Rheinmetall, Vantor plan joint ISR venture for Bundeswehr
The memorandum of understanding with Vantor marks the third partnership Rheinmetall has signed in recent months in the military space domain.
The memorandum of understanding with Vantor marks the third partnership Rheinmetall has signed in recent months in the military space domain.
The RFI tags on-orbit manufacture/ assembly as one area of interest, along with enabling tech for very low Earth orbit operations.
The new Scout-S radar will remain operational after Valiant Shield ends July 1, and already is contributing data to LeoLab's space monitoring network, the company said.
The new venture, Rheinmetall ICEYE Space Solutions, includes four German space startups as "initial" partners.
The two awards are collectively worth $437.7 million, according to the Space Systems Command press release.
"The NRO is at the forefront of integrating AI into space-based ISR," a spysat agency spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
Startup Apex Space had previously announced its own self-funded SBI demonstration called Project Shadow by the end of 2026.
NSSL will be okay because it can still rely on the Falcon 9 workhorse," said Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
"While this OTA agreement establishes initial SB-AMTI capability, the Space Force anticipates issuing multiple awards in the coming year ," the service said today.
An analyst called the new commitment to pursue cislunar operations a "massive policy change" for the Pentagon.
"We've seen in Operation Epic Fury, for the first time, that our space capabilities have been targeted and destroyed. We expect that to happen more," Brig. Gen. Christopher Fernengel said today.
The Department of the Air Force in "the coming days" will announce the finalized PAE structure along with the names of each office leader, Thomas Ainsworth, acting space acquisition chief, said.
The SpaceX "backbone" constellation will support the broader Space Data Network, which will include the Space Development Agency's Transport layer satellites.
One expert summed up the defense market viewpoint of AI data centers in space as: "If they build it, we might come."