for fielding smaller satellites that will reside in low Earth orbit, about 1,200 miles above the planet. Space Systems Command will continue to develop the GEO layer as well as a medium Earth orbit constellation, which will reside between LEO and GEO. The organization is also leading efforts to build a ground control segment that integrates systems from the three agencies.

MDA, meanwhile, is developing medium-field-of-view sensors through its Hypersonic Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program, or HBTSS. The sensors are designed track dimmer missile targets and send data to interceptors. The agency’s role is to demonstrate the capability, which the Space Force will ultimately take over and incorporate into the broader missile tracking constellation.

Denaro and Rasmussen said the regular working group meetings and summits have not only helped clarify roles among the agencies, but they’ve created a venue for them to learn from one another. For example, Rasmussen said that as MDA plans to launch its HBTSS satellites later this year and begins testing the capabilities in orbit, SDA will collect data from those demonstrations and opt to either integrate the sensors with its future satellites or continue to refine the technology.

“Even if HBTSS doesn’t end up in part of the future tranches, all that tech that they learned, all of that stuff that we were able to do in the demo, it’s absolutely advancing our mission,” Rasmussen said.

MDA officials have also indicated improved collaboration with the Space Force. In a March 14 budget briefing, the agency’s director, Vice Adm. Jon Hill, said the combined program office is helping the teams avoid “redundance and duplication.”

Denaro said because of the summits, SDA and SSC decided to co-fund technologies that both agencies will need for their pieces of the program. This includes capabilities like focal planes, which satellites use to collect real-time imagery, and crosslinks, which allow systems to communicate.

The collaboration has also helped address common supply chain issues. Over the next five years, the agencies plan to launch more than 100 missile tracking satellites combined, which means they need to be aware of any vulnerabilities within their supply base, Denaro said.

“We’re absolutely looking at the supply chain to make sure that . . . the supply chain is not a weak link in the chain, if you will, and that we’ve anticipated any potential disruptions or concerns on the supply side,” he said.

Rasmussen said the coordination among the agencies also helps industry view their work from an enterprise level and have a better sense of the various opportunities to compete for development contracts.

He said SDA and SSC have deliberately staggered their schedules, which makes competition “consistent and predictable.”

“That really tells industry, ‘Hey, make the investments. You know we’re going to compete this. You know we’re going to compete every tranche,’” he said.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Space Force wants to create a space-based “outernet” that would allow military satellites and networks to communicate more efficiently.

The service’s Space Warfighting Analysis Center recently completed its initial plan for the capability as part of its space data transport force design effort, according to Col. Eric Felt, director of architecture and integration in the Air Force’s space acquisition office.

“The outernet is the internet in space,” Felt said April 26 at the virtual C4ISRNET Conference. “The basic idea being that if I’m a sensor or a satellite in space, I shouldn’t have to worry about how my data gets to where it needs to go.”

The work is part of a broader capability design effort that considers what future satellite communications systems and sensors the military will need. The review considered how the Space Force could use a mix of traditional SATCOM networks and commercial satellites to help ensure data gets to its intended destination, Felt said.

“That’s very important because it gives us real-time command and control and access to our data . . . which we don’t always have today,” Felt said.

That hybrid approach of combining commercial and military SATCOM networks with varied levels of security offers a “broader view” of how data can travel through space using multiple connection pathways.

The Space Force is conducting similar force design efforts across its mission sets, including one for missile warning and tracking, which it completed in 2022, and another last year that considered how space-based sensors could be used to track moving targets.

Commercial integration

Felt said that as the service plans for future systems, it is considering how it can better incorporate capabilities from commercial companies and international allies. He noted that certain approaches, like reducing the classification level of certain programs or building smaller satellites can make it easier to bring in new partners.

“If we can do things at the secret, or even lower unclassified level, that facilitates easier integration with allies and partners,” Felt said. “To use small satellites just makes it easier for them. An outlier partner can much more easily and quickly build a small satellite than a large satellite.”

Speaking during the same C4ISRNET panel, Nicholas Eftimiades, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Councils Snowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, questioned whether that work to bring partners to the table is happening early enough in the Space Force’s capability development process.

“Where the allies couldn’t play 20 years ago because of the insurmountable costs . . . now, they can actually have capability in space,” he said. “That said, we’re still at a point where allies aren’t sitting in the room.”