NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth confirmed that the agency and the Space Force are working on a memorandum of agreement that will set "procedures" to ensure that they don't duplicate commercial imagery products.
However, several industry sources said that their companies have not been blocked by NRO from taking pictures over Ukraine.
The network transport architecture for NGC2 could be a hybrid approach that combines high assurance communications with 5G, WiFi, and multi-orbit satellites.
License holders are receiving emails saying that all correspondence with the Commercial Remote Sensing for Regulatory Affairs is now being routed to the NOAA Office of General Counsel as no "senior personnel remain in the office," according to communications reviewed by Breaking Defense.
Quantum tech could provide high-precision alternatives to GPS for targeting or sonar for hunting submarines. But the same hyper-sensitivity that makes them such good sensors also makes them fatally vulnerable to interference — so far. A new DARPA program aims to change that.
In an attempt to spur the Space Force to cough up more people, the House and Senate Intelligence committees have mandated quarterly reports by the Director of National Intelligence on whether DoD is meeting its commitment to provide uniformed personnel to NRO.
This year saw evidence that a shift toward more openness about US national security space activities is coming whether those deep in the "black world" are ready or not.
Why edge and endpoint security can’t be an afterthought.
The report, shared with Breaking Defense, recommends Congress consider funding systems against Chinese "counter-intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, electronic attack and cyber capabilities, antiradiation ordnance, base hardening, close-in weapons systems, and air defense capabilities."
The five new CIC companies are BlackSky, Kratos, Leolabs, ICEYE and Telesat; Hawkeye 360 and Exoanalytic will join soon, a Space Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense today.
The new effort for microHABs is being led by the Army's Program Executive Office for Aviation, Andrew Evans, director of the Army's ISR Task Force, told Breaking Defense, which for the moment is the primary acquisition shop overseeing the service's pursuit of systems that can operate at the upper edges of the stratosphere — roughly between 60,000 and 100,000 feet, and just below orbital space.
L3Harris said it wants "further analysis to ensure the proposal received an equitable evaluation," while SNC told Breaking Defense the protest has "no technical merit."
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
Bombardier is a go-to platform provider of choice for special mission aircraft with its in-house engineers that can tailor the solution to the customers’ requirement.
One of the JCO's new missions will be gathering what the Space Force calls tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking data from commercial remote sensing satellite operators, said JCO head Barbara Golf.
"Every dollar invested brings asymmetric returns, while every cut risks asymmetric losses, given the continued advancements of the competitors, the Space Force budget needs more, not fewer, resources to do our job," said Gen. Michael Guetlein, Space Force vice chief.
One of the key challenges for tracking enemy aircraft from space is that airplanes and drones move much faster than tanks, trucks and ships; confounded by the fact that satellites themselves also move around the Earth extremely fast.