Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters March 8 that the smaller budget request – which is, like the rest of the Defense Department, constrained by funding limits set in the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act — means the service won’t be able move as fast as he’d like to build more resilient systems that can counter space threats from China and Russia.

“China has fielded a combination of anti-satellite capabilities and space-based targeting capabilities — so they’re threatening our space assets and they’re threatening our joint force,” he said during an embargoed media briefing. “We’ve got to respond to that. . . . I’d like to move faster on that than we currently are.”

The Space Force’s budget has nearly doubled since it was created in December 2019. Its fiscal year 2021 request for $15.4 billion jumped to $30 billion by FY-24. That growth was due largely to the consolidation of space systems and personnel under the service’s purview.

Service officials, including former Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David Thompson, have said the Space Force’s funding must continue to increase as it takes on new responsibilities and missions.

“The budget needs to grow because there are still more missions that are migrating to space,” Thompson told C4ISRNET in December. “The challenge is, in this environment, defense budgets are likely not to grow significantly in the near future the way they have in the recent past. "

Kendall said the service is making progress toward improving the resilience of its systems. He pointed to the shift toward building smaller satellites in large quantities across key mission areas like missile warning and communications.

However, he wants to be able to invest more in other mission areas — like positioning, navigation and timing — and improve the service’s portfolio of offensive space programs, which are largely classified.

“We need to find a way to have PNT be more resilient, and I think there are some additional communications things that we need to do,” he said.

Funding modernization

The largest portion of the Space Force’s spending request, $18.7 billion, would fund the development of satellites, ground systems and other supporting technology and modernization of existing capabilities. That’s about $300 million less than FY24, due in part to the Space Force’s classified portfolio.

According to Kendall, a portion of the service’s FY25 budget is part of a separate account known as “pass-through” funding, which typically goes to outside organizations like the intelligence community. Kendall would not confirm whether or how much Space Force funding had shifted from its base budget to this account, but said that part of the service’s smaller request is owed to some of its funding being tagged as pass-through money.

Elsewhere in its research and developing account, the Space Force requests $4.7 billion to develop satellites in multiple orbits that can spot and warn of traditional and advanced missile threats.

Within that portfolio, the service proposes $2.1 billion for the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared program. The effort is the successor to today’s Space-Based Infrared System, which detects and tracks ballistic missiles. It includes two 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.

The Space Force also wants $2.6 billion for its Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking program, which aims to field satellites in low Earth orbit, about 1,200 miles above the planet, and medium Earth orbit, at an altitude of between 1,200 and 22,000 miles.

Funding for the MEO portion of the program would support initial satellite development and ground support. The LEO funding, which sits around $1.7 billion, would go toward the Space Development Agency’s efforts to launch 28 satellites in FY25.

Another $1.7 billion would support other SDA activities, including expansion of the agency’s fleet of communications, or data transport, satellites.

The Space Force’s request includes $1 billion for the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications program, which is developing secure, survivable communications capabilities for strategic missions. The satellites are designed to withstand nuclear attack, and the service wants to award a contract and begin production in 2025.

The request also calls for $237 million to start a new program, Protected Tactical SATCOM Global. Initial budget documents did not describe the effort in detail.

The Space Force’s $4.3 billion procurement account — which is about $400 million smaller than it was in fiscal 2024 — would fund 11 launches, down from 15 planned missions in FY24. Four of those launches will carry SDA satellites and the remaining 7 will be for Space Force missions.

Another $527 million, if approved, will buy two GPS IIIF satellites, a modernized version of navigation spacecraft designed to provide better accuracy and anti-jam capabilities. The service expects to start launching the satellites in 2027.

French Space Command has determined the move is deliberate, and intelligence shows the enemy spacecraft is equipped with a robotic arm that would allow it to de-orbit the friendly asset. The French-led blue team moves a “patroller” satellite into a protective position – a capability France is working on, but now lacks – to block any hostile action by the U.S.-led red team.

While fictional, the scenario played out March 7 during Europe’s largest space wargames is credible and based on real capabilities, said Colonel Mathieu Bernabé, who is leading the exercise. During the event called AsterX 2024, some 190 participants from France and 15 partner countries are training for everything from jammed space communications to hostile satellites maneuvering to take out friendly orbiters.

“This type of exercise is absolutely essential for our operators, but also our processes, training for what we call operational readiness, so we’re ready to fight a real war,” General Philippe Adam, the commander of France’s space command, said during a presentation of the exercise in Toulouse in south-west France. “It’s as realistic as an exercise scenario can be, obviously – inspired by a lot of things you’ve probably recognized.”

Adam said “unfriendly behavior” by Russian satellites, with uncoordinated and unannounced approaches, happens “all the time,” in all orbits.

Space is becoming more dangerous, and militarization is on the rise, Adam said. Earth orbits have become busier, with increased competition between commercial players and states, while satellites are becoming a lot more capable and maneuverable.

Space-based systems have become an integral part of military operations, from communication to ballistic-missile detection, navigation, planning and targeting. Meanwhile, the value of the space economy rose 8% to $546 billion in 2022, according to the non-profit Space Foundation.

UK space chief flags moon mining as next conflict ‘gray zone’

French President Emmanuel Macron created a military space command in 2019, with the goal of boosting the country’s awareness of the security situation in space, and to better protect its satellites. France had 91 satellites in orbit in February 2023, the most of any European Union country, according to data published by Statista.

AsterX is “absolutely essential” for ramping up French Space Command, which doesn’t have operational status yet, though it’s performing operations, Adam said. The command is expected to pass an initial stage of operational qualification when it moves into new headquarters in Toulouse next year, and targets full operational capability by 2030.

France is organizing the AsterX wargames for the fourth year, pitting the French-led blue team against the fictional country of Mercure, an adversary trying to destabilize the nation of Arnland. What’s new this year is that the red team, with “significant” space resources, is played by U.S. Space Force personnel, the first time a foreign nation plays the role of adversary.

The exercise simulates more than 4,000 objects in orbit, spinning around in simulated space already days before the exercise, and with the blue and red teams not fully aware of the spatial capacities of their adversary. The knowledge gaps create an intellectual challenge, and the red team being played by the U.S. results in a non-deterministic scenario, Bernabé said.

“AsterX is a laboratory in which you’re confronted with situations, where you experiment with solutions, and get feedback,” Bernabé said. “The challenge is to train how to manage a space situation, but backed up by an inter-army and multi-domain environment, which also means cyber or informational, so this scenario provides for conditions that enable us to play the full spectrum.”

Americans playing the red team provides an additional element of surprise to the exercise, according to Bernabé.

The exercise runs through to March 15 and will include 14 different types of threats and 23 events, within the scenario of a gradually worsening crisis, headed towards high-intensity warfare. Adam said a crisis situation is a useful exercise, as there’s “a lot of ambiguity” to be resolved, while a high-intensity scenario is in some ways simpler because “anything goes.”

Worst-case scenario

A worst-case scenario for orbital conflict would be generalized war with a completely uninhibited enemy attacking satellites “quite indiscriminately,” according to Adam.

“Then we’re going to be losing satellites all over the place, we’re going to lose resources, we’re going to create debris, and then it’s a bit of a snowball effect,” Adam said. Failure to quickly stop such an adversary would create “a problem that will last for decades. Once you’ve created debris everywhere, some orbits become completely inoperable.

”So yes, a generalized conflict in space would be very, very bad news.”

Through the exercise, France also seek to develop a common culture of space operations with its allies and partners, under realistic threat conditions. In addition to the U.S., countries participating in AsterX include the U.K., Japan and South Korea, as well as a number of EU partners.

“We understand each other better after this exercise, in the nature of the responses we can provide, since we’ve experimented with things together,” Bernabé said.

Interoperability challenges between countries’ space forces are “extremely numerous,” including distinct vocabulary for the same things and different procedures and policies, according to Adam.French Space Command targets about 500 personnel in 2025, from around 350 now, according to Adam. He said partners such as Japan, Germany and Italy are creating commands similar in size, between 300 and 600 personnel, adding that human resources are “a tremendous problem” for everyone.

Those goals compare to around 13,900 staff for the U.S. Space Force at the end of December. France doesn’t have the ambition of creating anything similar, which would require “being rich like an American,” the general said.

In addition to the new Toulouse headquarters, the main priority for France is to get patroller satellites into orbit, according to Adam. He said the country also needs to strengthen the terrestrial part of its space capabilities, and needs more space-surveillance sensors.

He said the country’s Yoda agile satellite demonstrator, which has been held up by a lack of launch slots, may become operational “in the next few months,” with operational space-patrol capacity following within one to two years.

“These are not very big satellites, they’re not very complicated satellites,” Adam said. “What’s most complicated is knowing how to use them.”And that’s what France is preparing for with AsterX.

Space Systems Command — the service’s acquisition arm — is in the early phases of planning for the capability, according to March 5 notice, and is seeking industry feedback as it studies the prospect of increasing its portfolio of observation satellites.

Domain awareness is a top priority both for the Space Force and U.S. Space Command as they look to better characterize and deter threats from adversaries like Russia and China. As the service prepares to release its budget request for fiscal 2025 next week, Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein on March 7 called for more funding for space domain awareness capabilities, among other areas.

“We must invest more in test and training, space domain awareness, command and control, and in the ability to control the domain,” he said in a March 7 speech at the McAleese & Associates annual defense forum in Washington.

The service already operates a fleet of Geosynchronous Space Situation Awareness Program, or GSSAP, satellites that serve a kind of neighborhood watch function. They also perform rendezvous and proximity operations, drawing close to other satellites to observe and provide data on them.

Details on GSSAP’s full suite of capabilities are slim as the program is largely classified. The service first launched the Northrop Grumman-built spacecraft in 2014 and in 2022 fielded two more to replenish the constellation. Last year, it deactivated one of the six GSSAP satellites in orbit.

It’s not immediately clear how the additional GEO satellites would be distinct from GSSAP. However, one key difference is that the service wants the spacecraft to carry carry a Space Force-supported, in-orbit refueling port that would allow them to extend missions.

In recent years, Space Command leaders have pushed for the service to field more refuelable spacecraft to support more dynamic operations, noting that satellites like GSSAP are somewhat limited due to their fixed fuel supply.

Last year, then-deputy Space Command commander Lt. Gen. John Shaw called on the Space Force to equip all space observation satellites to be equipped for refueling by the end of the decade.

The notice indicates the satellites would be highly maneuverable and would carry an electro-optical payload. The service is also looking for low-cost systems that require minimal development and could be quickly built and launched.

The spacecraft wouldn’t need bespoke ground systems or operational units but would instead rely on existing capabilities.

A scenario of nations jumping on lunar mining to refill their dried-up, terrestrial stocks has the potential for gray zone conflict, the kind of amorphous contest that transcends traditional notions of two warring parties shooting at each other, Air Vice-Marshal Paul Godfrey said at the Space Comm Expo trade show here.

For now, there is no commercial proposition for what Godfrey likened to a science fiction version of the U.S. Gold Rush of the nineteenth century.

“The cost of getting to the moon, creating a lunar base, extracting the minerals and getting them back to earth probably far outweighs mining precious minerals on the Earth,” he told Defense News in an interview.

It’s also still unclear exactly what types of rare-earth metals, critical in producing high-tech components, exist under the lunar surface. On Earth, China is a critical supplier of such ingredients. European and NATO nations are eager to diversify their supply chain as they view Beijing as an unreliable partner politically.

Godfrey characterized developments toward lunar mining as purely commercial, but, by raising the matter, made clear it has started to pop up on the radars of armed forces, with very practical questions emerging.

“Do you ring-fence your particular area on the moon if you strike gold, so to speak?” Godfrey asked.

Whether moon mining will become feasible one day depends on key technologies and ensured access to space for all, he said, adding that proliferating space debris could make the journey impossible for everyone at some point.

Reducing the cost of space launches and advancing the field of on-orbit manufacturing also are stepping stones to the vision of moon mining, Godfrey added.

Link 16 is a commonly used military signal SDA satellites will use to connect to radios on the ground. U.S. forces, NATO and international allies rely on the capability for real-time data exchange.

The agency has been working with the FAA to get approval to test Link 16 over national airspace, but the process has taken longer than anticipated.

“Primarily, the FAA wants to make sure that we have compatibility features that are tested on our satellites so that we can’t interfere with any radio navigation aids,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said during a March 6 Space News webinar. “That makes sense, and we’re working with the FAA to get a plan in place to do that.”

The Defense Department established SDA in 2019 to build a constellation of low Earth orbit transport and missile tracking satellites on rapid timelines, augmenting constellations of large spacecraft with hundreds of small, relatively low-cost satellites. Those spacecraft make up what SDA calls its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture and will serve as the data backbone for joint, multidomain command-and-control capabilities.

After launching its first satellites last April, SDA had hoped to move quickly to validate the capability and integrate it as part of large-scale Defense Department exercises, like Northern Edge — a joint training event conducted in the Gulf of Alaska.

Instead, the agency opted to perform initial tests over international waters, starting in November. During the initial demonstration, three satellites built by Denver-based York Space Systems transmitted signals from low Earth orbit — about 1,200 miles above Earth — to an international test site.

The Air Force’s 46th Test Squadron supported the mission from the ground.

SDA now has 27 satellites in orbit. Those spacecraft are not only equipped to communicate through Link 16, but also have what are called optical inter-satellite links that allow them to share data with one another.

SDA first tested those inter-satellite links in 2021 during a demonstration mission with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency called Mandrake. Tournear said the agency has begun to test the capability with the first batch of satellites it launched and expects to expand that across the constellation later this summer.

As the agency works to test and demonstrate the capabilities of its first tranche of satellites, it’s also preparing for its next launches, which are expected to begin in September. That mission will set off a nearly yearlong campaign to launch around 161 satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

“We expect to have at least one of those launches by the end of this calendar year and then the rest will essentially be as fast as we can get them through the payload processing facilities,” Tournear said.

The Space Force is the Pentagon’s hub for organizing, training and equipping the units that provide satellite communications to the joint force, track missile launches, catalog debris that could damage spacecraft, take images of troop movements and wildfires from orbit, and more.

But as the newest service has taken shape — pulling together soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and fresh recruits to form the military’s smallest branch — the growing importance of space in global security has highlighted the need for a flexible, collaborative workforce for the decades to come.

“I’m extremely proud of the Space Force and all the good that it has accomplished,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said Feb. 13 at an Air and Space Forces Association conference in Colorado. “But as good as we are, as much as we’ve done, as far as we’ve come — it’s not enough.”

The service hit its congressionally authorized staffing goal — about 13,900 billets overall — for the first time in 2023.

As of Dec. 31, the Space Force employed around 4,400 officers, 4,600 enlisted guardians and 4,900 civilians. The service plans to expand to 14,526 members, including 9,400 in uniform, in fiscal 2024.

Each year, that number creeps closer to the 16,000 personnel the Pentagon estimated the Space Force would reach as it lobbied Congress to create a lean new service in 2019.

Katharine Kelley, the Space Force’s civilian personnel boss, predicts “steady-state growth” that allows the service to keep up with operational needs without stressing the training pipeline or setting unattainable recruiting goals.

“We’re realists about what we can actually produce,” she said in a Feb. 23 interview. “There are plenty of people that say to me, ‘Why don’t you just add 10,000 more people?’ … We’re not trying to grow for the sake of numbers. We’re trying to grow for the sake of the mission capability.”

The Space Force is preparing to welcome reservists to its ranks under a new model that will allow guardians to serve in a full- or part-time capacity without leaving active duty. That approach lets the Space Force avoid the bureaucracy of standing up a separate reserve component while ideally offering troops more flexibility than active military service typically provides.

The window for reservists in the other armed forces to apply to transfer into the Space Force will likely open this summer or fall, Kelley said.

In the meantime, service officials will continue hashing out the details of how that hybrid workforce will function: How would it affect military housing or health care? How would promotions work? What would it mean for unit staffing? And what back-end human resources software does that require?

“It’s not copy-and-pasting the reserve model and dropping it into the Space Force,” Kelley said. “It’s truly, how are you going to manage one composition that has a couple of different ways to serve?”

Further growth may require the Space Force to take a more active role in its own recruiting. The Air Force has so far handled guardian recruitment in an effort to minimize overlapping bureaucracy between the two services, which comprise the Department of the Air Force.

But Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna, the service’s top enlisted leader, said that could change.

“We don’t have Space Force recruiters right now,” he told Air Force Times in a Jan. 11 interview. “That’s probably something we have to do.”

Still, the Space Force’s accession numbers haven’t suffered from a lack of in-house recruiters.

More than 4,000 people sought to fill just 492 enlisted billets in fiscal year 2023, the service told Congress in January. It signed up all but three of the 259 officers it sought last year.

The Space Force plans to recruit nearly 700 new enlisted guardians and 321 new officers in fiscal year 2024.

Bentivegna plans to work on refining the Space Force’s recruiting strategy in 2024, to give potential enlistees a better understanding of the service’s mission and what their place in it could be. That might mean mounting an ad campaign targeted at those who future guardians might ask for advice on joining the military.

“What do they say? What do they know about us?” he said of recruits’ family and friends. “I want to ... start owning that more as a service.”

Rethinking training

As the service continues to expand, leaders are reconsidering whether the foundation they’ve built can carry them into the future. That begins with an overhaul of the training pipeline.

The Space Force has already designed a service-specific curriculum for enlisted recruits inside the Air Force-run boot camp. Now it wants to shake up how guardians train for their first job in uniform, starting with the officer corps.

Rather than sending officers to technical school to learn about a narrow slice of military space, the Space Force will start them out with an introductory Officer Training Course that exposes troops to the basics of its three core operational fields — intelligence; cyber; and running the satellites, radars and other systems that comprise space operations.

Once the foundational course is done, guardians will pick the career field they like best and head to their first operational unit for on-the-job training, rather than spending more time in the classroom, Kelley said.

That means the Space Force will eventually stop sending guardians to some Air Force-run tech schools, like intel training at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas.

The service eventually plans to expand the same idea to the enlisted corps. It’s unclear how long the vision might take to implement.

Officials hope the idea will lead to a more intuitive workforce that better understands how the military space enterprise functions overall. Graduates will go on to staff units that increasingly look to blur the lines between operations, acquisition and sustainment of military space assets.

“It is very difficult to separate satellite operations, cyber operations and the intelligence that you need to understand to deal with the domain,” Saltzman said.

For example, he said, “a cyber operator will be far better at their job defending the network if they understand the satellite operations, and they understand the intelligence and the threat, and how to ask the right questions.”

The new ops floor

As the pace of operations mounts — fueled by wars in Europe and the Middle East, deterrence in the Pacific, the proliferation of satellites on orbit and burgeoning threats to the U.S. military space ecosystem — the Space Force is unsatisfied with the number of troops it has focused on the daily mission, Kelley said.

The service plans to bolster its shift work, hoping to ease burnout among operational teams, make better use of the troops it has and create more bandwidth in case of a surge.

The Space Force wants to grow the number of crews who staff ops floors around the clock from three to five or so, Kelley said, to give guardians more time to train when they aren’t handling the mission.

To build those rotational crews, the service aims to more cleanly divide guardians who handle administrative work from those who staff daily operations — allowing more operators to focus on the mission rather than distracting them with managerial tasks.

Those crews will form standard packages of combat squadrons the service offers the joint force for daily missions around the world, like the Navy’s carrier strike groups and the Air Force’s future expeditionary wings.

That comes as the Space Force continues to open service component units that work directly with combatant commands like U.S. Central Command and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to ensure precision-guided weapons can land on target, pass communications between troops, protect U.S. satellites from electronic attack and flag incoming rockets, among other tasks.

The tenor on ops floors is changing, too. Space leaders want guardians to see themselves not as button-pushers at desks, but as warriors in a fight that extends around the globe and into orbit.

In the past, “it was not about what happens if somebody actually tries to take out one of your satellites,” Kelley said. “What we’re focused on now is where to put that manpower and those resources to really flesh out the operational warfighter capabilities.”

The service expects to lean more heavily on enlisted guardians to run daily operations, while officers handle more of the joint force planning to which space is key. Bentivegna noted the Space Force plans to open a retraining program this year to more easily balance its noncommissioned officer corps and others across specialties.

Space Operations Command boss Lt. Gen. David Miller told reporters on a Feb. 27 call that the service is “in a good place” in terms of the staff needed to handle daily tasks, though it’s “in no way … overmanned.” He declined to say in which fields the Space Force is spread thinnest.

But he acknowledged that as the mission set grows, so will the need for staff in expanding areas like missile warning and tracking. That’s especially driven by the Pentagon’s plans to put hundreds of disposable satellites on orbit to become more resilient in case of attack.

It’s time for the service to take a hard look at how many people it needs in each of those roles, and figure out how to promote and pay them fairly, Chief Bentivegna said.

“Am I happy with the structure? No,” he said.

Bentivegna said he’d like to see all guardians who are fully qualified be promoted, up to the first noncommissioned officer rank of sergeant (E-5) — when troops start vying for a smaller number of leadership positions.

“I don’t want to have commanders make a decision that, ‘Only 65% can get promoted this cycle,’” he said. “The only thing that the guardians should be … comparing themselves against is the standard, not one another.”

Kelley, the civilian personnel boss, said the service will advocate for guardians to be allowed to pocket salaries that rival those in the commercial space, cyber and other technology-focused sectors that compete with the Space Force for talent. When guardians may qualify for bonuses and how large those might be is also under consideration.

Officials contend there’s no time to lose in nailing down the details.

“There’s [a] real world at stake here. This is not hypothetical,” Kelley said. “As much as I worry about how much we’re trying to attack at once internally, to get stood up and do all these new things and build new laws and new policies, what’s at stake is you’re farther and farther behind where you need to be. And so I’m excited for what we can do.”

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — India plans to spend about $3 billion on space-related contract awards over the next few years to reduce its dependence on foreign satellites and bolster its counter-space capabilities, according to the head of the military.

Gen. Anil Chauhan’s call to close the gap between India’s own capabilities and other nations that are developing countermeasures in space comes amid tension with China. The neighbors have clashed over a shared border area in the eastern Ladakh region, with both sides in 2020 suffering casualties. In August 2023, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss the unresolved border issue and try to deescalate the situation.

Speaking at the DEFSAT conference, held Feb. 7-9 in New Delhi, Chauhan called for greater investment in India’s military space sector and noted the military has already signed five contracts with the private sector, with four more being drawn up. In addition, the government plans to spend 250 billion Indian rupees — or about $3 billion — on contract awards over the next few years, he added.

“It’s the right time for the private industry to utilize this opportunity,” Chauhan said. “Our leadership has envisioned big targets for the nation, from space augmentation to space exploration.”

Sino-Indian space race

During his speech, Chauhan outlined several areas of focus for India’s space sector. First, he called for an indigenous constellation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites equipped with optical and hyperspectral sensors.

Next, he said, the military cannot remain dependent on foreign constellations for positioning, navigation and timing requirements.

“We should also be investing in launch on-demand capabilities in the near future. As the national requirements of ISR, PNT and communication grow, this will resultantly increase the number of Indian satellites orbiting the space, [thus requiring the need for] securing these particular assets, which will require space situational awareness.”

To fill these gaps, the general recommended high-speed satellite communications, a satellite-based internet of things and robust, ground-based infrastructure.

“Lastly, when we are developing all this, I think we need to look at counter-space capabilities, which nations are developing, as a means of deterrence. And maybe this would be required in [the] future to safeguard our assets. In order to ensure that these capabilities are rightfully utilized, doctrinal and connected concepts need to be developed,” he added.

Indeed, there is an inequality in China’s space-based assets compared to those of India. According to the “Military Balance” report released in February by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, China operates 245 military satellites, compared to India’s 26. China also has a reusable spacecraft and counter-space technology, the London-based think tank found.

China is certainly interested in dominating the space domain in terms of control and denying access to adversaries, according to Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst focused on space and Chinese military modernization at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

“They’re also developing the counter-space capabilities to threaten U.S. and allied satellites and developing sophisticated launch capabilities that are moving much more toward reusable launch vehicles, heavy-lift and encouraging the growth of commercial space,” he told Defense News. “So in every sense of the word, I think the Chinese are determined to overtake the U.S. in space.”

India is a major ally of the United States, whose own Defense Department warned last year of China’s rise in space capabilities. Its report last year asserted more than 290 systems made up China’s ISR satellite fleet.

“The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] owns and operates about half of the world’s ISR systems, most of which could support monitoring, tracking, and targeting of U.S. and allied forces worldwide, especially throughout the Indo-Pacific region. These satellites also allow the PLA to monitor potential regional flashpoints, including the Korean Peninsula, Taiwan, Indian Ocean, and the SCS [South China Sea],” the report noted.

For example, China has dozens of Yaogan-class satellites in orbit, with 54 dedicated to ISR and another 46 providing electronic or signals intelligence, per IISS data, gathered as late as November.

On Dec. 15, China launched the large Yaogan-41 optical satellite into geostationary orbit. There are also about five Huoyan-1 early warning satellites, and China is testing a quantum-enabled communications satellite that could lead to virtually unbreakable communications.

Beijing’s progress in space, including the creation of its Strategic Support Force in 2015, which is responsible for nearly all PLA space operations, shows “forward thinking,” said David Stupples, an expert in space-based systems and professor at City, University of London.

“China [has] a very agile military, and they follow the latest trends very quickly,” he said, comparing the nation to the U.S. and NATO, which have historically focused more on kinetic capabilities. “Warfare has changed a lot over the last four to five years: Whereas it was 90% kinetic and 10% electronic warfare, it’s now probably 50% to 60% electronic warfare and 40% kinetic.”

China also has its own facsimile of GPS. Known as BeiDou, this constellation has 45 satellites, with the final system launched in June 2020 to provide positioning accuracy at up to 5 meters (16 feet).

China is also developing counter-space capabilities through direct-ascent technology, co-orbital systems, electronic warfare, cyberattacks and directed-energy weapons. These can deny access to and operations in the space domain.

“What you’re seeing is that while the Chinese are developing [these] sort of direct-ascent, kinetic-kill anti-satellite [technology], the favored capability for them will be soft-kill systems that are either co-orbital or ground-based because they can deliver reversible, scalable effects, and they also don’t create clouds of space debris,” Davis said.

Asked whether China has interfered with foreign satellites, Davis said he hasn’t heard of “actual attacks so far, but what they’re demonstrating — perfecting — is the technological means to do these sort of attacks in a crisis leading up to war, to exploit the gray zone attack using, for example, a dual-role commercial satellite that has an anti-satellite capability.” (Gray zone military activities fall below the level of traditional armed conflict.)

China reportedly has multiple ground-based lasers that can disrupt, degrade or damage satellites, with the Pentagon describing the technology as a “current limited capability.”

“They do have lasers powerful enough at the moment probably to destroy a satellite in low Earth orbit,” Stupples concurred. “But they’re also developing satellite-killer satellites, which will go alongside another satellite and then aim a laser at the solar panels or antennas.”

China demonstrated its counter-space work with an anti-satellite test against a defunct weather satellite in 2007. It has continued to launch multiple anti-satellite missiles, like the SC-19 used in 2007, proving Beijing can target systems both in low-Earth and geosynchronous orbits. And in 2018, Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, then-director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, warned China was working on the ability to jam satellites from the ground.

Stupples said while the anti-satellite threat is “very serious,” any attack would lead to fratricide due to the likelihood of American retaliation. “What China has then said is: ‘OK, you can do all of that, but we will flood space with our signals intelligence satellites and our reconnaissance satellites, etc., and therefore we’ll make it very difficult to do that.’”

Other notable Chinese capabilities include three tests of a reusable spaceplane and the fielding of transportable, quick-response, solid-fueled space launch vehicles. These could help the PLA rapidly reconstitute its low-Earth orbit capabilities by launching replacement satellites.

China’s commercial constellations also benefit the government, Stupples noted. For instance, Beijing is working on its Guo Wang constellation that could include 13,000 satellites for widespread internet coverage — a concept similar to the Starlink network created by American firm SpaceX. The state-owned company SatNet is to operate this massive constellation.

Juliana Suess, an analyst with the British think tank Royal United Services Institute, wrote in an article that “there are many reasons why China would build a satellite-enabled internet constellation in LEO,” not least of which is to expand its influence overseas.

“The existing strides that China has made in terms of soft power, specifically on the continent of Africa and with regard to internet infrastructure, suggest a relatively fast and easy plug-in into Guo Wang,” she noted.

Playing catchup

In comparison, India’s space efforts, historically headlined by the Indian Space Research Organisation, appear rather modest. But the country has achieved notable feats, including the July 14 launch of the Chandrayaan-3 mission into orbit, which then successfully landed on the moon.

M. Matheswaran, a retired Indian Air Force air marshal, told Defense News the major drivers for India’s focus on space are the 1999 Kargil War, fought against Pakistan over disputed territory, and China’s 2007 anti-satellite test. The Indian government eventually created its tri-service Defence Space Agency in 2019.

“Now the government has brought out a new space policy opening up the space segment to the private sector,” said Matheswaran, who leads The Peninsula Foundation, an India-based think tank. “India is on the right track now to meeting both its civilian and military requirements, but the pace is not going to be comparable to China’s.”

“There are startups that are doing well, and ISRO [Indian Space Research Organisation] is supporting them as well. That needs to be accelerated, which can only be achieved by adequate government and funding support,” he added. “I suppose India will close the gap, but catching up with where China is today is going to take a long time.”

Stupples agreed India is “a long way behind,” citing a lack of research and funding for military space initiatives. “India has the capability of launching satellites,” he said, “but it doesn’t have the impetus to develop this further. Its thinking is more like America’s — you know, kinetic.”

Last year, the Indian government released a space policy to encourage developments in the domestic space sector through private participation. And in February 2024, the government approved a more liberal foreign direct investment policy to attract investors to the industry.

ISRO also announced plans for 30 space launches by March 2025; that’s compared to an average of about three annually in recent years, Matheswaran said.

Meanwhile, China plans to execute about 100 space launch missions this year, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Among India’s private sector, Tata Advanced Systems has emerged as a key player, with local media reporting it can build up to 24 LEO satellites annually. And the startup GalaxEye Space plans to launch its Drishti satellite this year equipped with synthetic aperture radar and multiple sensors to perform multispectral imaging.

The Indian military is also eyeing December for the launch of its GSAT-7R communications satellite for the Navy, reportedly followed by a 2026 deployment of the GSAT-7B that will provide the Army with its first dedicated communications satellite.

India is increasing its navigation capabilities with the so-called NavIC system; that constellation is to grow from seven satellites to 11 within the next five years. A decade later, the government hopes to have 26 satellites in operation to give India a GPS equivalent.

But among India’s production efforts are destructive aims. In 2019, the country test-fired an anti-satellite weapon that destroyed a low-Earth orbit satellite and resulted in additional space debris. Modi said the test was “not against anyone.”

However, Matheswaran said the experiment was meant “to send a message to the rest of the world, particularly to China, because they did it in 2007.″ He said the move exhibited India’s “capability to protect our assets in space, [showing] we have the ability to interfere with your assets in space as well.”

He agreed with Chauhan that India is overly reliant on foreign sources for surveillance data. “When it comes to security-related issues, India cannot depend on that alone for our entire capability. There’s no substitute for creating your complete independence in that capability from other countries, and therefore this is an urgent requirement.”

In January, India and France signed a memorandum of understanding covering satellite launches and space exploration initiatives. The collaboration is expected to lead to a joint constellation of surveillance satellites focused on the Indian Ocean within four years.

They key here is collaboration rather than dependence, Matheswaran said.

“Down the line, it should result in joint training, joint research and development and joint work, including industrial partnerships,” he said. “That’s the way to go.”

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 two 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, and a Northrop Grumman-Ball Aerospace team to to develop the primary payloads for the geosynchronous satellites. 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.