A new prototype platform sought by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit could significantly boost situational awareness for users like mobility aircrews, whose decades-old aircraft often lack modern communications equipment.
NATO's collectively funded space efforts are focused on space domain awareness and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, Col. Jonathan Whitaker, who heads the NATO Combined Forces Space Component Command, told Breaking Defense.
Lockheed Martin’s ACES platform delivers a shared virtual battlespace that strengthens readiness, interoperability, and faster decision-making through advanced, integrated modeling and simulation capabilities designed for evolving global threats.
The space service’s new “Data & AI Strategic Action Plan” emphasizes overhauling UDL, aiming to finally integrate its private-sector data with operational Space Force systems.
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"I'm not criticizing ATLAS, but on the record, if it doesn't get there on time, I'm gonna find an alternative, because that's why I exist," Space RCO Director Kelly Hammett told Breaking Defense.
Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant told Breaking Defense that the long-troubled effort to upgrade the C2 system for space domain awareness is making progress — with the ATLAS software due to become operational "at the end of next year."
Breaking Defense’s latest eBook brings together reporting from GEOINT 2026 on how intelligence leaders are shaping the future of space-based geospatial intelligence.
"By breaking down barriers between government, coalition, and commercial space situational awareness data, CODA allows us to create a tailored, operations-relevant understanding that directly informs tactical fires and maneuver decisions,” said Col. Raj Agrawal, Space Operations Command Delta 2 commander.
The NDAA instructed Air Force space acquisition czar Frank Calvelli to detail a UDL integration plan, following criticism from the Government Accountability Office, as well as to explain the Space Force's process "to regularly identify and evaluate commercial space situational awareness capabilities."
"The next pivot for looking up is to look in outer space from outer space. There's no reason you only need to observe satellite maneuvers from the ground. You can do it from space," Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, Space Force deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, said today.
Besides tracking adversary satellites, said Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, "sometimes I want to be looking at my own object to see if anything's going on, right?"
Artificial intelligence is reshaping adversarial cyber operations at machine speed, requiring defenders to increase operational tempo while imposing pain and cost.
The Space Force, in essence, wants to move the 2018-conceived Unified Data Library from a card catalog system to a machine-to-machine search engine using artificial intelligence tools.
"Providing space operators with relevant, timely data can help to prevent operational surprise and support efforts to protect and defend space assets," a recent report to Congress on Pentagon space policy and strategy says.
The draft National Space Authorization Act would also push Space Force on integrating commercial data and on over-classification of space programs.
If a modern integrated operations network is the foundation of the home, the Unified Data Library is the electricity flowing through it, Space Force Chief Technology Officer Lisa Costa told Breaking Defense. Also, the SpaceVerse will come into play somewhere down the line.