“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.
When completed, the six-satellite WorldView Legion constellation will "be able to revisit certain areas of the world up to 15 times a day," Susanne Hake, general manager of Maxar Intelligence, told Breaking Defense.
From emerging data networks to missile tracking and cyber resilience, Breaking Defense’s latest eBook brings together essential reporting on the evolving role of satellites in national security.
The new office will coordinate the commercial cooperation activities of the Joint Task Force-Space Defense at Schriever SFB in Colorado and the Combined Force Space Component Command at Vandenberg SFB in California.
The strategy includes procuring SATCOM, space domain awareness and a handful of other commercial capabilities as "services" under leases or long-term contracts for access.
Details of the plan will remain classified, but an unclassified outline is expected to reveal more about how Space Command intends to engage industry.
The new military accord signed by Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US presages joint stance on future space norms.
The challenge for Western democratic institutions is not a lack of capability — it is a structural one.
"The US doesn't go anywhere alone, we don't do it alone around the world, and we certainly don't do it alone in space," Lt. Gen. Nina M. Armagno, Space Force staff director said yesterday.
"The hesitation to include allies in Olympic Defender was on our end as well," says Secure World Foundation's Brian Weeden. "National security space is sort of the last bastion of America's 'crown jewels'."
Space Force is looking to establish an independent identity, based on the legacy of the Air Force space community, but focused on "22nd century warfare," says Maj. Gen. John Shaw.
The average person in the world doesn't understand how their way of life is linked to space," says Gen. Jay Raymond, head of SPACECOM. "I don't think the average person understands the threat that exists today."
GAO finds that the Space C2 program "is planning to meet previously deferred requirements that proved too complex for prior programs to achieve," and "also plans to address new and emerging threats to space assets, for which requirements are not yet defined."
"The goal is to eventually integrate all of AFSPC data" into the UDL, says AFSPC, "along with other sources such as commercial space (already there but more coming), multi-domain data from such as air, land, sea, data from other agencies, and even academia."
CFSCC's mission includes executing "tactical control over globally dispersed Air Force, Army, and Navy space units that command satellites in every orbital regime."
Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen Whiting is the new head of SPACECOM's Combined Force Space Component Command; Gen. Tom James leads the new Joint Task Force Space Defense.