The U.K. arms of Belgian-based company Rhea and American firm Lockheed Martin won separate contracts, cumulatively worth £4 million (U.S. $5 million).

The deals were announced Feb. 14, although both contractors have worked on their potential offerings since mid-2023, when they were selected from six firms initially tasked to undertake work on what is known as Project Beroe.

The amount of money involved may be small, but the outcome of the research and development work by the two companies could be key, according to Commodore David Moody, the head of capability at UK Space Command.

“This is a pivotal moment for UK Defence and the UK Space Sector as we develop software and partnerships that will determine the future of how we manage our activities in space,” Moody said in a statement released at the time of the announcement. “This project will enable us to define and understand how we will control and optimise the use of our satellites in a safe and sustainable way and is an important part of UK MOD’s future satellite aspirations.”

The 20-month-long contracts are scheduled to conclude in March 2025. There is no public timeline regarding the possible acquisition or future development phases of the software.

Existing British satellite control is focused around the Skynet 5 communications spacecraft network but Project Beroe is expected to enable satellite taskings from a much wider group of government entities and satellite types, individually or in concert.

Project Beroe is not directly related to Skynet and will support future non-Skynet satellite constellations like the low-Earth orbit ISTARI and Minerva programs.

Together, ISTARI and Minerva are to form the building blocks of a low-Earth orbit ISR capability for the British military.

ISTARI is a 10-year, £968 million program planned to deliver a multi-satellite system supporting surveillance and intelligence gathering for military operations.

Minerva is a £127 million project to develop four concept demonstrator satellites: Titania, Tyche, Oberon and Juno.

Tyche, which is the first of the four to launch, is scheduled to enter orbit this year. The Minerva group is meant to demonstrate the ability to autonomously collect, process and disseminate data from British and allied space assets, and this will inform how the ISTARI project moves forward.

Both programs are part of a planned £6.4 billion fund spread out over 10 years, as announced by the MoD when it rolled out its space defense strategy in 2022.

At a cost of about £5 billion, the lion’s share of that spending will go toward the procurement of a new generation of satellites and ground facilities under the Skynet 6 program.

Airbus is already building the first of those satellites, known as Skynet 6A, and a further competition is underway to provide a new generation of narrowband and wideband satellites under the Skynet 6 banner.

Receiving that payload, built by RTX, and integrating it onto the first Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared satellite is a top acquisition priority for the service, Frank Calvelli said during a Feb. 27 speech at the National Security Space Association’s Defense and Intelligence Space Conference.

He told C4ISRNET on the sidelines of the conference he’s concerned further delays could push the planned launch date past its 2025 target.

“Given that the payload is a year late, yeah, I’m worried,” Calvelli said.

Next-Gen OPIR is the successor to today’s Space-Based Infrared System, which detects and tracks ballistic missiles. It includes three satellites built by Lockheed Martin that will reside in geostationary orbit, about 22,000 miles above Earth, and two Northrop Grumman-built polar satellites destined for a highly elliptical orbit.

Lockheed in 2022 selected RTX, formerly Raytheon, to develop the primary payloads for two of the geosynchronous satellites and chose a Northrop Grumman-Ball Aerospace team to build the third. The mission payloads feature advanced sensors the Space Force will use to detect missile launches around the world.

The Government Accountability Office has issued repeated warnings of potential delays to the program, most recently in a June 2023 report. Program officials told GAO at the time mission payload delivery was the main driver of program risk.

“Our review of this program indicates that delivery of both payloads and the first launch are likely to be delayed,” GAO said. “According to program officials, each payload developer is working to overcome supply chain issues that could delay payload deliveries. Additionally, the complex integration of a novel payload and a modified spacecraft continue to present significant risk to the launch schedule.”

Calvelli said in his speech the payload needs to be delivered to Lockheed this spring to maintain the launch schedule, at which point the company will integrate it onto the satellite. He told C4ISRNET that while he’s concerned about the delay postponing launch, the program team is working to prevent that.

One way to do that, he said, is by changing the sequence by which Lockheed integrates other payloads and subsystems onto the satellite.

“Lockheed, quite honestly, is the best of the best at shuffling around their [integration and test] schedule,” Calvelli said. “Right now, they’re absorbing most of the impact by putting other stuff on first.”

A spokesperson for RTX deferred comment to Lockheed as the program’s prime contractor.

Michael Corriea, Lockheed’s vice president of warning programs, told C4ISRNET in a statement the company expects the re-sequencing to save time while it awaits the payload.

“Lockheed Martin is committed to delivering the first Next Gen GEO satellite to meet the Space Force’s planned 2025 launch date,” Corriea said. “To ensure that, we have been working closely with our payload provider, including having staff at their site, to help with payload integration.”

Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, the service’s chief strategy and resourcing officer, said he hopes to have a task force of 10 to 15 personnel in place by this summer. That team will lay the groundwork for the command with the goal of initial operations before the end of 2024.

“We’ll get the team, and they’ll start pulling it together and working through both the administrative [Defense Department] requirements to create a new organization as well as the much harder work of really getting after the tasks associated with it,” Bratton said Feb. 27 at the National Security Space Association’s Defense and Intelligence Space Conference in Virginia.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman announced the creation of the command Feb. 12 as part of organizational changes meant to position the Air Force and Space Force to better deter and counter threats from China. The Army has had a futures command to run modernization efforts since 2018.

The idea is that as the Space Force matures, it requires a more robust analysis backbone to not only understand what satellites, sensors and ground systems it needs, but also what structures it must have in place to support those capabilities. That includes the military construction, classified facilities, training and operational units that come with a new mission.

Space Futures Command will focus on three primary functions, which will be organized into centers. The Concepts and Technology Center will analyze the threat environment and consider what capabilities and forces the service needs to respond to those threats. A Wargaming Center will evaluate potential technologies through tabletop exercises and learning campaigns.

The third hub, the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, already exists within the Space Force and is focused on developing models for how the service can apply those capabilities in a future warfighting environment.

Bratton pointed to cislunar operations and on-orbit servicing and logistics as two mission areas Space Futures Command may explore in the near term.

Cislunar refers to the area between geostationary orbit — about 22,000 miles above Earth — and the moon. The service has been exploring concepts for future operations in that region, and Bratton said the new command could help refine how the service might operate in cislunar and what threats it may encounter.

Servicing, mobility and logistics is an emerging mission for the Space Force as it looks extend the life of its satellites and change the way it maneuvers them. While the service has demonstrations planned in the coming years, Bratton said there is some analytical work around how, for example, on-orbit refueling contributes to the Space Force’s role in future conflicts.

“We think there’s value there,” he said. “It’s sort of like going into court and proving there’s value. And that’s what futures command is going to have to do.”

“We’re having conversations about that with the service chief. He will decide what are the next candidates to do that,” Lt. Gen. David Miller told reporters in a Feb. 27 briefing.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman announced in September the service would pilot an integrated mission delta construct as a way to better align responsibility, authority and resources within mission areas. The concept is a departure from the service’s current unit structure, which separates operations, sustainment and acquisition into separate commands.

The Space Force chose positioning, navigation and timing, or PNT, as well as electronic warfare as the first two mission areas to test out the idea.

Miller said the service has been analyzing lessons from the first few months of the effort and made recommendations to Saltzman for which mission areas should be included in the next phase. He would not discuss his proposal with reporters and didn’t disclose the timing of an announcement, but said to expect more details “in the coming weeks.”

“You can imagine that my recommendations are pretty aggressive,” Miller said. “But we’re going to go with whatever the service chief and the [Air Force secretary] decide.”

Since implementing the construct, the PNT and electronic warfare integrated mission deltas have seen significant efficiency improvements, according to Miller — blowing past testing milestones and fielding capabilities in “record time.” For PNT, he said, the team demonstrated the ability to quickly address service outages now that its commander has authority for all of the system’s sustainment and maintenance, which would have previously resided in a separate command.

While the model has worked well for those two mission areas and Miller expects the same in other areas, he noted that the integrated approach may not be the right fit for all capability sets. Some, for example, may not be designed to present combat forces and so would function better under a single delta with a more focused responsibility scope.

“I don’t think that in every case and every situation that you’ll see an IMD, or Integrated Mission Delta, be a requirement,” he said. “Some of those deltas don’t need that.”

Space acquisition chief Frank Calvelli said today that while he stands by the fixed-price construct for much of the Space Force’s portfolio, there are some programs that require a more nuanced approach.

“I haven’t said I’m going to build the next-generation Battlestar Galactica, that’s never been built before, fixed-price,” Calvelli said at a Feb. 23 Center for Strategic and International Studies event. “We look at each acquisition individually and then we try to marry up the best strategy. When we’re doing smaller footprint systems using existing technology, fixed price works fine.”

Under fixed-price contracts, companies are responsible to cover any unexpected costs incurred during a development program. The deals are designed to reduce risk to the government, but can cause problems for industry when challenges arise.

One well-known example of this is Boeing’s development of the KC-46 tanker. The Air Force awarded the company a $4.9 billion fixed-price contract for the effort in 2011, but the company has racked up $7 billion in cost overages due to design and production issues.

In a series of earnings calls in late January, several large defense firms said they were concerned about the Defense Department’s use of fixed-price contracts. Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet said the deals lead companies to “take tremendous risk on cost and pricing.”

Northrop Grumman’s top executive, Kathy Warden, said the company has passed on high-profile defense programs due to that risk, and Chris Calio — chief operating officer at RTX and the company’s soon-to-be CEO — expressed similar sentiments.

Since Calvelli took the lead of the Space Force acquisition office in 2022, he has issued multiple memos highlighting acquisition practices that can drive speed into development programs. His vision is for the service to buy smaller systems that rely on existing technology under fixed-price contracts that push for a program to be fielded within three years of an initial award.

“When you’re using fixed price, you’re not doing the first-of-its-kind or inventing something new,” he said. “And so, I’m a little bit confused by some of the bigger primes who say they’re against that. They should not be against that.”

Calvelli acknowledged that not all programs fit that mold. He offered as an example the Space Force’s Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications program, which will provide secure, survivable communications capabilities for strategic missions. The satellites carry complex requirements and are designed to withstand a nuclear attack.

Boeing and Northrop Grumman have been developing prototype satellites since 2020 and the service expects to choose a single provider and begin production in 2025. Calvelli said that because the program was conducting early design and prototype work, the service considered a fixed-price contract as part of its acquisition strategy. However, it appears a cost-plus deal, which covers a company’s expenses as well as some profit, may be a better fit.

“Had we built a real payload or actually built the prototype of a satellite, then maybe it’s time to go off and do something fixed price,” he said. “As we revise the [acquisition strategy,] we are looking at going more towards the traditional cost-plus model.”

The California-based company, founded in 2021, develops orbital transport vehicles, which transfer spacecraft into different orbits. In January, SpaceWERX — the Space Force’s innovation arm — chose Impulse to support its tactically responsive space efforts.

“With the two awards from SpaceWERX and the guidance from General Raymond, Impulse can help bring the government closer to its goal of unlocking a more responsive space profile,” chief executive Tom Mueller said in a Feb. 21 statement.

Raymond was the first chief of space operations, overseeing the creation of the Space Force and leading the organization from 2019 to 2022. He oversaw the service’s pursuit of tactically responsive space operations, which emphasizes the need to quickly respond to threats in orbit.

In a statement, Raymond highlighted Impulse’s work in this area.

“This innovative company, led by our nation’s leading propulsion experts, is focused on responsive space mobility,” Raymond said. “I look forward to working closely with the team to advance our nation’s freedom to maneuver in the domain which is so vital to our national security.”

Impulse’s contracts with SpaceWERX center on rapid refueling operations and further development of its Helios engine. The company is also pursuing commercial applications for its technology.

Since retiring from the military, Raymond has joined private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, serving as senior managing director for supply chain and strategic opportunities. He also is a board member at Axiom Space, a commercial human spaceflight company.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried the satellites, four of which support the Space Development Agency’s constellation of tracking spacecraft and two are part of the Missile Defense Agency’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor program, or HBTSS.

The agencies, along with the Space Force, have been working together to develop a more robust network of satellites that can detect and track traditional ballistic missiles and maneuvering hypersonic weapons, which can travel at speeds above Mach 5.

The satellites will reside in low Earth orbit, or LEO, about 1,200 miles above the planet’s surface.

“Launching our tracking satellites into the same orbit with the MDA HBTSS satellites is a win for both agencies,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said in a Feb. 14 statement. “We’ll be able to look at test targets from the same orbit at the same time, so that we can see how the two sensors work together.”

The satellites represent a portion of a broader Space Force plan to strengthen its missile warning and tracking capabilities against increasing threats from China and Russia. Today, those spacecraft mostly reside in geosynchronous orbit, or GEO, about 22,000 miles above Earth. Satellites located in lower orbits like LEO can observe large areas without requiring the same level of complexity from sensors positioned further away.

The Pentagon expects to spend nearly $16 billion on these efforts through fiscal 2028, according to the Space Force’s FY24 budget request.

While the MDA and SDA sensors were developed through separate programs, future tranches of SDA spacecraft will combine the capabilities, incorporating the medium-field-of-view sensor featured on the HBTSS satellites. The HBTSS sensors are designed to track dimmer targets and send data to interceptors.

L3Harris built all four of the SDA satellites, which are part of the agency’s Tranche 0 tracking layer. The company is also on contract to build missile tracking satellites for the next two capability tranches, which will feature improved sensor technology.

MDA also tapped L3Harris to build one of its HBTSS satellites, selecting Northrop Grumman to develop the second.

For L3Harris, traditionally a satellite payload provider, the launch represents its foray into leading a satellite development program as a prime contractor, according to Kelle Wendling, president of the company’s space systems business.

“It’s been a very interesting path for us as a payload provider moving into that prime role,” Wendling told C4ISRNET in an interview.

Having a role in HBTSS as well as the first three tranches of SDA’s missile tracking constellation means the company can find ways to both streamline its manufacturing processes and improve its sensor design over time, according to Rob Mitrevski, vice president and general manager of spectral solutions at L3Harris.

“What that creates for us and our customer is an ability to be very agile in the way we address the evolving threat – to be very predictable in terms of schedule because you’re using previously developed technology building blocks,” Mitrevski said in the same interview.

That agility is a key feature of SDA’s mission to regularly upgrade its constellations with new capabilities.

The agency has launched 27 Tranche 0 satellites since April 2023 — eight for missile tracking and 19 for data transport and communications. In September, SDA will begin launching its Tranche 1 spacecraft, which will eventually include 161 operational satellites.

The Space Force is considering giving prospective guardians the option to enlist for an initial term of eight years on active duty — twice as long as first-term troops usually sign up for — in a bid to build a more stable workforce to span the coming decades.

It’s one change to personnel policies now under consideration as the Space Force looks to break typical military molds and craft a workforce that meets its unique needs as the Pentagon’s newest and smallest branch.

Congress approves Space Force part-timers, but still no space guard

“I know eight years is a big commitment to make if you’re 20 years old, 21 years old,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna told Air Force Times Jan. 11. “But let me explain to you … the training you’ll get, the opportunities you’re going to get, the experience you’ll have — it takes time.”

All enlisted troops across the armed forces are already required to agree to at least eight years in uniform. But most serve out a four- or six-year term on active duty before spending the remaining time in the individual ready reserve — a pool of former active duty, National Guard and Reserve troops who can still be called up in an emergency.

Instead, the Space Force could ask guardians to spend their entire enlistment on active duty. Once those eight years are up, they would be off the hook — with no commitment to the individual ready reserve.

In a statement emailed after publication, Bentivegna clarified that the idea would not be mandatory for new enlistees.

“If offered, in addition to 4- and 6-year enlistments, 8-year enlistment options would be voluntary and tied to a potential incentive bonus,” he said. “The Space Force is carefully considering the impact of voluntary extended enlistment contracts; we have proposed a third-party study on the impact of this concept.”

Bentivegna hopes that a new set of policies, which will allow guardians to toggle between full-time and part-time service while remaining on active duty, can offer the enlisted force more flexibility while keeping them in uniform longer.

The idea is on the table because the Space Force, established in 2019, has discovered that its enlisted recruits skew older — averaging 22 years old — and are more educated than those of the other services. Rather than joining the military straight out of high school, 40% of those recruits enlist after earning an associate’s, bachelor’s or master’s degree, the service said last month.

The Space Force also handles a niche set of highly technical missions, like cyber operations, electronic warfare and space-based intelligence, using an enlisted workforce of more than 4,000 people. All enlisted guardians must pass the background checks and polygraphs needed to receive a top secret/secure compartmented information clearance as well.

Because its recruits come in with more skill, and because the force is so small, the service doesn’t want to lose that expertise — or the money and time it takes to train guardians in those fields — after just four years.

The service will also explore how to structure re-enlistment bonuses and other incentives to avoid losing them to lucrative jobs in the space and cyber industries once the eight years are up.

“A guardian’s journey doesn’t end at the traditional four- or six-year mark, which enables the service to build the technical depth and expertise we need for great power competition,” Bentivegna said in a follow-up email from a spokesperson Jan. 30. “We are working to enrich their experience through technical training schools, fully qualified promotion policies, bonuses and [reimagining] our professional military education.”

Speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Warfare Symposium on Wednesday, Bentivegna noted that the U.S. also needs to reform military pay and benefits to make service more enticing and sustainable for those who do opt into years in uniform.

“That model that we’re looking at may be just a little outdated. What is the value proposition of service? It’s changed,” he said. “I think that’s the goodness of the dialogue we’ve had.”

It’s unclear whether asking prospects to join the Space Force for nearly a decade would make a dent in the service’s recruitment efforts.

More than 4,000 people sought to enlist in the Space Force in 2023, the service told Congress in January. But just a fraction make it into the limited number of available billets. The service plans to recruit nearly 700 new enlisted guardians in fiscal year 2024.

That’s a sliver of what the other armed forces aim to bring in throughout the year. For instance, the Air Force hopes to sign up 25,900 new active duty enlisted airmen by the end of September.

Todd Harrison, a military space expert at the American Enterprise Institute, warned the Space Force to do its homework before settling on major changes to career models.

He worries an eight-year commitment could make it harder for the Space Force to compete for talent with private industry and the other armed forces, if recruits see the contract as a long time to be locked into military service.

Harrison also questioned whether high performers, who may have other options to consider, would be attracted to an eight-year commitment. He suggested the Space Force track the correlation between how people feel about longer enlistments and how well they score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, an entrance exam that determines which jobs a recruit is qualified to hold.

“Look before you leap,” he said.

“We have this wonderful vision, lots of great programs that we have teed up,” Andrew Hunter told reporters at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Warfare Symposium here. “[We] still need that FY24 budget to make it real.”

The Pentagon is now operating under its third continuing resolution of fiscal 2024 as Congress continues to draft defense spending legislation. The latest stopgap deal, passed in January, funds the government through March 8.

Like a traditional CR, the measure pauses funding at the prior year’s levels — fiscal 2023, in this case — and prevents the Pentagon from starting new programs and increasing procurement quantities for existing efforts. While the department is accustomed to operating under a continuing resolution for at least a portion of each fiscal year, the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act adds a twist.

The law stipulates that all federal agencies would face a 1% cut from fiscal 2023 funding levels if the government was still operating under a CR on Jan. 1, 2024 — which it was. However, the language includes a four-month grace period, so while that initial deadline has passed, Congress has until April 30 to approve FY24 appropriations and avoid slashing the executive branch’s spending.

While lawmakers tend to reach an annual appropriations agreement by March or April each year, Air Force officials signaled a growing concern that Congress could miss the late April deadline.

During this week’s conference, the Department of the Air Force distributed a fact sheet outlining the impact a 1% cut would have on its two services, the Air Force and Space Force. The measure would reduce the service’s buying power by nearly $13 billion and put $2.8 billion in space modernization projects on hold. It would also limit production increases for key programs like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Small Diameter Bomb and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, and delay seven Space Force launches, according to the department.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in keynote speech Monday that the congressional funding standoff has caused significant delays to his vision for modernizing the service. When he took on the role in 2021, he revealed seven “operational imperatives” meant to inform Air Force and Space Force budget priorities.

Initiatives driven by those priorities, 19 of which were included in service’s FY24 budget request, have yet to be fully funded.

“It would be very disappointing to me to have been in office for an entire administration and have never received any of the needed resources to be competitive — resources that we identified in the first six months I was in office,” he said.

Key among those efforts, Kendall said, is the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which will field fleets of drones powered by autonomous software and designed to fly alongside crewed fighters.

The service hopes to narrow its pool of potential CCA providers from five companies to two or three in fiscal 2024, but that timeline depends on when funding is available.

“We’re moving ahead with a sense of urgency on CCAs,” Kendall told reporters Tuesday. “As a preamble, everything depends upon FY24 being appropriated.”

For the Space Force, which requested $30 billion in FY24, the automatic cuts have an outsized impact. The $2.8 billion in stalled modernization projects represents nearly 10% of the service’s total budget.

The Space Force’s budget has nearly doubled since it was created in 2019, and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told reporters Feb. 13 that funding delays are having “an acute effect” on the service as it continues to grow.

“Our ability to do all the missions that are required is being severely impacted by not being able to get the resources that we’ve asked for,” he said.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman announced the creation of the command Feb. 12 as part of organizational changes meant to position the Air Force and Space Force to better deter and counter threats from China. The Army has had a futures command to run modernization efforts since 2018.

“We’ve focused on some of the systems, we’ve focused on maybe a resilient architecture and the kinds of systems we thought were going to be necessary for space superiority, but . . . we didn’t really have the mechanisms to evaluate all the other components that have to be in place,” Saltzman said during a speech at the Air Warfare Symposium in Denver. “That is what a futures command can provide for you.”

Saltzman did not discuss details on specific concepts the command will explore, but said that as the Space Force matures, it needs to have a more robust approach to considering not just what satellites and ground systems it needs to develop but what supporting structures it will need to maintain those capabilities.

That includes things like the military construction, classified facilities, training and operational units that are needed to support a new mission. The command will also help the service prioritize which missions it needs to pursue due to growing threats or emerging technologies.

To that end, Space Futures Command will focus on three primary functions, which will be organized into centers. The Concepts and Technology Center will analyze the threat environment and consider what capabilities and forces the service needs to respond to those threats. A Wargaming Center will evaluate potential technologies through tabletop exercises and learning campaigns.

The third hub, the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, already exists within the Space Force and is focused on developing models for how the service can apply those capabilities in a future warfighting environment.

“We’re going to take all those together and that’s going to inform our objective force, the force design, what is it that the Space Force is going to need now in the near term and in the long term to maintain competitive endurance,” Saltzman said.

Speaking with reporters at the conference on Feb. 13, Saltzman said he expects the command will initially establish a small team to conduct early analysis on how it should be structured and where personnel can be drawn from other parts of the Space Force.

“Some of those functions existed but in small pockets spread around,” he said. “And what we’re trying to do is, is congeal them into these three centers.”

That work will continue through this summer or fall, and by later this year, the service will likely start moving people into those positions. Saltzman said he hopes to have a headquarters leadership structure in place by next year, noting that it may take longer for the Space Force to identify a general officer to lead the command.

Space Systems Command, the service’s primary acquisition organization, said in a Feb. 5 notice it is conducting market research to refine its concept for a constellation of GPS demonstration satellites.

“The government is studying ways to reduce lifecycle cost and increase the pace of GPS satellite development, production and on-orbit deployment,” Space Systems Command said. “The government is developing a vision for tranches of demonstration prototype satellites of increasingly complex capabilities.”

Because the service is still in the exploration phase, the notice doesn’t offer details on how soon the first satellites would launch. It emphasizes that the Space Force is interested in systems with a three to five year lifespan that could be available for launch within six months of a contract award.

The Space Force has around 31 operational GPS satellites in orbit, a mix of modern and older spacecraft providing varying levels of capability. The newest satellites, dubbed GPS III, are built by Lockheed Martin and provide three times greater accuracy and much-improved anti-jamming abilities than previous variants. They also offer a capability called M-code, which offers a secure and accurate signal for military users.

Lockheed is also developing the next iteration of space vehicles, GPS IIIF, which will build on the accuracy and anti-jam protections of the GPS III satellites. Slated to begin launching in 2027, they will also feature upgraded nuclear detection detonation system and search and rescue payloads.

While today’s satellites provide key military and civilian capabilities, the Space Force has been considering how it can augment them with alternative systems, including smaller satellites that are cheaper, easier to produce and able to operate in degraded areas where GPS isn’t accessible today. A constellation of demonstration satellites could help the service validate and quickly field new augmentation capabilities or inform upgrade plans for future GPS satellites.

“The intent of this overall effort is to explore opportunities for non-traditional and/or traditional space vendors to rapidly manufacture, integrate, and make available for launch, navigation payloads that are interoperable with existing and future GPS User Equipment while minimizing change to current and future GPS ground control segments,” the service said.

The service has other efforts to showcase new satellite navigation technology. Later this year it will launch Navigation Technology Satellite-3, an experimental spacecraft developed by L3Harris and the Air Force Research Laboratory.

Once launched, NTS-3 will conduct more than 100 experiments testing different technology, including a digital signal generator that can be reprogrammed in orbit to broadcast new signals.

The Space Force’s Commercial Space Office is also working with its innovation arm, SpaceWERX, to identify alternative navigation capabilities. Col. Richard Kniseley, senior materiel leader for the office, told C4ISRNET the goal of that effort is to provide seed funding for non-traditional companies to mature capabilities.

The Victus Nox mission — Latin for “conquer the night” — lifted off on Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket within 27 hours of initial launch orders. It carried a Millennium Space Systems satellite that was delivered in a matter of months rather than the years it typically takes.

Following the launch, the spacecraft was ready for operations in just 37 hours — a phase that can stretch for weeks.

For its next demonstration, dubbed Victus Haze, the Space Force wants to achieve similar satellite delivery and launch timelines, but with a twist. This time, the spacecraft will be required showcase the ability to maneuver from a real-time threat.

The mission — named using a combination of Latin and English words to reflect its goal to demonstrate the ability to overcome the fog of war — is slated to launch in 2025, according to Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough, senior materiel leader in the Space Force’s Space Safari Office. Her office, which leads these tactically responsive space efforts, was created in 2021 to respond to urgent operational needs.

Birchenough told C4ISRNET in an interview the Space Force has been on a “crawl, walk, run” trajectory toward establishing an enduring, operational, tactically responsive space capability. The goal of Victus Haze, she said, is to transition the Space Force to the “run” phase, helping prepare it to shift to operational missions by 2026.

“We feel like we’re really ready to move into that run phase of the approach,” she said. “And so, that’s where we’re taking Victus Haze.”

Speaking Jan. 19 at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington, D.C., Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Victus Haze aims to answer key questions about what training, policy and operational structures the service needs to put in place to operationalize these demonstrations.

“Victus Haze is about continuing to break those paradigms and to show how we would rapidly put up a space domain awareness capability and operate it in real time against a threat,” he said.

The Space Force defines tactically responsive space as the ability to react quickly to the threats that come from operating in an increasingly congested and adversarial space environment. That could mean launching satellites on short notice, maneuvering a pre-positioned, spare spacecraft to augment a degraded system or buying data from a commercial partner during a crisis.

“It’s about how we improve our acquisition processes and how we shorten our end-to-end timelines in everything that we do — from the contract awards to launch to on orbit checkout,” Birchenough said. “And then ultimately it’s about how we respond to on orbit needs or threats on tactically relevant timelines.”

Expanding commercial partnerships

For Victus Haze, the service is working with the Defense Innovation Unit to help strengthen its partnerships with commercial companies. Birchenough said the team is in the final process of selecting companies to participate and hopes to announce details “in the near future.”

Those awards will go to launch providers as well as companies with spacecraft that can maneuver in orbit — a departure from many of today’s satellites, which are designed to remain in a particular orbital position throughout their service life. The Space Force and U.S. Space Command have identified a growing need for satellites to be able to maneuver away from threats like debris or toward objects the U.S. may want to observe more closely.

In parallel to its work on Victus Haze, Space Systems Command is also partnering with the Space Force’s innovation arm, SpaceWERX, to broaden its vendor base and explore other responsive space concepts.

“It’s really important to us that we have multiple vendors that are able to do this type of mission where they have active production lines

Last month, Space Safari and SpaceWERX chose 19 companies to demonstrate new approaches to various tactically responsive space challenges.

Maj. Jason Altenhofen, director of operations for the Space Safari Office, told C4ISRNET in the same interview the goal of the SpaceWERX effort is to look beyond launch capabilities and consider other technologies that could support these missions.

“We realize that there’s a lot of opportunity for some of these companies that are developing these capabilities and there are some concepts out there that we’re pursuing to get after the threat that way,” he said.

Altenhofen noted that along with ensuring industry is ready to respond to urgent operational needs, the service is working to make sure it has the personnel and funding in place to enable these missions. Victus Nox, for example, brought to light the need for an operational structure to support tactically responsive space.

“There’s a lot of work going on right now on how do we resource this correctly and go beyond demonstrations to operations — not just from a capability standpoint, but from a resourcing and people standpoint as well,” he said.

The office is the service’s hub for commercial engagement, overseeing a slew of initiatives, including SpaceWERX — the Space Force’s innovation arm — and Space Systems Command’s Front Door, an online portal companies can use to connect with the acquisition community. It’s also leading the establishment of a Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, an effort to scale up its use of commercial capabilities during a conflict.

The Commercial Space Office’s creation came amid a push within the Space Force to strengthen its partnership with commercial industry. Officials have called for the acquisition workforce to consider opportunities to buy services and systems from industry — rather than build a bespoke government satellite — wherever possible.

Col. Richard Kniseley, who leads the office, recently sat down with C4ISRNET at the Space Mobility Conference in Orlando, Florida. He talked about the office’s accomplishments over the last year and its priorities for 2024.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

What has your office done since its creation last year?

We marched forward with the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, and stood up that task force with many Department of Defense subject matter experts to really flesh out that framework. That all culminated in a successful briefing to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall around September where he said: “Go forth and prosper.” He considered this good news and a step in the right direction, especially as we’re looking at great power competition.

The SSC Front Door has been meeting with many different industry members every day. This past August, we onboarded a new website and share tool. Since then, we’ve met with over 200 industry members. The goal of that website was to have faster response time, to make sure that we were assessing industry, understanding their maturity levels, and then understanding the mission areas they can play in so that we can get them to the right mission area owner.

Our alignment with SpaceWERX has proved very successful. We aligned a SpaceWERX challenge with one of our first reverse industry days out of the gate, which was alternative positioning, navigation and timing. The goal of that was to seed industry, but also to keep a lot of the conversations going and mature capabilities.

We also awarded, out of the Commercial Satellite Communications Office, the Proliferated Low Earth Orbit contract, which was a $900 million [indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract]. It went out to 20 different vendors and covered many different mission areas. We didn’t want to hone in just on commercial SATCOM, so we opened it up to alternative position, navigation and timing, as well as space domain awareness, to name a few. The goal out of that was to capitalize on dual-use capabilities.

So we are not slowing down in 2024; it is going to be a very busy year, and we’ve already got a number of different things on the horizon.

How do you expect the Proliferated Low Earth Orbit contractor pool to grow? What value will that bring to the Space Force?

While it was awarded to 20 providers, we are onboarding new providers. In fact, we have an onboarding period right now, which ends in May, where new providers can reach out to the Commercial SATCOM Office and be evaluated as a provider on that contract.

It allows the contractors to propose areas where they can benefit the Department of Defense. It’s a very open contract, and it allows us to work and reach out with a lot of those providers. But that contract also allows us to combine a lot of different requirements across the Department of Defense into one award, so that we’re not doing one award, one award, one award. The first task order that got awarded to SpaceX combined requirements from over 70 different agencies.

So it’s the ability to get better pricing and economic order quantity by combining a lot of those requirements. It allows us to get more providers on, understand their capabilities, and get those commercial capabilities out to the warfighter and better integrated across the space enterprise.

The Space Mobility Conference saw a heavy focus on space servicing. What is your office doing in this area? How are you engaging with the companies developing these capabilities?

A great deal of the companies that have been coming through the Front Door that we have been meeting with have been companies aligning themselves with servicing, mobility and logistics. So whether we have companies that are looking at the refueling aspect of it, companies that are looking at the repair aspect of it or even the maneuverability aspect of it — there is a great deal of innovation and expertise in those different areas.

What we’ve been doing is assessing these companies for their maturity level, but also one of the functions of the Front Door is to take a look at the investments in those companies — venture capital and also any potential nefarious capital. We do want to be investing in companies that are on the up and up. But at the same time, we’re also looking at companies where the government can be one of many customers and not just be a crutch to lean on.

We’ve been bridging that gap between the companies and the mission areas. We’ve been introducing a lot of great companies to the Assured Access to Space team — so looking for investment opportunities there as well as working with the Space Systems Integration Office. They are looking at the overall enterprise and where does servicing, mobility and logistics fit into that overall architecture.

You can only imagine what those capabilities will do for the mission because you will be able to refuel some of our [high-value] space vehicles, which allows them to stay on orbit longer and do more mission passes.

Some of the technologies that are coming into play have a lot more size, weight and power so that while they can be carrying space vehicles to many different orbits, these things can also carry gas cans on them. They have more abilities to stay on orbit longer. You can even deploy them, and you don’t even need to use the space vehicles right away; they could just sit there in a loiter state, which kind of lends itself a little bit more to the logistics side of the house. You could save the gas on those space vehicles and have them ready, which also lends itself more to a tactically responsive space standpoint.

What are the most important parts of the Space Force’s upcoming commercial space strategy?

It’s going to do two things. One, it’s going to be a very clear message to the government that because of the threats, we need to change how we do things. Resting on building everything in house is just not palatable anymore. We need to integrate with commercial [sectors] at better scale. It recognizes how the commercial industry is innovating every single day. A lot of the expertise is out there.

What the strategy is also going to do is be a signal to industry of areas of importance to us. We’re not going to prioritize areas, but it will be very clear some of the areas that are very important to the government. Throughout the strategy, there will be kind of a mixture of strategy, but also some implementation. So there’ll be some actions that will be in that strategy, and then it will also be further fleshed out with implementation plans that will be released after the strategy is released.

The Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, or CASR, framework received approval last fall. How is your office implementing that?

My No. 1 focus is working with [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the National Space Council on a threat-sharing model. The Department of Defense has a few of them that we are exploring.

We are working to develop a surveillance plan for CASR membership. That’s really going to lend itself into the reliability construct, ensuring they stay in good standing as a member. Are they still investing in their cyber capabilities? Are they able to surge or adhere to the contract as planned? And even looking at some of their manufacturing capabilities. Once we get you to that membership, we need to make sure you’re ready for what that potential bad day might be.

We’re also integrating right now with tactically responsive space [team]. We want to inject CASR fundamentals and exercises into one of their next capability exercises. I could easily see a scenario of a surging of capability, or even potentially taking space vehicles off a production line for a CASR need. That’s really going to help us exercise the contract and the concept of operations.

We are starting to develop the concept of operations, partnered with U.S. Space Command, primarily looking at commercial satellite communications as the first one. Putting that to paper is going to help us work toward exercises as well. But then after that, it’s really working on securing funding.

When will you start putting companies on contract for CASR?

We’re going to start fleshing out the contract pieces a little bit more this year.

I promised this to industry: We will still have a couple more industry offerings so that I can be completely transparent with them before they start seeing this in contracts. I almost want to get a litmus test from them and make sure that I’m going down the right path, especially as we’re starting to develop our incentive plan.

I’m going to potentially have something this year, but probably 2025.

You previously said it’s important to have a sustained budget line, or program element, for commercial space capabilities, including CASR. Where does that effort stand?

I’m anxiously waiting on the appropriations bill. If all goes well, the appropriations bill could be the mechanism that starts the commercial space program element. There was some language in the Senate Appropriations Committee markup that pretty much allows for the creation of it, and I just want to see if that language makes its way through. Those dollars were specifically targeted at commercial surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking, so that would be a budget activity created under the commercial space piece. We’re waiting to see the outcome of that one.

What other efforts would receive funding under that new budget line?

We’re definitely looking at the funding of some enterprise capabilities, like funding for exercises, funding for threat sharing — all of that.

There will need to be an enduring CASR line in there to keep that overall enterprise together. Some of the biggest feedback we got from industry was that we need to understand what’s going on with the threat. And I totally resonated with that because that’s going to help them be more responsive to our needs. It’s going to help inform their business area. If they’re a CASR member, then that’ll help them indicate when a call-up might be OK.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who provides civilian oversight for the service, approved the Commercial Space Office’s plan for the construct, known as CASR, last fall. Since then, the office has worked on an implementation strategy, which includes writing contractual language for companies that will participate in the reserve.

Col. Richard Kniseley, who leads the service’s Commercial Space Office, said he plans to meet with industry a few times this year as that language gets finalized. He told C4ISRNET in a Jan. 30 interview at the Space Mobility Conference in Orlando, Florida, that the service may be ready to onboard firms to CASR as soon as this year, but it’s more likely to happen in 2025.

“We will still have a couple more industry offerings to that I can be completely transparent with them before they start seeing this in contracts going forward,” he said. “I almost want to get a litmus test from them and make sure that I’m going down the right path.”

The Space Force’s acquisition arm, Space Systems Command, announced last year it was making plans to create a commercial space reserve. The team met with industry in February 2023 and formed a task force soon after to work through legal, policy, contracting and programmatic concerns.

The resulting strategy factors in those concerns as well as feedback from more than 60 companies to ensure that both the government and industry understand the requirements and risks associated with leaning more heavily on commercial systems during conflict.

While establishing contractual language is just one piece of the service’s implementation plan for CASR, it’s an important one, Kniseley said. Speaking during a panel discussion at the conference, he said contracts are key to ensuring the capabilities these companies will be providing will remain available when they’re needed most.

“It’s how you write the contract,” he said. “It’s the terms and conditions. And that level sets the expectations for the contractor of the services that they will provide.”

Concerns about the reliability of commercial systems during wartime were illuminated last September when SpaceX founder Elon Musk revealed he had opted not to activate his company’s Starlink communication satellites in certain regions of Ukraine due to fears an attack would escalate the war. The company provided Starlink terminals to Ukraine in the early days of the conflict.

Kniseley alluded to this scenario, without mentioning SpaceX by name, saying that had the company been under contract when it happened, the outcome may have been different.

“What happened is all the more reason why have to get these on contract right now,” he said.

The Commercial Space Office is also crafting a surveillance plan for CASR members to help ensure that a company is reliable and investing in things like cybersecurity and manufacturing capabilities, Kniseley told C4ISRNET.

“Once we get you to that membership, we need to make sure you’re ready for what that potential bad day might be,” he said.

Beyond contractual details and reliability metrics, Kniseley’s team is working with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the White House’s National Space Council to develop a construct for sharing relevant threat information with CASR members.

The Space Force recently signed an agreement with the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center — a Colorado-based organization created in 2019 to disseminate information about in-orbit threats — to learn more about its threat-sharing approach and potentially use it as a model, he said.

Kniseley also hopes to begin collaborating with the Space Force’s Tactically Responsive Space team to test out CASR concepts as part of their capability exercises. That collaboration could help inform and validate a concept of operations for the commercial reserve, which his office is developing with U.S. Space Command.

Once that concept of operations is in place, Kniseley said, the next focus will be to secure funding for CASR. The Space Force’s fiscal 2024 budget request proposed creating a funding line for commercial capabilities, including CASR.

The fate of that proposal, at least in the near term, will lie in the FY24 defense appropriations bill, which Congress has yet to pass.

While the Space Force has traditionally charged for direct costs like equipment usage at a launch pad, the 1984 Commercial Space Act barred it from asking companies to pay for what are considered “indirect” costs, like facilities repair and maintenance.

The Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Dec. 26, changes that. The legislation features a provision that lets the Space Force collect additional fees from range users.

Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, program executive officer for assured access to space, said Jan. 31 the service has had several meetings with industry to discuss the implications of the new fees “and make sure everybody fully understood what was coming.”

“The promise that we made to both industry and Congress on this is that we be very transparent with our charging to make sure they understood what was happening,” she said during a media briefing at the Space Mobility Conference here.

The language limits the indirect fees the Space Force can collect to 30% of what a company is contracted to pay in direct costs, with a cap of $5 million per year. Panzenhagen said the service doesn’t expect to collect “a huge amount,” but noted the funding will help the service improve its range facilities and operate them more like commercial spaceports.

She added that if all goes well over the next few years, the service hopes to reduce the caps included in the new law.

“Our intent is to execute the authorities we’ve been given in [fiscal years] ‘24 through ‘26 in a really responsible manner and show the benefits that it has both to government and commercial with reinvesting in the spaceport,” Panzenhagen said.

The change in how the Space Force collects range fees comes as launch rates surge at the service’s East and West Coast ranges. The service’s FY24 budget requested $1.3 billion over the next five years for infrastructure projects aimed at increasing the number of launches it can support.

The provision is one of two major policy changes the service sought heading into the FY24 legislative cycle to enable this new way of operating. The other, which would streamline the process for leasing federal land around military bases to commercial companies, didn’t make it into the final bill.

Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., told C4ISRNET in December he plans to push for the provision to be included in FY25 defense policy legislation.

“There’s a huge amount of viable, productive space around a number of bases, and if it’s done right and appropriately, it could actually provide a revenue stream that, in this case, could be reinjected back into the ranges,” he said.

Diane Howard, the council’s head of commercial space policy, said agencies including the Space Force have done a good job in recent years of articulating their interest in these types of capabilities, but now they need to act.

“We need a clear demand signal from government users. We need to identify and prioritize resources, funding and personnel,” Howard said during a Jan. 30 speech at the Space Mobility Conference in Orlando, Florida. “Clear strategy, clear policy, clear requirements and real funding will send a consistent and reliable message to investors, to the private sector and to our international allies and partners.”

The ability to refuel or repair a satellite in space could have significant implications for how the military operates in the domain. For example, because fuel capacity often determines how freely a satellite can travel, equipping spacecraft with refueling ports and partnering with commercial companies developing vehicles to service satellites is an attractive proposition for the Space Force.

The service wants to demonstrate an on-orbit refueling capability by 2026. Last year, it created a servicing, mobility and logistics directorate to oversee these efforts and craft a roadmap for adopting these capabilities. In September, the Space Force agreed to co-fund a refueling vehicle prototype with space mobility company Astroscale U.S.

The National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, has been taking steps to support companies as they develop “novel space activities” like refueling and repair systems, releasing a regulatory framework in late December.

Howard and others at the Space Mobility Conference here said these steps need to be backed by a tangible commitment to pursuing these capabilities.

Clare Martin, executive vice president of Astroscale U.S., said industry and the private investor community want to see the government put funding toward satellite servicing capabilities.

“A demand signal is not a statement at a conference like this,” she said during a Jan. 30 panel. “A demand signal is something planned for in the budget that gives an indication of some sustained, long-term funding.”

Martin told C4ISRNET in a separate interview she’s “optimistic” that the recent steps the Space Force has taken, particularly its decision to create a dedicated acquisition office, are bringing the service closer to requesting funding for a longer-term program.

Robert Hauge, president of Northrop Grumman-owned Space Logistics, said that signal not only spurs investment from companies developing the servicing capabilities, but it shows commercial operators that the government sees potential in the market.

“When the government procures that capability, that sends a demand signal not just to the industry building it, but it sends a message to the satellite operations industry as well that this market is real,” he said during the same panel.

Each company received a $66 million contract for early design and risk-reduction, according to a Jan. 25 Defense Department announcement. Following the first phase of the effort, which will run through July 2025, the Space Force will select a single company to build two satellites, the first of which it expects to launch before the end of fiscal 2030.

The Mobile User Objective Systems, or MUOS, satellites operate in a narrowband frequency range that makes them less vulnerable to bad weather or tricky terrain — factors that can affect a satellite’s performance. The range is also ideal for securely transmitting information.

MUOS satellites were built to replace the Ultra High Frequency Follow-on system, known as UFO. They feature two payloads — one to maintain the legacy UHF network and a second that provides a new Wideband Code Division Multiple Access capability. The system is designed to provide 10 times the capacity of its predecessor.

The service has four MUOS satellites in orbit, plus one spare, all built by Lockheed Martin. The two satellites will join that constellation, extending operations into the 2030s. Lockheed, Boeing and Northrop Grumman participated in a series of studies that considered options for keeping the system active.

While the Space Force hasn’t said what capabilities the additional satellites will provide, officials have said the service is prioritizing resilience in these near-term upgrades. Earlier MUOS spacecraft weren’t designed to resist cyber threats and enemy jamming.

In the meantime, the Space Force is finalizing a long-term plan for narrowband communications, which could include integrating commercial satellites.

The service projects it will need $2.5 billion for the program between FY24 and FY28, including $230 million next year.

As the Space Force moves forward with plans to buy more MUOS satellites, lawmakers and watchdog groups have raised concerns about the performance of the current capability. The program experienced significant fielding delays, particularly with the terminals and equipment that allow users to connect to the system. A 2021 Government Accountability Office report found personnel on the ground were not able to take full advantage of the satellite’s more advanced features.

The defense company is in the process of refining what it calls False Track Reduction Using Machine Learning for the U.S. Space Force, with eyes on delivery in early 2025. It is anticipated for use in the Space-Based Infrared System program, or SBIRS, and has potential application in other overhead persistent infrared assignments.

Space Force personnel track thousands of potential missile incidents each month and must contend with false alarms. Increasingly delicate spying technologies, proliferating satellites, ever-evolving weapons and military flare-ups overseas can aggravate the already-complicated process.

Northrop’s offering is designed to ease the information avalanche analysts face by parsing what may not be an actual launch or outbound projectile while, at the same time, ensuring no “real event or real missile” is improperly sorted, according to John Stengel, the director of the company’s mission exploitation enterprise.

“As sensors get better — as sensors in space improve — they get more sensitive. As sensors get more sensitive, the more false tracks we get,” Stengel said in an interview with C4ISRNET. “Having the ability to leverage machine learning to help the human in the loop, so to speak, do his or her job is to become absolutely critical.”

South Korea company fuses AI with imagery to detect ballistic missiles

False Track Reduction Using Machine Learning is trained on real-world data and can be amended as foreign militaries advance their respective arsenals. The system uses what Stengel called profiles, or proven characteristics such as speed, shape and altitude, to detect and earmark objects for further inspection by users.

“What the system is going to do is say: ‘Hey, this doesn’t seem like a real missile, but I’m going to present it to the operator, the human in the loop, to make sure and make that decision,’” Stengel said.

“As different countries in the world modify or adjust or come up with new weapon systems, we then have to take those and add them to the training scenarios, so that the system knows about it, has the latest and greatest,” he added. “I’ve never heard of replacing the human in these scenarios. This is all about assisting.”

The Department of Defense has for years considered artificial intelligence and machine learning critical to the speedy sorting of battlefield information. Its implementation is gaining speed and spread; the department is juggling more than 685 AI-related projects, including several tied to major weapons systems, according to the Government Accountability Office.

C4ISRNET reporter Courtney Albon contributed to this article.

The policy is itself classified, according to John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy. While he declined to talk at length about the document, he told reporters Jan. 17 the rewrite is more focused on eliminating out-of-date policies around what information can be shared about certain programs than it is on lifting the veil on highly secretive programs.

“Inside the beltway, people always ask me, how can I make things unclassified. That is not actually a thing I’m all that concerned about,” Plumb said in a briefing at the Pentagon. “I’m concerned about reducing the classification of things where they are overclassified to the point that it hampers our ability to get work done or hampers the ability of the warfighter to do their mission.”

Secrecy in the space domain is not a new obstacle for the Defense Department, which has slowly worked to reconsider policies around how it classifies space programs and shares information gathered by in-orbit assets. That could mean talking publicly about threats or new capabilities, or changing a program’s classification level — without removing it altogether — so defense agencies can share information with allies.

The policy, which Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed in late December, specifically addresses a security designation called the special access program. When the Space Force starts a satellite or technology development program, it typically gives it one of two security designations — unclassified or special access program.

Labeling an effort as a special access program, or SAP, severely restricts information sharing and makes it hard to integrate across platforms and with other military services.

As it implements the policy, Plumb said, the department will apply “minimum classifications” to various programs and the service will then review whether those efforts should be managed at the SAP level or can be operated under a less restrictive designation.

“Anything we can bring from a SAP level to a top secret level, for example — massive value to the warfighter, massive value to the department,” Plumb said. “My hope is, over time, it will also allow us to share more information with allies and partners.”

Plumb noted that his office, in partnership with U.S. Space Command, has undertaken a separate effort to improve information-sharing with international allies.

“The more things that can be shared with allies and partners, I think the deeper that relationship can be,” he said. “That’s not going to happen overnight.”

The satellites will make up a portion of what SDA calls its Tranche 2 Tracking Layer, which will detect and track advanced missiles from low Earth orbit, about 1,200 miles above planet’s surface.

The Jan. 16 awards totaled about $2.5 billion. SDA incumbents Lockheed Martin and L3Harris both received contracts; Lockheed’s was valued at up to $890 million and L3Harris’s at $919 million. Colorado-based Sierra Space, a newcomer to the program, received $740 million. The deal is the first major defense satellite contract for the company.

SDA was established in 2019 to quickly field a constellation of hundreds of data transport and advanced missile tracking satellites, a capability it refers to as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Those spacecraft will augment existing fleets of large satellites and the plan is for SDA to upgrade its capabilities on a two-year cycle.

The agency received bids from nine companies for these awards. Officials declined to confirm which companies submitted the losing proposals, but SDA Director Derek Tournear said the growing vendor base shows that companies are responding to the U.S. military’s need for smaller, more affordable satellites.

“The agile response across the space industry is critically important as we deliver to the warfighter this no-fail mission capability of missile warning, missile tracking, and missile defense,” Tournear said in a statement.

The agency has four tracking satellites in orbit today and plans to have another 43 in its constellation — four more from Tranche 0 and 39 from Tranche 1 — by the time the Tranche 2 satellites launch in April of 2027.

The 54 Tranche 2 satellites this week include 48 detection and warning spacecraft and six equipped with fire control sensors. These sensors can track targets at a higher fidelity and feed that data to missile defense interceptors.

The fire control sensors in Tranche 2 build on lessons learned from the Missile Defense Agency’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensors program. Those satellites, built by L3Harris and Northrop Grumman, are slated to launch later this year and will help inform designs for future SDA tracking layer systems.

“The fire control missile defense sensors build upon the investments made by Missile Defense Agency in the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensors (HBTSS) program and novel approaches from industry to accelerate global missile defense capability,” SDA said.

Along with its collaboration with MDA, the Space Development Agency is also working closely with the Space Force’s acquisition arm, Space Systems Command. SSC is developing satellites designed to track missile threats from higher orbits.

First, current policy has restrained the Space Force from generating the requirements and resource requests necessary to achieve a credible deterrence and warfighting Space Force. Instead, current policy and strategic frameworks like the U.S. Space Priorities Framework focuses the service on enable and support missions for the joint force (i.e., terrestrial military operations). As a result, the service has not developed space deterrence and warfighting force postures that enable space superiority against our adversaries, but rather have continued on the path of graceful degradation via under attack.

This type of thinking, while arguably rational for the 1990s, is wholly inadequate for an era of rapidly developing and deploying Chinese, Russian, and Iranian space forces and ongoing counterspace operations against the U.S. and its allies. These operations, while non-kinetic, occur “every single day,” according to former vice chief of space operations, Gen. David Thompson.

Second, due to this mentality of supporting the joint force, the service is not deploying the weapons systems necessary for a credible deterrent against a near peer like China. Regardless of what side of the counter-space continuum you look (non-kinetic or kinetic), the Space Force either does not have the variety of anti-satellite and counter-space weapons systems to match what the adversary is deploying, or lacks sufficient numbers to have any real effect in a major great power conflict.

For example, China has deployed or is expected to deploy in the near term kinetic anti-satellite missile units; jammers of various kinds (satellite communications, GPS, etc.); and on-orbit anti-satellite technology, including those capable of aggressive rendezvous and proximity operations as well as the ability to capture and move U.S. and allied assets from their orbital posts and into disposal orbits.

If that was not enough, China has also demonstrated its capability and willingness to use a fractional orbital bombardment system equipped with hypersonic glide vehicles with either conventional or nuclear payloads. This provides China with escalation dominance, which is key to credible deterrence in a great power competition environment.

As an example of how we lack credible numbers of counter-space weapons, the Space Force has a few Counter Communications System and Bounty Hunter jamming systems. These weapons systems, while supporting combatant commander requirements over the past few decades, exist in insufficient numbers to have much effect in a great power war in the Pacific. Even if all of these units were deployed to the Indo-Pacific region, there are not enough to address all adversarial orbital targets overflying the operating areas of U.S. terrestrial forces and our allies. As a result, we are putting our guardians in harm’s way without sufficient equipment to achieve meaningful effects in combat, much less the ability to gain space superiority in a high-stakes conflict.

Third is the budget for the service. While many have lauded the largest budget increases for the Space Force, the priorities and resources are insufficient. The majority of the budget is research and development, which is fine, but it is beyond time to move more capability into operational and maintenance lines and deploy capabilities for deterrence and warfighting, not just for continued space-support missions.

Finally, the Space Force is hindered by law from recruiting sufficient military personnel due to congressional limitations imposed before its establishment in 2019. This has led to insufficient numbers of trained personnel to operate space support, space deterrence and warfighting systems needed to defend American interests in space. Thus, a never-ending cycle of re-optimizing the service or military departments happens every few years to make it look like major changes are being made, when in reality the service is just trying to find ways to do more with less.

This passive and inadequate approach will cede freedom of access and maneuver advantage in space to the adversaries of this nation and its friends. Congress should act quickly to remedy this situation and require the development of true warfighting capabilities necessary for the Space Force to be a fully coequal provider of combat forces in the joint force and not simply a service provider.

The Space Force was established to address the threat in space, not to be the help desk of the other services. The Space Force must have the funding, personnel and, most of all, the weapons to address the threats facing our nation today and into the future.

Christopher Stone is a senior fellow for space deterrence studies at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies think tank. He previously served as special assistant to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy. This commentary does not necessarily reflect the position of the U.S. Defense Department.

With the success of Vulcan, there are now two U.S. companies — ULA and SpaceX — offering heavy-lift launch capabilities using U.S.-assembled rockets with U.S.-manufactured engines. These companies, hopefully joined soon by Blue Origin with its own heavy-lift rocket, will create competition in U.S. launch services and strengthen the ability of U.S. companies to compete with their Chinese peers for global customers.

Therefore, the Vulcan launch and engine development should be considered a success story for U.S. industrial policy.

Arguably, one decision made in the mid-1990s led directly to the Vulcan: the decision to use a Russian-made rocket engine, called the RD-180, as the primary engine for the Atlas III and, later, Atlas V rockets. Given the current geopolitical climate, it is impossible to imagine a U.S. defense contractor turning to Russia — or perhaps any foreign company — as the supplier for a component so critical to U.S. national security. But the world looked different then, and following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S. sought to stabilize the economies of what were hoped to be the Soviet Union’s democratic successor states, including Russia, and mitigate concerns about unbought space and rocket technology proliferating to countries like Iran and North Korea.

In 2014, 12 years after the first launch of an Atlas V, then a cornerstone of the U.S. national security launch architecture, Russia invaded Ukraine. In response to engine supply chain concerns resulting from Russia’s actions and worsening U.S.-Russian relations, Congress directed the U.S. Air Force to start a program to develop and field a new U.S.-designed engine and stop using the RD-180.

Though Congress mandated that the Department of Defense produce a replacement domestic engine for use on military launches starting in 2019, the first flight of the replacement engine — Blue Origin’s BE-4 — was the inaugural Vulcan launch. Meanwhile, in 2015, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 was certified for military launch contracts, and the company quickly established itself as a reliable government launch partner.

Though delayed by almost five years, the successful Vulcan launch and performance of the BE-4 engine is a U.S. space milestone worth celebrating, reflecting the strength of the U.S. space-industrial base. The rocket’s success is also a success of U.S. industrial policy, and is the result of significant government and private sector investment. Some of that investment went to develop a different engine, Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR1, which was not used on Vulcan. There is, however, some interest in using the AR1, which was completed by Aerojet Rocketdyne, to power a different U.S.-made rocket, one produced by Firefly Aerospace.

But no matter AR1′s fate, investment in an RD-180 replacement has not only met its primary goal, disentangling U.S. national security launch capabilities from a Russian supplier, but also set the stage for a diverse and competitive U.S. launch provider ecosystem, which will benefit not only the U.S. government but commercial space customers in the U.S. and around the world.

Two companies now offer heavy-lift rockets assembled in the U.S. using American-made engines: SpaceX and ULA. Moreover, U.S. investment helped pave the way for a third capability, Blue Origin’s upcoming New Glenn heavy-launch vehicle, which will also use the BE-4 engine. Relatedly, other U.S. launch providers, such as Rocket Lab and Relativity Space, are also developing similar capabilities.

While SpaceX has demonstrated it can launch at scale, with close to 100 launches last year, now ULA and Blue Origin will have to demonstrate the same repeatability and consistency for Vulcan and BE-4. The goal should be multiple successful U.S. launch providers, offering cost-competitive launch services to global government and private sector customers, as this strengthens the U.S. industrial base, supports high-tech U.S. jobs and grows the U.S. space economy.

China is eyeing commercial customers — the first Chinese commercial launch happened last year — and is likely to follow the same playbook as it did with 5G technologies to capture a share of the global launch market. If U.S. launch companies are to compete and successfully win business around the world, they must offer better, cost-effective solutions than Chinese providers, who in many cases are state-owned or -backed enterprises. With the advent of the Ariane 6, Europe too will have a new heavy-lift capability that competes for many of the same customers.

While the U.S. government cannot subsidize every good idea from a space startup, it can make strategic investments that aim to not only meet national security requirements but also lay a foundation for the commercial success of American space companies in the U.S. and abroad.

Government funding and support to U.S. space companies can also encourage more private investment in these same endeavors, creating a flywheel effect and injecting more capital into initiatives seeking to develop advanced space technologies.

As the DoD nears the release of its first national defense industrial strategy, and soon pivots to implementation, policymakers should consider the Vulcan launch, albeit delayed, as a success story. In this case, the government had a clear goal to replace the weakest point of the supply chain for a critical U.S. national security capability. While meeting that primary objective, the government also strengthened the overall capabilities of the U.S. space industry and positioned it better to compete with China.

Policymakers should discern lessons learned along the decade-long journey that culminated in the Vulcan’s successful launch, and identify where and how to apply future investments to strengthen our security and increase the global competitiveness of U.S. companies.

Clayton Swope is deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. He previously led national security and cybersecurity public policy for Amazon’s Project Kuiper; served as a senior adviser on national security, space, foreign affairs and technology policy issues for a U.S. representative; and worked at the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology.

The company joins Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, who received awards in August to develop 36 satellites each. The spacecraft are part of the third generation — dubbed Tranche 2 — of SDA’s Proliferated Warfigher Space Architecture, a fleet of hundreds of small satellites operating in low Earth orbit, about 1,200 miles above the planet’s surface.

California-based Rocket Lab has been expanding its space systems business in recent years, and the SDA award marks its first prime satellite development contract. The company in November announced plans to expand its production footprint with a new Space Structures Complex in Maryland.

“This contract marks the beginning of Rocket Lab’s new era as a leading satellite prime,” CEO Peter Beck said in a statement. “We’ve methodically executed on our strategy of developing and acquiring experienced teams, advanced technology, manufacturing facilities, and a robust spacecraft supply chain to make this possible.”

Chief Financial Officer Adam Spice told investors Jan. 8 that Rocket Lab sees opportunities for future satellite contracts within the national security space sector, though he declined to discuss specifics.

“I think this is a huge validation of the fact that these opportunities are real for Rocket Lab,” he said.

Rocket Lab will build the satellites — designed to provide encrypted connectivity and communication for military users operating around the globe — at its Long Beach, California, manufacturing complex. The company will produce the subsystems for the 18 spacecraft in-house, including start trackers, solar panels, flight software and other components.

“This high degree of vertical integration gives Rocket Lab a rare level of control over supply chain, enabling efficiencies and certainty on cost, schedule and quality,” the company said.

Established in 2019, SDA’s strategy is defined by two key acquisition concepts: spiral development and proliferation. The PWSA will augment constellations of large spacecraft with hundreds of small, relatively low-cost satellites. While it takes the military on average five to 10 years to conceive and then launch a satellite, SDA wants to shorten that to about two years and field technology at a regular pace, or “spiral.”

The agency expects to launch the 72 transport satellites built by Lockheed and Northrop in 2026 and the remaining Rocket Lab spacecraft in 2027.

The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the early morning hours of Jan. 8, carrying a lunar lander called Peregrine, developed by Astrobotic Technology. The lander is flying 20 payloads, including five for NASA.

“Vulcan’s inaugural launch ushers in a new, innovative capability to meet the ever-growing requirements of space launch,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said in a statement.

The Denver-based company, along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is one of two firms with launch vehicles certified to fly space missions for the U.S. Defense Department and the intelligence community. In 2020, the Space Force chose ULA to conduct 60% of its launches between fiscal 2022 and 2027 and SpaceX to fly the remaining 40%.

Once Vulcan is certified, it will replace the company’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets.

That is slated to occur this spring following Vulcan’s second certification flight. The rocket will carry its first military mission this summer — an experimental navigation satellite for the Air Force Research Laboratory — and is scheduled to fly another three national security missions before the end of the year.

Mark Peller, ULA’s vice president of Vulcan development, told reporters in a Jan. 5 briefing that this week’s launch is the “final step” in the rocket’s development. Vulcan’s test program included more than 150 individual component tests and dozens of major system tests, he said.

While the rocket’s first two flights are critical to demonstrate the Vulcan’s performance and achieve certification, Peller said that process started long before the vehicle was ready to launch.

“The U.S. Space Force has partnered with us through development and has had full insight into design, development and all the other validation tests,” he said.

Following Vulcan’s first flight, ULA will spend the next two months reviewing data and observations from the launch. If the rocket performed as expected, the company will proceed toward its second mission in the April timeframe, launching NASA’s Dream Chaser spaceplane.

ULA produces Vulcan at its Decatur, Ala. facility. The country is on contract for more than 70 Vulcan launches with a variety of customers across the civil, commercial and national security markets.

The company is poised to conduct 16 launches this year, six of those on Vulcan. Its cadence is set to increase to 28 launches in 2025.

Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, the service’s deputy chief of space operations for operations, cyber and nuclear forces, said Jan. 5 the strategy will address how commercial systems could be used to fill capability gaps and provide backup capability when needed. It will also consider how the Space Force can rely more on industry to provide services — such as launch or satellite communications — rather than complete systems.

“What we’re trying to . . . make sure we capture in the strategy is how do we get after buying some of these capabilities, particularly something like SATCOM, as a commodity rather than, ‘I’ve got to own and operate the entire satellite,’” Burt said during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

The Space Force’s strategy and programs office submitted an initial commercial space strategy last fall for approval from Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman. Saltzman sent it back, requesting more detail on what services and products the Space Force wants to buy from commercial companies.

The service in recent years has increased its focus on strengthening its partnership with commercial and industry. Officials have called for the acquisition workforce to consider opportunities to buy services and systems from industry — rather than build a bespoke government satellite — wherever possible. And last year, it established a Commercial Space Office aimed at helping it better integrate these capabilities across its mission areas.

Burt said this push is rooted, in part, in a recognition that the Space Force needs to invest in strengthening the space industrial base.

“The space domain has not necessarily had a very large industrial base in the past because . . . it was primarily the government running those capabilities,” she said. “Now that you see entrepreneurs and commercial companies going into the domain and more nations are also spacefaring nations, you’re starting to see that industrial base build.”

It’s in the Space Force’s interest, she added, to draw from that industrial base wherever possible.

Defending commercial satellites

One area where the Space Force must continue to engage with industry, Burt said, is in determining how to defend commercial space assets during conflict.

Some companies may be concerned about choosing a side and may opt not to have the U.S. defend their systems, she noted, while others may want assurance that their satellites will be prioritized. At the same time, the Space Force wants assurance that those commercial systems will be available in wartime.

Those questions need to be answered in the contract negotiation process, Burt said.

The Defense Department must also consider its own process for prioritizing commercial satellites in wartime. While the military has a process in place for identifying “critical assets” requiring protection during conflict, it needs to determine where commercial satellites and services fit within those priorities.

“Those will all be considerations as we move forward,” Burt said.