ULA’s Atlas V 551 rocket, carrying the SILENTBARKER/NROL-107 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and United States Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC), was successfully launched Sept. 10, 2023 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. (Photo credit: United Launch Alliance)
WASHINGTON — The Senate Appropriations Committee’s just-revealed fiscal 2025 defense budget bill takes the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community to task for what it sees as shortfalls in promises to take better advantage of commercial space capabilities in a number of key areas.
Perhaps most intriguing is language in the bill that calls into question Pentagon and IC plans to declassify data from classified remote sensing satellites they are partnering to develop and manage, under a newly developed joint architecture called the “High-Capacity, Find, Fix, Track, Target and Engage and Assess Constellation,” or “HCF” for short. The constellation comprises satellites carrying electro-optical, synthetic aperture radar and ground moving target sensors, the bill says.
Neither DoD nor the IC have announced the new HCF. However, senior officials over the past year have boasted about the increased cooperation between the Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites — despite continued backroom brawls over authorities and budgets involving the two as well as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). NRO and the Space Force, for instance, have announced their partnership on both the SILENTBARKER constellation of space domain awareness satellites, as well as joint work to develop new birds carrying ground moving target indicators.
“[T]he Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Intelligence and Security) [USD (I&S)] recently led a process to determine the classification levels of data from the HCF, most notably proposing to mark certain data unclassified, despite its origin from traditionally classified government intelligence collection systems,” the bill states.
Lawmakers on the committee are “concerned” that unless DoD and the IC also are planning to increase use of the now “robust” commercial space capabilities across those same sensor technologies, “which inherently provide unclassified shareable collection,” the move will undercut the US remote sensing industrial base, the bill adds.
Thus, the senators have instructed the Government Accountability Office to undertake a study of the government’s geospatial intelligence infrastructure and acquisition plans, including HCF. Further, the study is to compare the projected costs of current and future HCF development by DoD and the IC versus that of fulling the requirements using “commercial services.”
SAC also once again weighs directly into the ongoing tug-of-war, as first reported by Breaking Defense, between DoD and NGA over authorities concerning the use of commercial satellites for “tactical” ISR — with the bill adding $40 million for Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office to continue its pilot project that would allow Combatant Commands to directly task commercial birds to provide imagery over specific target areas. The FY24 appropriations bill approved by both the Senate and House also included $40 million for the effort; although the Space Force did not ask for any funds in for either fiscal year.
Finally, the SAC bill adds $22 million to the Space Force budget “to support the acquisition of commercial services to augment the position, navigation and timing mission, space-based environmental monitoring mission, and the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve.”
The Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve, or CASR, is the Space Force’s emerging plan to mimic the Air Force’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet by creating pathways to in essence stockpile commercial space capabilities across a variety of missions to enable surge capacity in case of war.
