The new White House plan for cislunar S&T tasks DoD to lead development of new, and/or improvement of current, ground- and space-based sensors for monitoring the cislunar region.
A new study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies details a number of serious obstacles to cislunar operations, from a lack of robust business cases to the literal fabric of time.
The network transport architecture for NGC2 could be a hybrid approach that combines high assurance communications with 5G, WiFi, and multi-orbit satellites.
The UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, on behalf of the Ministry of Defence and UK Space Command, will contribute an experimental sensor package to the "Redwing" project, managed by Canada's defense research organization, Defence Research and Development Canada.
Gen. Stephen Whiting revealed that the command has just submitted to the Joint Force its FY27 "integrated priorities list" — an annual compendium of requirements put together by each combatant command to "inform the services and defense agencies of our warfighting needs as they prepare their budget and acquisition plans."
Future military, civil and commercial cislunar operations will require precise lunar maps not just of topography, but also of the Moon's gravitational and magnetic fields.
"The envisioned lunar railroad network could transport humans, supplies and resources for commercial ventures across the lunar surface," according to Northrop Grumman's announcement.
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
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."
"And so I think, as you see new missions come on, you can presume that that means more Guardians to perform those missions, and we'll have to adjust the strength going up," said CSO Gen. Chance Saltzman.
Technologies being explored include "lunar power; mining and commercial in-situ resource utilization; communications, navigation, and timing; transit, mobility, and logistics; and construction and robotics," according to DARPA.
The new version of Joint Publication 3-14 explains that "offensive and defensive space operations" are supported primarily by "direct capabilities" — that is, "fires that impact an adversary."
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
The Space Force sees nuclear fission reactors as a solution to replace solar panels for operations in the darkness of deep space.
"Each nation possesses unique advantages, technological capacities, and strategic geographic positions that, when combined, have the potential to significantly advance humanity's understanding of what's going on in space," the paper says.
"More than 100 lunar missions are planned for this decade alone, including many that are commercial," said Jessica West, of Canada's Project Ploughshares.
Pulsar-based PNT could be used in cislunar space — where the Space Force already is eyeing future operations — or farther out into the solar system where GPS signals do not reach, explained Paul Ray, NRL's head of high energy astrophysics and applications.