SMC Commander Lt. Gen. John Thompson

LOMPOC, CALIF.: Even as the Pentagon wrestles with how the nascent Space Force will acquire capabilities, the long-established Space & Missile Systems Center is working to improve the usefulness of space assets for all five services. In fact, the Los-Angeles-based SMC, recently transferred from the Air Force to the Space Force, is already heavily involved with joint efforts to develop Multi-Domain Operations: coordinated campaigns across air, land, sea, cyberspace, and outer space.

SMC has both “foundational and emerging roles… in enabling Multi-Domain Operations,” said Col. Thomas Rock, deputy capability lead for SMC’s Portfolio Architect, in an email to Breaking Defense. Those roles range from connecting terrestrial forces to satellite systems and services, such as GPS, to creating a new “Space Common Operating Picture” that will help enable Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2).

The Space Force was stood up on Dec. 20 with President Donald Trump’s signature of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Formerly part of Air Force Space Command, SMC is now officially the “center of acquisition excellence” of the Space Force, according to its website. SMC is led by Lt. Gen. John Thompson.

But as Breaking D readers may recall, the Pentagon has yet to figure out how it intends to deal with the NDAA-imposed creation of an Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. That new assistant secretary was mandated to oversee SMC, the Space Rapid Capabilities Office (SpRCO), and the nascent Space Development Agency (SDA). In October 2022, whoever holds that position will also become the Air Force Service Acquisition Executive for Space Systems and Programs.

Most experts carefully picking through the NDAA language agree that, while it does not explicitly say so, its intent appears to be to shift, not just SMC, but also SDA and SpRCO into the Space Force.

“I see no mention of placing the three acquisition organizations under the Space Force. However, the FY20 NDAA Conference Report does call on the SECDEF to provide a report to the congressional defense committees on the funding requirements for the Space Force for fiscal years 2021 through 2025, including Procurement, RDT&E [Research, Development, Test, & Engineering], O&M [Operations & Maintenance], and MILPERS [Military Personnel],” said one analyst closely following the NDAA process. “The fact that Procurement and RDT&E are included gives an indication the Space Force is expected to carry out acquisition activities.”

One idea rolling around the Pentagon is to lump SMC, SDA and SpRCO together under a new Space Force entity called Space Systems Command. However, source say, there is internal disagreement on whether all the organizations must be moved and a reluctance to change anything hastily, given that DoD has two years to decide what it wants to do regarding space acquisition and perhaps even convince Congress to change its mind.

In particular, as I reported when the NDAA was signed, there has been discussion of whether SDA might somehow remain under Mike Griffin, DoD undersecretary for research & engineering. Indeed, the DoD report on Space Force organization passed to Congress today, first reported by colleague Sandra Erwin, does not detail the purview of the new space acquisition czar.

All that said, SMC is now part of the Space Force no matter what happens to SDA and SpRCO. Further, SMC on Jan. 31 declared “full operational capability” for its recently revamped organizational structure called SMC 2.0, designed to streamline decision-making, improve performance and speed acquisition of space capabilities. And it is moving out on critical work on enabling future Multi-Domain Operations, Rock said.

As for foundational work on MDO, Rock explained, this involves providing space services, capabilities and most importantly connectivity across all the domains. “These include Position, Navigation and Timing, Missile Warning, Military Satellite Communications, Weather and the host of other capabilities we currently provide to all-domain operations.”

Rock seems most energized by SMC’s direct efforts to develop new capabilities to underpin future all-domain operations. “The emerging role is where SMC’s leadership is really starting to take hold,” he enthused. This work has four major elements, he said:

First, the Unified Data Library developed by SMC is influencing the development of a new “data architecture” for JADC2 and the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS). ABMS is a family of systems that the service sees as its main contribution to the evolution of JADC2. The Unified Data Library was originally designed to integrate data from the Air Force’s space surveillance network — already a vast and difficult task — but now has evolved into one of the ABMS subsystems called “dataONE.”

The expanded dataONE library now includes data from air-, ground- and sea-based sensors, and was “featured in the recent AF Fall Corona event [and] the Advanced Battle Management System Demo #1 in Dec. 2019,” Rock said. It also will be used in the upcoming April ABMS demonstration, he added.

The new data library is developing to “not only collect all sensor information, but also provide primary or backup dissemination systems for much of the command and control infrastructure being considered” for JADC2, Rock said. “This information is directly accessible by any operations center, anywhere in the world.”

In addition, Rock said, “[SMC’s] tight relationship with Air Force Research Lab Micro Satellite Military Utility (MSMU) section has created a huge opportunity to formally leverage our commercial partners’ satellite capabilities to augment the more formal Intelligence Community and DoD specific sensors.” Indeed, the Air Force for some time has been trying to figure out how to integrate commercially provided space communications, Earth imagery and even space object tracking data into its own intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) networks.

SMC further is responsible for “creating and delivering a Space Common Operating Picture” now being used to provide space domain awareness, which also “is being considered as the template for the all domain/multi-domain common operating picture,” Rock told me. A common operating picture for MDO would integrate sensor data from all the services, depicting the battlefield in real time, rather like current commercial software applications for mapping traffic such as Waze.

Finally, Rock said SMC is a thought leader on how the space assets can “provide resiliency across all the domains” by figuring out how to expand or replace current satellite communications networks. This could involve, for example, new satellites in Low Earth Orbit to provide redundant space-based communications, or alternatively non-space systems such as high-flying aerostats.