The planned launches, which will take place starting in FY26, include sending a second SILENTBARKER watchdog satellite jointly developed by the service and the National Reconnaissance Office to geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO).
The Space Force sees nuclear fission reactors as a solution to replace solar panels for operations in the darkness of deep space.
“Tactical operating system” for warfighters has evolved to provide more situational awareness of the battlefield.
The Space Force is interested in DRACO primarily as an option for allowing it to undertake rapid on-orbit maneuvers, but also for potential future missions out to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
"When people like to question the validity or usefulness of this engine, I point them to Wernher von Braun," said Tabitha Dodson, DRACO program manager at DARPA, "because this was more or less his idea."
"We're kind of restricted right now, by the tyranny of the rocket equation. I've got to have mass to eject in order to move myself around within the Earth-Moon gravity well and beyond. How do we get past that?" asked SPACECOM deputy commander Lt. Gen. John Shaw.
AFRL last Thursday held a classified stakeholder meeting to discuss R&D to underpin future military operations beyond the traditional near-Earth orbits used today.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
Administration officials were quick to stress that US pursuit of space-based nuclear power sources has absolutely nothing to do with building nuclear weapons in space.
"If you look at the orbits of the stuff that's going around the Moon, It looks like a drunken sailor wandering around as compared to the orbits that we're used to describing closer to the Earth," AFRL's Col. Eric Felt says.
"Failure to conduct sustainable and transparent operations in an environment with a growing number of players may lead to conflict if careless behavior or unannounced proximity operations are interpreted as hostile acts," says Aerospace Corp.'s James Vedda.
DARPA's budget documents say cislunar orbit is the "new high ground" at risk of being taken over by US adversaries.
Balancing security and access to data are critical to providing users with trustworthy, reliable data for real-time decisions.