The Mitchell Institute is advocating that from now on Congress bolster the Space Force's budget by "about $250M a year" and "increase end strength by approximately 200 personnel for the new responsibilities associated with emerging national interests on the moon and the cislunar region."
A new breed of small sat for the U.S. Space Force launches into orbit.
Standoff capability means warfighters stay connected and remain remotely located in a safer environment while making it harder for adversaries to target them.
Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of Space Operations Command, said that the Space Force is now following 35,000 space objects, a 22% jump in only the last two years.
The funds will support potential new space missions such as re-fueling satellites on orbit.
The Space & Missile Systems Center has reaffirmed its choice of NSTXL to manage the public-private Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC), rejecting allegations by The Washington Post.
Other Transaction Authority awards have soared 712 percent since 2015, helping jumpstart R&D, including on COVID vaccines. But now the Space Force’s OTAs have been derailed by a court case against contractor NSTXL – and the whole OTA system is under fire.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
"The Joint Force depends upon SATCOM communication services as part of its JADC2 and Internet of Things," says Maj. Gen. Kim Crider, Space Force acting technology innovation officer.
Major SATCOM providers -- such as Hughes (a subsidiary of SATCOM giant Echostar), Viasat, Intelsat, Inmarsat, SES and Eutelsat -- argue that this would not only ease problems with service gaps that have long plagued troops in the field, but also be cheaper and allow speedier integration of new technology.
"They waste a lot of bandwidth right now," Lober said of DoD's SATCOM management.
The vision itself isn't the only thing that is needed, industry sources say. A concept of operations is required for how the Air Force will manage different user needs and interact with different industry providers. "The vision is out, but there is no concept of operations," said one source.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
The robot satellite known as RSGS will provide four types of service: inspection of anomalies that appear in a satellite's operations; assist with adjustments to a satellite's orbit; correct mechanical problems; and, help install new payloads to upgrade capabilities.
The Space & Missile Systems Center’s Space Enterprise Consortium has been so successful at providing competitive prototypes, fast, that SMC wants to expand its scope dramatically.