Theresa Hitchens is the Space and Air Force reporter 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.
thitchens@breakingmedia.com
“Ligado fails to plead any plausible facts to support its purely speculative claim that the Government has occupied its licensed spectrum,” alleges the DoJ motion to dismiss the satellite communication firm’s suit in US Federal Claims Court.
Firefly is already on contract and will “support a responsive on-orbit mission for the NRO” using the Alpha small launcher and its Elytra on-orbit vehicle for hosting payloads.
A new “white paper” from Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman, obtained by Breaking Defense, stresses the foundational role of timely space domain awareness in ensuring that Space Force commanders are not caught flat-footed by adversaries.
“Commercial analytics-as-a-service, or the purchase of analysis vice pixels, means that we can integrate commercial capabilities faster into our existing products and services (e.g., object detection),” an NGA spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
“I would imagine that as Department of Commerce continues to mature this concept, we will definitely want to take advantage of what they’re doing,” said Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein.
Russia’s stance will need to be “baked into” Biden administration “thinking as we look at our own nuclear modernization, our own deterrence measures that we may want to take, and what the security environment could look like after 2026,” said White House arms control advisor Pranay Vaddi.
Under the new approach, there must be a technical rationale for stamping a space program as special access, not simply because of a service policy decision, said DoD space policy czar John Plumb.
The Mitchell Institute is advocating that from now on Congress bolster the Space Force’s budget by “about $250M a year” and “increase end strength by approximately 200 personnel for the new responsibilities associated with emerging national interests on the moon and the cislunar region.”
An SDA official explained that the six “preliminary fire control” satellites in Tracking Layer Tranche 2 will carry a mix of wide-field-of-view and medium-field-of-view infrared cameras.
“The current and future strategic environment requires immediate, comprehensive, and decisive action in strengthening and modernizing our defense industrial base ecosystem to ensure the security of the United States and our allies and partners. As this strategy makes clear, we must act now,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks writes in a forward to the new National Defense Industrial Strategy.
As well as leveraging space systems for its own operations, the Army intends to invest in capabilities to counter enemy space systems, the new vision document explains.
ULA’s Vulcan Centaur needs one more successful flight test to be certified to carry payloads to orbit under the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch program.
The Space Force’s 75th ISR Squadron is looking at not just how to take out enemy satellites on orbit, but also the other dimensions of space systems including ground facilities and the command and control data links in between, explained Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt.
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI will present integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI will present integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
