Theresa Hitchens is the Senior reporter, Space at Breaking Defense. The former Defense News editor was a senior research associate at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). Before that, she spent six years in Geneva, Switzerland as director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).
A sci-fi geek, voracious reader, enthusiastic cook, dabbler in poetry, Theresa is also the proud mom of a wonderful young man by the name of Nicholas.
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“Their specific goals are to be able to track and target us high value assets at the time and place of their choosing,” Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, commander of US Space Force Indo-Pacific, told reporters at the Spacepower 2024 conference.
The new Stage III contracts are expected by industry officials to be the last of the short term, relatively small dollar awards under the SCC BAA — with senior NRO officials pushing to create a longer term program of record in the fiscal 2026 budget.
Once up and running, the new TraCSS.gov site will allow commercial and foreign operators to migrate from DoD’s Space-track.org website for accessing data on space object whereabouts.
Anduril’s Lattice software “will replace legacy communications systems with a resilient mesh network” to link sensors, rapidly share data with users, and ease integration of new software systems and users, the company said.
The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office report reveals that the GREMLIN sensor suite for detecting, tracking and characterizing UAP was successfully used in March, and next will be deployed to undertake a 90-day “pattern of life” campaign at an unnamed national security site.
While Pentagon launches are not covered by FAA rules, a healthy and, importantly, diverse rocket industry base is important to the Space Force for keeping its launch costs down.
In a March 2021 report to Congress, signed by then-Acting Secretary John Roth and obtained by Breaking Defense, the Air Force endorsed a Space National Guard, but subsequently changed its position.
“Sen. Tuberville has spoken with President Trump several times about the importance of moving Space Command back to its rightful home in Huntsville,” a spokesperson for the Alabama Republican’s office told Breaking Defense.
“The collaboration includes dedicated satellite capacity and constellation access, which allows the capacity of the entire ICEYE satellite fleet to be utilized,” according to a Rheinmetall press release.
“It’s essential that the [Olympic Defender] allies and partners have a shared understanding of the battlespace, to ensure mission impacting decision-making is based on common perceptions of what’s occurring and likely to occur in the Area of Responsibility,” said Royal Australian Air Force Group Captain Julien Greening, CSpOC deputy director.
The five new CIC companies are BlackSky, Kratos, Leolabs, ICEYE and Telesat; Hawkeye 360 and Exoanalytic will join soon, a Space Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense today.
“We’ll have multi-form factor balloons operating at various altitudes, executing different mission sets, ultimately increasing the target problem set and dilemma for our adversaries …,” said Col. Donald Brooks, commandant of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence.
“This BAA helps NRO advance emerging technologies across launch, on-orbit support, and command & control,” said Col. Eric J. Zarybnisky, director of NRO’s Office of Space Launch.
