Build, Upgrade Satellites Fast For Space Resilience: Aerospace Corp.

WASHINGTON: DoD must change its approach to space if it is to stay ahead of satellite attrition during future wars. It needs to regularly replace entire satellite constellations every few years rather than once every 15 to 20 years, the respected Aerospace Corporation says in a new study.

“[R]esiliency does not come from picking one optimal future architecture now,” the paper warns DoD. “Instead, it comes from the ability to adapt the architecture and scale to future needs in an affordable way.”

The new paper, Continuous Production Agility: Adapting at the Speed of Relevance and authored by Karen Jones, says DoD should shift its focus to “delivering an entire constellation over a short period (e.g., five years) and immediately beginning the replenishment process on a schedule-certain basis.” Such a “high quantity and high production rate strategy” would create a predictable cadence for industry and encourage them to invest in “efficiency and speed.”

In turn, that kind of increased production “diminishes dependence on individual satellite reliability,” Jones argues. “Constellations are more robust against threats and single-point failures. In some cases, shorter design lives may enable simpler designs with less redundancy, reducing per-unit costs and partially offsetting the increased costs from production and launch quantities.”

While Aerospace recognizes that moving to a new national security space architecture and acquisition process would probably require increased capital costs up front, the paper argues that savings accrue over time. “Upfront investments are necessary to break the vicious cycle in which current DOD high-value assets are stuck. Still, average unit costs can be lower,” the paper states, due to: “flow production efficiencies,” pre-planned production quantities, shorter satellite design lives and “learning curve efficiencies.”

Such a strategy would represent a perfect 180-degree turn from the current structure of DoD’s space enterprise, which is centered on very high-performance satellites with long lifetimes (and stratospheric costs) that are replaced every 15 to 20 years, and often take that long to build.

For example, DoD’s constellation of radiation-hardened, encrypted communications satellites, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) network, built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, will comprise only six satellites when completed. Launch of the sixth satellite is slated for Thursday on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The replacement of that strategic communications capability, designed to connect the president and top military leaders in any foreseeable circumstance (including during a nuclear attack), under the  Evolved Strategic SATCOM (ESS) program is not slated to begin until 2032, according to Space Force officials.

Moreover, Aerospace’s CPA strategy echoes — or perhaps it is the other way around — the development and acquisition philosophy being championed by Air Force acquisition head Will Roper. Roper has consistently argued for fast and furious development of not just space systems but also aircraft — note his Digital Century Series concepts for replacing fighter jets every five years — at “the speed of relevance” by adopting Silicon Valley modular processes whereby new systems are produced and upgraded in a nearly constant cycle. Think Apple and iPhone upgrades that come every few years.

Moving to such a rapid space development/acquisition cycle will require DoD to whole-heartedly embrace “modular open systems architectures” used by commercial industry — meaning systems are built and fielded incrementally — and open software standards that allow third-party upgrades and are not proprietary. The Aerospace Corp. paper notes that the Army, Navy and Air Force secretaries already have directed use of open systems architectures whenever possible to allow rapid integration of new tech.

For space systems, this would mean contracting with “multiple providers for satellite buses and payloads in support of multiple programs.” The idea, the paper explains, is to “encourage innovation, competition, and schedule confidence” via “multiple parallel contracts … where economically viable, with each delivering a portion of the needed units.”

Accordingly, “A key first step will be development of modular bus/payload interface standards to shape future acquisitions” — something that the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) already has begun “with a working group of 10 prospective contractors for its strategic space systems,” the study adds.

As Breaking D readers know, DARPA, SMC and the Space Development Agency are eyeing the use of standardized satellite busses that can be integrated with multiple payload types under the high-priority Blackjack program.

A shift to rapid replenishment of incremental satellite capabilities would also require a change to national security launch practices, to enable the ability to “launch on schedule” rather than the current “launch on need” system. This again implies far-reaching changes in current practice. For more than a decade, DoD has had an on-again, off-again love affair with so-called responsive launch — but in reality little has changed that fact that launches are few, far between and require months if not years of planning.

SMC’s Launch Enterprise Director Col. Robert Bongiovi told reporters today in a briefing about the AEHF-6 launch that DoD has planned nine national security space launches for the year. These include the AEHF, and the April 29 scheduled launch of a third GPS III satellite, he said.

The GPS III series is the long-delayed upgrade of the venerable Global Positioning System positioning, navigation and timing constellation to improve cybersecurity and resistance to jamming, built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin. The second in the series, called Magellan and launched in August 2019, last night was transferred to operational status with the Space Force and is now being controlled by the Second Space Operational Squadron at Schriever AFB in Colorado, SMC announced.

Despite the social distancing and teleworking measures put into place by DoD to combat the COVID-19 pandemic at the Eastern Range in Florida and the Western Range in California, that schedule remains in place, Bongiovi stressed, although he added that the situation is fluid and each launch will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis as it approaches.