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.
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The new Stage III contracts are expected by industry officials to be the last of the short term, relatively small dollar awards under the SCC BAA — with senior NRO officials pushing to create a longer term program of record in the fiscal 2026 budget.
By Theresa Hitchens
“This BAA helps NRO advance emerging technologies across launch, on-orbit support, and command & control,” said Col. Eric J. Zarybnisky, director of NRO’s Office of Space Launch.
By Theresa Hitchens
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.”
By Theresa Hitchens
“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.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Calvelli’s decision comes after a five-month delay necessary to hash out a reliable cost estimate for the NRO-Space Force development program.
By Theresa Hitchens
The company’s capability to precisely measure land surface temperatures — using data from a wide variety or Earth monitoring satellites and a software suite for data fusion — has potential military and national security applications.
By Theresa Hitchens
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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.
By Theresa Hitchens
ULA CEO Tory Bruno explained that Air Force space acquisition czar Frank Calvelli asked Lockheed Martin and Boeing to create an independent review team to “help” Vulcan production rates and launch site readiness remain on track.
By Theresa Hitchens
The delay in the review, however, is not expected to impact the planned delivery schedule, an Air Force spokesperson said. That said, neither the Pentagon nor the NRO has revealed the hoped-for schedule.
By Theresa Hitchens
Meanwhile, the report says, the Space Force should be in charge of pursuing large networks of small satellites under the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) — differentiating its “tactical ISR” job from the “strategic” mission of NRO.
By Theresa Hitchens
The status change should give the Space Force more weight in debate about how to share acquisition authority for commercial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
By Theresa Hitchens
Next month’s launch “will be the first launch of an actual operational system,” NRO Principal Deputy Director Troy Meink said.
By Michael Marrow
More than a dozen sources tell Breaking Defense that tensions between the NGA and Space Force are rising on commercial ISR, with White House officials watching closely.
By Theresa Hitchens
