Peeking behind the veil: 5 revelatory space stories from 2024
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.
White House charges Pentagon to develop cislunar monitoring tech, including for ‘planetary defense’
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.
Modernizing defense enterprise IT without disrupting the mission
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
NRO speeding contracting to support commercial partners
Meanwhile, Meink said the spy agency is sticking to what it sees as its primary lane in the interagency division of labor for commercial acquisition: "procuring pixels."
Going for the gold: Chinese firms lead US firms in remote sensing ‘Olympics’
"The stakes are high. Should any one country dominate the commercial remote sensing market, not only could it gain economic advantages, but it would also control the information narrative about the entire planet, from the environment to natural resources to human conflict," the report concluded.
NGA seeks help training AI to translate imagery for targeting intel
The Sequoia ID/IQ contract will support the Maven Program, "which applies AI capabilities to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors and platforms, primarily through computer vision," the NGA announcement said.
SPACECOM expanding missions for multinational commercial space domain awareness cell
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.
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America must adopt a Sixth Domain of warfare doctrine
The Sixth Domain is not defined by geography. It’s a new kind of conflict in which autonomy and networked systems allow thousand-dollar consumer electronics to destroy multi-million-dollar conventional weapons systems.
Space Force chief: Commercial imagery analysis aided Niger withdrawal — just don’t call it ‘intel’
“This is about providing situational awareness [and] operational planning products,” Gen. Chance Saltzman told reporters as he talked up a pet program, TacSRT -- which some in the intelligence agencies say treads on their turf.
NGA picks 10 commercial firms to compete for $290M pot for unclassified data analytics
An NGA spokesperson told Breaking Defense that the agency has yet to issue any individual task orders under the Luno A program.
NGA slates $700M for AI data labeling; launches standard model push
Data labeling is key to enabling the AI model to properly separate friend from foe, explained Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth.
‘Success begets challenges’: NGA struggles to meet rising demand for Maven AI
“The number of detections are way up [and] the number of models that we have are way up, [but] with the same level of compute that you had in 2017,” said Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth. “It starts to slow down. We are already seeing evidence of that.”
Breaking Defense announces Breaking Defense Europe, a new, distinct, European edition
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
Air Force greenlights baseline for new NRO-Space Force satellites to track ground targets
Calvelli's decision comes after a five-month delay necessary to hash out a reliable cost estimate for the NRO-Space Force development program.
‘AI gold mine’: NGA aims to exploit archive of satellite images, expert analysis
“We're sitting on two big sets of data,” said NGA’s Mark Munsell, referring to an unequalled archive of satellite imagery and all the intelligence analysts’ reports on that imagery – and they’re cross-referenced so an AI can correlate them easily.
Senate appropriators push Pentagon, Intelligence Community on commercial space acquisition
Perhaps most intriguing is legislative language that calls into question Pentagon and IC plans to declassify data from classified remote sensing satellites that are part of a newly developed joint architecture called the "High-Capacity, Find, Fix, Track, Target and Engage and Assess Constellation," or "HCF" for short.
Orbital Insight nabs NGA pilot for commercial maritime awareness data
Orbital Insight's contract, worth up to $2 million, is focused on providing data and analysis about potentially threatening maritime activity in the Indo-Pacific.