This will be the eighth mission for the Boeing-built space plane, which has served as an on-orbit, experimental testbed for emerging technologies being developed by the Pentagon and NASA. The platform is designed to conduct long-duration flights before returning to Earth, where it can be repurposed for future missions. The system has already spent more than 4,200 days in space, according to Boeing.

Personnel are currently preparing the vehicle — which will fly with a service module — for another launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, according to a press release issued Monday. Mission partners for OTV-8, as the effort has been dubbed, include the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Silicon Valley-headquartered Defense Innovation Unit.

The service module will expand capacity for laser comms demonstrations, per the release.

Laser communications demos in low-Earth orbit “will contribute to more efficient and secure satellite communications in the future. The shorter wavelength of infrared light allows more data to be sent with each transmission,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman wrote in post on X.

“We’re also demoing the world’s highest performing quantum inertial sensor ever used in space. Bottom line: testing this tech will be helpful for navigation in contested environments where GPS may be degraded or denied,” he added.

According to Boeing’s press release, the mission will include the first in-space demonstration of a “strategic grade” quantum inertial sensor.

“OTV 8’s quantum inertial sensor demonstration is a welcome step forward for the operational resilience of Guardians in space,” Space Delta 9 Commander Col. Ramsey Hom said in a statement. “Whether navigating beyond Earth-based orbits in cis-lunar space or operating in GPS-denied environments, quantum inertial sensing allows for robust navigation capabilities where GPS navigation is not possible. Ultimately, this technology contributes significantly to our thrust within the Fifth Space Operations Squadron and across the Space Force guaranteeing movement and maneuverability even in GPS-denied environments.”

The launch date is targeted for Aug. 21, according to Saltzman.

During the space plane’s most recent mission, which started in 2023 and wrapped up earlier this year, efforts included experimenting with operating in new orbital regimes, testing space domain awareness technologies and investigating radiation effects, according to officials.

For the mission before that, the X-37B spent a whopping 908 days in orbit.

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During a keynote address at the AI+ Expo in Washington hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project, which brought together some of the biggest companies in the tech sector as well as smaller vendors with more niche capabilities, Caine suggested legacy systems and old ways of doing business won’t be sufficient for maintaining military superiority in the future.

“Peace in our nation will not be won by the legacy systems that we’ve had or the legacy thinking. It will be determined by the entrepreneurs and innovators and leaders, both in government and out of government, that create overwhelming strength. It will be won by our breakthroughs in AI, cyber, autonomy, space, energy, advanced manufacturing, data, compute, you name it. And we need your help with this,” he said.

New capabilities can improve command-and-control systems, decision-making, mission execution and survivability, he noted. However, the Pentagon needs industry to scale new technology to the point that it becomes a “strategic differentiator.”

U.S. adversaries are sharing tech and intelligence, enabling them to field advanced capabilities faster, he warned.

“And on our end, the barrier for entry for technology, for disruptive tech, is low, but the barrier to government business is high, frankly, too high. And yet, the changing nature and character of warfare is happening right before our eyes. We’ve seen examples of that, most recently as this weekend” when Ukraine attacked Russia’s strategic bombers with cheap drones, Caine said. “We’ve got to go faster, my friends. And that’s mostly, in many cases, on us in … the government. Together, though, we’ve got to be focused on fighting the next war, not fighting the last war, and we need entrepreneurs both in the private sector and in government.”

He added that the Defense Department needs to “do some work” to improve the requirements process and be “better buyers.”

“I know this from my time in the private sector where I tried to sell things to the government when I was an entrepreneur. It’s hard,” Caine said.

He has previously touted his experience in the private sector, including at his confirmation hearing.

After retiring from the military and before his return to service to lead the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Caine was a venture partner at Shield Capital, an advisor for Thrive Capital and a venture partner at Ribbit Capital, among other roles.

The chairman noted that reform efforts are already underway at the Defense Department.

In recent years, the Pentagon has tried to expand its acquisition ecosystem by attracting non-traditional contractors and encouraging investors to back startups working on defense-related technologies.

In his speech Wednesday, Caine pointed to progress made by organizations like the Silicon Valley-headquartered Defense Innovation Unit, which has outposts in major tech hubs across the country and works with nontraditional tech vendors via commercial solutions opening contracting mechanisms.

“We’ve got to drastically scale that capability and that culture inside the joint force, the entrepreneurial culture, which I believe is one of America’s great tools. We’ve got to change our willingness to accept risks, and we’re going to do that,” he said.

The chairman noted that he needs to make sure the joint force is integrated across the globe within the combatant commands and among the services.

“We’ve got to connect them with our interagency allies and partners, including founders and funders, and scale that capability in order to meet the challenges that we need to,” Caine said. “We can do more.”

Caine is a former F-16 pilot who has held a variety of roles throughout his military career, including with the active-duty Air Force, National Guard and the special operations community.

When it comes to relying on advanced tech at the tactical edge, resiliency is key for mission success, he noted.

“My time as a Special Forces officer taught me that two of one thing is [only] one, and one of one thing is none. So we’ve got to be able to build resilient technology [so] that if the power fails or something like that, we’re still capable of doing it,” Caine said.

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The new MOS 40D will comprise hundreds of non-commissioned officers that will be trained and deployed by Army Space and Missile Defense Command, SMDC Commander Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey told reporters Friday during a media roundtable. By establishing the career field, the service will no longer have to borrow soldiers from other military occupational specialties and can focus on fostering space-specific careers within the Army.

“Here’s an opportunity to now take these soldiers and build that expertise, build a professional non-commissioned officer corps,” Gainey said. “So as we continue to move forward and we continue to develop next-level space capabilities, you will have the expertise within these soldiers and non-commissioned officers to continue to build that capability forward.”

Following the establishment of the Space Force in 2019, the Army transferred a number of its personnel and space-based missions — such as satellite communications operations and the Joint Tactical Ground Station (JTAGS) — to the new service. Since then, the Army has looked to adapt how it conducts operations in the space domain by developing service-specific capabilities and growing its cadre of space soldiers.

The Army published a space vision in 2024 outlining how SMDC would integrate space into daily operations, as well as plans to counter an adversary’s ability to employ space-based systems on U.S. troops. The document also emphasized the importance of having dedicated space personnel able to provide those capabilities to Army formations on the ground.

To that end, officers under the 40D will be trained to provide close support with space capabilities to conventional and special operations forces in the Army, protecting them from space-enabled attacks, Gainey said.

“Where the differentiation occurs is, the Space Force is going to focus on the on-orbit fight and some of the other areas — missile warning and other things,” he said. “We are focused on the tactical maneuver fight with our forces on the ground, pushing that capability forward so our forces have that capability at echelon, at formation, to be able to leverage the effects of a space-based system directly benefiting the operator on the ground.”

The 40D military occupational speciality is set to officially stand up Oct. 1, 2026, but the Army is already looking to recruit soldiers with applicable skillsets from across its formations, Gainey said. After soldiers attend initial qualification training, the specialists will go to SMDC’s Space and Missile Defense School in Colorado Springs, Colo., to learn how to operate electronic warfare and other space-based systems, Gainey said.

Then, space soldiers could be assigned to the multidomain task forces (MDTFs), theater strike effects groups (TSEGs), 1st Space Brigade, 100th Missile Defense Brigade or a space support element.

Over the past three years, SMDC has borrowed enlisted soldiers from other career fields — including air defense, signal corps and intelligence — to support operations. The new MOS will allow those soldiers to transition back to their original units, Gainey said.

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The so-called cyber-special operations forces-space triad or “irregular triad,” is a partnership between the three disciplines to deliver capabilities and outcomes greater than the sum of its parts, leveraging the unique access and authorities of each contributor. While officials explained this fusion of capabilities came about in tabletop exercises years ago, the Army began putting it into practice with its relevant components and it’s now making its way to the joint four-star combatant commands.

The strategic environment for the U.S. military is significantly more complex now than it has been in years past, requiring more and different options to deter adversary activity around the globe.

“Some of our adversaries are demonstrating a degree of skill and effectiveness in their employment of irregular warfare that the United States has difficulty matching and the United States has difficulty dealing with,” Mike Nagata, corporate strategic advisor at CACI and a retired three-star general with decades of special operations experience, said Thursday during a panel at the Special Operations Symposium hosted by NDIA. “Many of our competitors and many of our adversaries are adopting modern, powerful digital technologies faster than the United States is. They are not hesitating to use it.”

Experts explained that America’s adversaries have sought to use unconventional, irregular and hybrid tactics as a means of combating the conventional strength of U.S. forces. Much of this is taking place below the threshold of armed conflict.

“Our adversaries, particularly the Chinese but really all of them, are pursuing irregular strategies … It’s a combination of political warfare, economic warfare and irregular warfare. They are pursuing strategies to achieve objectives without having to go to conventional conflict,” said Ken Tovo, president and CEO of DOL Enterprises and a retired three-star general. “Our challenge is, are we ready to play on that field? While we have talked about irregular warfare, and especially in this community for many years, the reality is there’s a lot of things that have actually inhibited our execution of effective irregular warfare strategies around the world to achieve our objectives.”

Current officials explained that the modern triad provides an existing operational concept that is operating currently and can act as a deterrent capability.

“The irregular triad that we’re talking about here is an operational concept,” said Lt. Gen. Richard Angle, commander of Allied Special Operations Forces Command at NATO and Special Operations Command Europe. “It brings together multi-domain capabilities. This concept can, in fact, enable deterrence, because that’s what we’re talking about.”

Officials explained that the three disciplines aren’t as siloed as they may seem, noting inherent integration currently exists.

For example, the Marine Corps and Navy cyber service components to U.S. Cyber Command are also their service components to Space Command. Additionally, Marine Corps Forces Cyberspace Command serves as the coordinating authority for cyber for U.S. Special Operations Command under Cybercom’s Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber enterprise. Similarly, 16th Air Force/Air Forces Cyber, a service cyber component to Cybercom, is the coordinating authority for cyber for U.S. Space Command under its Joint Force Headquarters-Cyber.

“The area that I’ve been most proud of is the fact that we have aggressively taken this from a conceptual discussion to one where we’re doing operational activities together and doing it routinely and how we are able to come together to bring our respective strengths,” Gen. Timothy Haugh, commander of Cybercom, said. “Overall, where we’ve come together has been driven by we can produce better outcomes together in those situations, particularly on really hard problems, and the fact that the initial investments we’ve made to do that have produced outcomes just reinforces the need for us to be able to collaborate in our planning and also in how we approach problems together. Because it gives different options to the secretary than we would have been able to do independently.”

Angle, who also has cyber experience having previously served as deputy commanding general for operations at Army Cyber Command, explained that through deterrence by denial, the triad can make it difficult for adversaries to achieve objectives below the threshold of war.

But, he said, it has to be employed more often if it is to be successful in the future for deterrence, or if deterrence should fail, for managing escalation and crises.

“You need to employ this capability now if you want options later. You can employ it now at low cost, at fairly low risk with potentially high payoffs. By doing so, you can actually lower the risk later because you’re now holding critical adversary capabilities at risk,” Angle said. “The conversation we have to have is here’s also the risk of not taking action. Because if you don’t employ these capabilities, you won’t hold that critical adversary capability at risk when the time comes. We are doing a lot of things inside of this triad, but we have to find a way to do more. We have to find a way to get to the point where we’re doing things and the adversary is reacting to what we’re doing and we’re not reacting to what they’re doing.”

For Haugh, while there have been positive discussions among the relevant stakeholders and good operational applications, he’d like to improve upon what opportunities exist for tighter linkage.

“Today, we have started to put the right pieces in place. Much of what we could also talk about is, when we miss opportunities, why do we miss them? In many of those cases, it’s about the kit that’s available to us at that moment and are we fully using the opportunity for us to be innovative from a technical solution standpoint that fits the timeline of the opportunity of placement and access and the ability to come together around a specific problem,” he said. “I think there’s some things we could talk about what we’re each doing in that area where we could be also more purposeful to be able to fully leverage our respective authorities and how we innovate and how we acquire.”

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Under the directive, titled “Iron Dome for America,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is required to develop “a reference architecture, capabilities-based requirements and an implementation plan” to address emerging aerial threats against the U.S. homeland. The strategy, due to the president in the next 60 days, must focus on defense against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other aerial platforms.

“Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities,” the EO states.

The directive comes after Trump promised to create a “great Iron Dome shield” over the United States in June during his presidential campaign, referencing the Israeli air defense system built by Rafael. While Israel’s capability is designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery, it’s clear that Trump’s vision for America’s own Iron Dome shield considers a greater range of threats and technologies.

Notably, the order calls for development and deployment of “proliferated space-based interceptors” stationed on orbit that can defeat ballistic missiles during the boost stage of flight.

The inclusion of space-based interceptors will likely be a source of contention in the executive order’s execution, Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told DefenseScoop. Fielding such weapons has been a controversial matter that was floated by the first Trump administration in 2018, but did not receive traction during President Joe Biden’s term.

The concept for space-based interceptors was a centerpiece of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s, which was abandoned due to technological immaturity and expensive price tags at the time. Critics referred to it derisively as a “Star Wars” project. But the cost of putting satellites on orbit has reduced drastically in recent years, largely due to advancements made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX business.

“When Ronald Reagan wanted to do it many years ago, luckily we didn’t. We didn’t have the technology then. It was a concept but we didn’t have” sufficient tech, Trump said Monday evening during remarks to lawmakers at his Trump National Doral resort in Miami. “Now we have phenomenal technology. You see that with Israel, where out of 319 rockets [launched against them] they knocked down just about every one of them. So I think the United States is entitled to that. And everything will be made right here in the USA, 100 percent.”

However, there are still technological limitations to the weapons that require additional study and analysis before the Pentagon can field them at scale, Harrison said.

“If you have a system that’s designed so that there’s always at least one interceptor within range, you could shoot down any one missile. But if someone launches a salvo of two missiles, the second will get through,” he said. “You would have to double the size of your constellation in order to shoot down two at once, and you would have to quadruple it to shoot down four at once. So it quickly becomes cost prohibitive the way it scales.”

Space-based interceptors would be ideal for threats posed by Iran or North Korea, neither of which currently have significant numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). But against nations with larger ICBM arsenals like China and Russia — considered by the Defense Department as the United States’ most pressing military adversaries — the weapons aren’t as effective, Harrison added.

Given the growing importance of space as a warfighting domain, however, kinetic and non-kinetic space-based weapons will become more common in missile defense solutions, according to Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“It’s not necessarily going to be 10,000 things, it may be more limited,” Karako told DefenseScoop. “But the genie is out of the bottle. The past paradigms of strategic stability have kind of vaporized and vanished before our eyes over the last decade … The world has changed, and we’re going to have to change with it.”

Trump’s executive order prioritizes several ongoing space-based missile defense programs, as well. It calls for “acceleration of the deployment” of the Missile Defense Agency’s demonstration Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Layer (HBTSS) satellites.

The directive also tasks the Space Development Agency to develop a custody layer within its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a planned mega-constellation comprising hundreds of satellites carrying data relay, missile warning and missile tracking capabilities.

Harrison noted that SDA had previously considered incorporating a custody layer into its architecture as part of future tranches, and Trump’s order now gives the agency the green light to move forward.

A deployed custody layer, which continuously tracks and keeps eyes on enemy missile threats, would also contribute to the EO’s directive to deploy capabilities that can defeat missile attacks prior to launch, he added.

“Previously, they planned to just use other people’s systems and make kind of a virtual custody layer,” Harrison said. “I think that’s one of the biggest changes here, is they’re giving [SDA] the go-ahead for that.”

Space-based capabilities aren’t the only elements of Trump’s directive, as the executive order calls for “deployment of underlayer and terminal-phase intercept capabilities postured to defeat a countervalue attack.” That would likely mean bolstering the United States’ arsenal of ground-based interceptors with additional systems already available.

“The foundation for an Iron Dome for America needs to start with air and cruise missile defense,” Karako said. “That’s our biggest gap area. That’s our biggest, near-term vulnerability that we have very little capability against, and so we need to get after that.”

After submitting his plan for homeland missile defense to the White House, Hegseth has been tasked to conduct a subsequent review of theater missile defense postures. Per Trump’s executive order, the follow-on should include options for protecting forward-deployed troops; accelerating provisions of missile defenses capabilities to allies and partners; and increasing international cooperation on relevant technology development, capabilities and operations.

A large question for the Defense Department as it carries out its review will be the cost of developing and deploying such a large missile defense architecture. The order requires an accompanying funding plan that can be examined and included in the upcoming budget request for fiscal 2026, but the EO offers no insight into how much the Pentagon would have to spend.

Some previous cost estimates for a large-scale architecture with space-based interceptors have been upwards of $100 billion, although others have said it could be built for a fraction of that amount.

Harrison estimated the missile defense efforts outlined by Trump would require substantial long-term investment, likely costing billions of dollars per year over at least the next decade.

“That impacts the question of, are they going to request more defense funding overall or will this come at the expense of something else within the defense budget? It’s not clear, because the administration has not been all that forthcoming about their plans for the defense budget overall,” he said.

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The technology suite, dubbed Otter, was launched Jan. 14 via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, the Navy said in a news release Friday.

The platform’s primary payload has “space-based maritime domain awareness capabilities.” The secondary payloads — an X-band transmitter and an LED on-orbit payload (LOOP) — will “help the government evaluate communication technologies and concepts of operations on future CubeSat missions,” according to the release.

The vehicle will be operated by Naval Postgraduate School faculty and students on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office, via the Mobile CubeSat Command and Control network.

NRO is one of the United States’ premier spy agencies when it comes using satellites for intelligence purposes. President Donald Trump has nominated Troy Meink, one of the office’s senior leaders, to serve as the next secretary of the Air Force.

“The NRO is always looking for innovative ways to advance our capabilities in space,” Aaron Weiner, director of the organization’s advanced systems and technology directorate, stated in the release. “This demonstrator … showcases the value in rapidly qualifying low-cost, commercial off-the-shelf hardware.”

New Zealand’s Defence Science and Technology organization is also a partner in the project.

The Otter effort comes as the Pentagon and intelligence community are embracing the concept of putting relatively inexpensive platforms and proliferated satellite architectures into LEO to improve resiliency and reduce latency, among other benefits. For example, the Space Development Agency is working to build out a massive constellation, known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), for data transport and missile tracking.

“One of the things we’re excited about when you look at taking satellite communications from [geostationary orbit] all the way down to LEO and not GEO, [is] you’re able to … decrease latency, increase throughput,” Mike Dean, director for command, control and communications infrastructure in the office of the DOD Chief Information Officer, said Thursday during a panel at the Potomac Officers Club’s annual Defense R&D Summit in Northern Virginia, noting that the Pentagon is about to kick off a new study focused on non-terrestrial networks and protocols.

The Navy is also looking to improve its SATCOM and networking capabilities.

“When you look at 5G and Navy, a big part of this becomes, what’s the base component? … And for us it’s about that high data rate, high speed, large bandwidth capability. So as you start to look at those applications that we’re working on in the future, what would that be when you’re looking at the afloat? It’s that satellite communications to improve the bandwidth and connectivity to our strike groups at sea. That’s huge,” Scott St. Pierre, the service’s director for enterprise networks and cybersecurity, said during Thursday’s panel.

“Afloat [command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting], long-range fires — those are big data capabilities that we need to move data fast. We want to get it up to the satellite, down to an analysis station, [and] back up to the satellite with the results of what we’re looking at,” he added.

The Otter technology, an experimental system that’s not currently part of the PWSA, is intended to “add sensors in the space layer to be able to see what’s going on in the water,” Wenschel Lan, interim chair of the Naval Postgraduate School’s Space Systems Academic Group, stated in Friday’s release. “It’s not just a camera, but a lot of different phenomenologies that you can sense from space to then help paint the picture of what’s going on.”

The X-band transmitter “is ideal for space communications optimized for data-intensive payloads,” according to the release.

The Otter project is also envisioned as a risk-reduction effort that could smooth the way for future Pentagon satellite programs and give personnel important know-how.

“We’re spending a small amount of money to buy down the risks so that when they actually do a full program of record, they’re not going into it blind,” Lan added, noting that the initiative will also give NPS students direct experience with space missions and make them “better prepared to serve as Space professionals in the Navy, throughout the DOD, and beyond.”

Otter isn’t NRO’s and NPS’ first rodeo when it comes to collaboration on satellite projects. Last year, they launched a CubeSat called Mola that also carried an X-band transmitter and LOOP technology, according to the release.

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The review will launch as the Pentagon is moving to modernize its communications and data transport capabilities and implement warfighting concepts like Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control.

“We’re kicking off a study soon on non-terrestrial networking protocol. And I think that’s going to really allow us to take the scalability, the network management agility of 5G and really push that across a lot of our communications architecture,” Mike Dean, director for C3 infrastructure in the office of the DOD Chief Information Officer, said Thursday during a panel at the Potomac Officers Club’s annual Defense R&D Summit in Northern Virginia.

The NTN examination, which is slated to begin in a few weeks, will include officials from across the department as well as engagement with industry, according to Dean.

“It’s a kind of an internal look in the DOD, across the DoD, [with] a lot of stakeholders. And it’s both with industry and our DOD mil [departments] and agencies,” he told DefenseScoop at the conference. “We’re just trying to get a sense of where they are and where they’re headed, so we can set policy and resources.”

The Pentagon is pursuing new satellite systems, drones and other airborne platforms to help move data and better link U.S. military forces and key allies and partners.

The plan for the upcoming study is to “do industry engagement, bring those folks in, start saying, ‘What kind of capabilities do you have? What are you working on?’ So that we can look long term and say, ‘How do I set the requirements, how do I set the resources, and how do I set the architecture and policy?’” Dean remarked. “Because what we don’t want to do is be in a situation where we have Tetris, we have all these solutions coming in, and now we’re trying to mix and match. And having that framework in place allows us to do it quicker.”

DOD has a variety of initiatives underway that are expected to boost non-terrestrial networking. For example, the Space Development Agency is moving forward with plans to build out a massive constellation of hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture for data transport and missile tracking.

The Pentagon is also working to onboard new wireless tech with 5G and “FutureG” initiatives.

These efforts are intended to help the military communicate faster and manage data more effectively.

“One of the things we’re excited about when you look at taking satellite communications from [geostationary orbit] all the way down to LEO and not GEO, [is] you’re able to … decrease latency, increase throughput. And that’s the kind of advantage you [also] get from 5G. So we think if you pair those two, that’s going to be pretty powerful, particularly as you’re trying to track” forces that are forward deployed and keep up with “the pace of battle,” Dean said.

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During the post-9/11 Global War on Terror, U.S. commandos squared off against relatively low-tech adversaries. However, with the Pentagon’s focus now turned toward competition with nations like China and Russia and the proliferation of advanced technology, the SOF community faces new challenges.

Officials are pointing to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict as an example of how warfare is evolving. In that clash, both sides have been using drones, electronic warfare, cyber, counter-drone tools, deception techniques, social media and other means to find enemy forces and obscure their own locations.

“I think we’ve seen this in sort of a microcosm of the Ukraine fight, it’s going to be more about dealing with being seen and what that means in terms of your signature, as opposed to maybe a previous way of thinking of being not seen at all. And so … in the multi-domains we’re going to have to operate it means having the right, if you will, footprint in the digital environment. It means knowing that if an adversary can see you, that you’re not something that necessarily generates any more interest,” Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, said Tuesday at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Maier continued: “The fascinating thing looking at some of our less sophisticated adversaries … is they almost all have social media presence, right, things that we wouldn’t have thought about 15, 20 years ago, maybe even five years ago. And that means there’s a lot of chaff out there. And I think finding ways to use that noise, you know, sort of security through obscurity, is going to be how we have to think about this. [There’s a] lot of effort to really build, in many cases, the technology, but oftentimes, it’s the different thinking, the different tactics, techniques and procedures that we’re going to have to use against adversaries that — let’s face it, China, Russia, Iran are much more sophisticated in identifying our activity than ISIS and Al Qaeda were, and so we’ve known that for a long time. There’s a lot of emphasis and a lot of investment in that space.”

The Defense Department is trying to work through those challenges via experiments, he noted.

“What I can talk about here is really thinking about it in a different way than just assuming we’re always going to have the advantage and that some of these capabilities that are so ubiquitous now … and so easy to access, aren’t going to be threats to us. They are. And it’s less of the perfect widget or the perfect way of doing things, and more of, I think, a series of layering approaches we’re going to have to take. And we’ve seen some good success in our internal departmental experimentation that if we really put a lot of emphasis on it, we can achieve degrees of obscurity that I think we’re going to need, not only in … sort of steady state of campaigning, but certainly in cases where we’re going to need a period of uncontested space in a crisis or conflict to do the things we need to do,” he said.

Last month, U.S. Special Operations Command released a new strategy document, dubbed “SOF Renaissance,” which noted the need to be prepared for “hyper-transparent battlefields.”

The strategy’s development came as commandos are preparing for and conducting a variety of missions, not just raids against terrorists. That includes assisting foreign partners — U.S. SOF are present in more than 80 countries — with honing irregular warfare concepts, and countering adversaries’ strategies and activities below the threshold of armed conflict.

Key focus areas for the command include assured access, shaping operating environments prior to conflict, all-domain deep sensing and supporting the Joint Force with SOF capabilities, among others.

“I think SOF has started to come into the fore again, still doing counterterrorism [and] crisis response — those have been the persistent missions — but increasingly where we can support other elements, largely in a support role for those strategic competition elements. And here campaigning is the bread and butter of SOF. So when we talk about the integration of technology in a way that advances not only our ability to operate, but often provides many of the fixes that we’re struggling with as an overall force, we talk about that as solving the challenges of the Joint Force. SOF plays a big role in that. That could be in some of the more, you know, in vogue elements like AI or … machine learning. We’re doing that at a level that brings operators and technologists together quite effectively. But it could be in some of the old traditional ways of being that sensor out there and providing the necessary input to decision makers to better understand the situation,” Maier said.

The “silent warrior” concept fits with that vision, he noted.

“Going forward, in many instances, sure, there’ll be opportunities and probably we’ll be called on to do more of the direct action that have been more the calling card … of SOF in the CT fights, [but] I don’t think that’s going to be the future bulk of our effort. And I think we will be enabling lots of other aspects of the government and hopefully partners and allies, to be that more visible face,” he said.

The special ops community will need resourcing for transformation, the new strategy noted.

“As we look to the future, we can see a changing world where SOF is required to conduct full spectrum Special Operations that illuminate challenges and offer new options to the Joint Force in campaigning, crisis, and conflict,” officials wrote. “Ensuring this transformation in the face of today’s strategic landscape requires innovative force designs regarding how SOF will fight in the future. This demands a joint, all-domain, SOF formation that utilizes time-tested SOF concepts, approaches, and techniques, with modern-day technology and SOF-Space-Cyber convergence… all while adapting to the complexities of a converging threat and changing character of war. Finally, SOF experimentation and wargaming aim to introduce futuristic concepts in evolving operational environments, with a particular focus on capabilities tied to how SOF fights.”

Special ops forces must be early adopters at the Defense Department of innovations in areas such as AI, autonomous systems and cyber to enhance irregular warfare capabilities in complex operating environments, the document emphasized.

“AI and uncrewed systems are changing warfare through increased automation and autonomy. This leads to more precise targeting and reduced risk to human personnel. The distinction between optimizing and generative AI is crucial and will be a game changer. Swarms of low-cost drones and remote explosive devices, using AI and autonomy, blur traditional human-machine boundaries on the battlefield. SOF must also use these systems to improve decisionmaking and situational awareness,” officials wrote, noting that SOCOM “views the relationship of data, analytics, and AI not just as a tool, but as a strategic imperative to create advantages for the Joint Force.”

In future conflicts, commandos are expected to serve as a so-called “inside force” to support other U.S. military elements and operate within sophisticated adversaries’ weapons engagement zones.

Defense Department officials are promoting a concept known as the SOF-space-cyber “triad.” Traditionally, in U.S. military parlance, the term “triad” referred to strategic forces consisting of nuclear-armed missiles, submarines and bombers. The new or modern triad is focused on supporting conventional and irregular forces.

“The SOF-Space-Cyber triad represents a powerful convergence and synergy in modern warfare, combining the unique capabilities of special operations forces, space assets, and cyber operations. This integration enables on-the-ground intelligence, access, global communication, surveillance, information warfare and network disruption. Together, these elements create a force multiplier factor that enable the Joint Force to conduct operations with reduced risk of escalation,” officials wrote in the strategy.

Officials in the special ops community want SOCOM to remain a pathfinder for new capabilities that other elements of the Joint Force can adopt.

The new strategy noted that SOF had a pioneering role in bringing the Maven Smart System artificial intelligence capability into the U.S. military.

Last year, Palantir was awarded a $480 million deal for the system to be used broadly across the Defense Department. The Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office (CDAO) plans to proliferate the technology to warfighters. Work under the new contract will initially cover five U.S. combatant commands: Central Command, European Command, Indo-Pacific Command, Northern Command/NORAD, and Transportation Command.

Meanwhile, SOCOM aims to bring new innovations and vendors into its acquisition fold.

The SOFWERX hub, located in Tampa, Florida, near where Special Operations Command is headquartered, helps connect technology providers with acquisition officials and special operators.

Last month, the Defense Department announced that SOCOM’s acquisition, technology and logistics directorate is launching a commercial solutions opening to support the program executive office for SOF digital applications.

Maier said he talked to SOCOM commander Gen. Bryan Fenton earlier this week about challenges associated with onboarding new tech, including solutions from the commercial sector.

“We’re continuing to try to stress the system that is still fundamentally built on a previous model — you might call it the hardware model. We’ve moved to the software space,” Maier said.

SOCOM has seen successes in linking operators with officials in the acquisition world, he noted, but it faces some of the same constraints as other DOD components when it comes to procurement and working with commercial vendors.

“We’re endeavoring to continue to reinforce the idea that this is operator led, as opposed to spending a lot of time developing a requirement, then it goes out for bid and we’re shooting a couple ducks behind the duck we’re trying to hit. I do worry, though, that some of the structures are built on a previous model and you can only evolve them so much, and we’re going to have to find ways to do things differently,” Maier said.

“We’ve got to do it with the necessary safeguards, but we want our operators who are seeing the problem upfront or talking closely to their allies and partners who might be dealing with the problem to be sitting side-by-side with industry or the right parts of the commercial sector to build solutions. We always pride ourselves from the special operations world of being those pathfinders. We’re going to have to make sure that we’re not believing our own sort of … hype and showing that we’re actually providing capabilities that then the Joint Force can take, maybe make a program of record, maybe scale up and use otherwise. If we’re only doing it for SOF, that’s not going to be effective. And if we’re doing it too slowly to even help the Joint Force, that’s also not going to be effective.”

That principle should apply to how the special ops community develops capabilities for operating in environments that are contested from a surveillance perspective, he suggested.

“A lot of this is going to have to be SOF working closely with the intelligence community to come up with those solutions. It’s not only about the next widget per se or the next, you know, first-person viewer drone,” Maier said. “It’s going to have to be some of these tools that enable us to have that security wrapper around the things that are necessary for us to operate in semi or totally contested environments.”

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“We do not have the industrial capacity built today to get after this,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Dec. 7 during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “We’re going to have to start getting comfortable with the lack of efficiency in the industrial base to start getting excess capacity so that we have something to go to in times of crisis and conflict.”

Resilience through proliferation

Historically, the Defense Department tended to develop a few very large and exquisite satellites to conduct critical military missions. But with the growing use of space as a warfighting domain by both the United States and its adversaries, the Pentagon is now focusing on different ways to build resilience in its space systems — such as by launching hundreds of smaller, inexpensive satellites for a single constellation.

At the forefront of the relatively novel approach is the Space Development Agency’s spiral acquisition strategy that is being used for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). Once it’s built out, the constellation is expected to comprise hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and include space vehicles carrying different communications, data relay, missile warning and missile tracking capabilities.

SDA plans to field systems in batches every two years, with each iteration carrying the latest technology available. Although the first operational satellites known as Tranche 1 were slated to launch in fall 2024, that deadline has since been delayed to March or April 2025 due to supply chain bottlenecks, according to SDA Director Derek Tournear.

“I will say that what we’re seeing in the supply chain in the small LEO market has caught up to what SDA’s needs are, but it took them about eight months longer than they anticipated to ramp up,” Tournear said during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum. 

A total of 158 satellites are being developed for Tranche 1 of the PWSA: 126 data transport sats, 28 missile warning/missile tracking sats and four missile defense demonstration sats. The agency will also launch 12 tactical demonstration satellites under the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES) initiative to test new capabilities that can be leveraged in future PWSA tranches.

Across that order, four prime contractors are on the program — York Space Systems, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3Harris — and each of them is working with dozens of subcontractors.

Executives from various Tranche 1 primes who spoke to DefenseScoop acknowledged that they encountered supply chain bottlenecks in their work for the contract. Issues have now mostly been resolved and the vendors are on track to launch by the new deadline, they said.

However, companies are still using those lessons learned to mitigate setbacks for future tranches that go beyond just purchasing long-lead items.

“We’re seeing the results of that demand signal that SDA has been sending us on a very consistent basis through their spiral tranche acquisition. Is it perfect yet? No. We’ve got some places to go,” Rob Mitrevski, vice president and general manager of spectral solutions at L3Harris, said in an interview.

Tranche 1 isn’t the first time SDA has experienced delays. The agency was forced to push back the launch of Tranche 0 — a group of 27 satellites that served as a proof of concept for the entire PWSA — by about six months.

The holdup was attributed to supply chain bottlenecks that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when many manufacturers were forced to slow or stop production lines. Specific microelectronic components such as resistors were particularly difficult to buy, Mitrevski noted.

The recent issues aren’t caused by COVID-19 conditions, but are instead reflective of the sheer volume of systems SDA is asking of its contractors and an industrial base that wasn’t quite ready to meet the increased demand.

“I think a lot of that has been just scaling — getting past designing tens of things to designing lots of things,” Louis Christen, senior director of proliferated systems at Northrop Grumman, said during a tour of the company’s Space Park facility in Redondo Beach, California, where it’s manufacturing Tranche 1 birds.

To alleviate potential risk, Northrop Grumman has been moving through production as much as possible and building multiple satellites in parallel, Christen said. Working very closely with its multiple subcontractors throughout the process has been another critical strategy.

“Although they’re commercial suppliers, we’re not just buying stuff from them. We’re a partner. We’re there on a daily basis and helping prop them up,” he said.

Dirk Wallinger, CEO and president of York Space Systems, said challenges the company had weren’t specific to its Tranche 1 contracts, but actually reflect a lack of diversity in the supply chain that is affecting the entire space industry. 

“One of the key bottlenecks results from [requests for proposals] with subsystem performance specifications that inadvertently narrow the qualified vendor pool to a single supplier,” Wallinger told DefenseScoop. “This limits the value tradeoffs of all of the prime contractors and by creating dependency on sole-source suppliers, exacerbates delays.”

Addressing the problem would require rethinking high-level performance requirements in a manner that would diversify the supplier base and enable more competition in industry, he added.

L3Harris is also trying to move away from single or sole-source suppliers by building strong relationships with the swath of subcontractors it has worked with on all three of its contracts for the PWSA, Mitrevski said.

“The supply chain works to create scale over time, and the scale is created through a diverse group of suppliers,” he said. “What you’ve seen in the way we’ve evolved from [Tranche 0] through now [Tranche 1] and [Tranche 2] is a continual improvement of the scale and diversity in that supply chain.”

Wallinger noted that they’ve found the most effective way to mitigate supply chain risks has been to buy satellite buses from providers ahead of receiving mission specifications. In the future, it’s crucial that the government secures these long-lead items as early as possible to effectively eliminate delays, he added.

“Schedule risk is mostly induced from bus component suppliers, not mission payload developers,” Wallinger said. “Commoditized satellite buses are the only ones being considered, and by definition can support a range of mission sets. They are the critical component to procure in advance.”

Mitigating future delays

While SDA has tried to ensure its system requirements can leverage readily available hardware, Tournear said there are some components that must be tailor-made for the Tranche 1 satellites. Mesh network encryption devices that are approved by the National Security Agency have been a significant headache because there’s only one manufacturer able to make them, he said.

The agency has adjusted its timeline expectations for future PWSA tranches to allow more time for vendors to build their platforms, adding several months to overall production time.

Mitrevski also noted that SDA’s overall strategy to fund development of capabilities that can be tested early on is beneficial. 

“They have a number of efforts where they’ve clearly acquired leading-edge capabilities with the intention of driving the maturity level of those leading-edge capabilities forward and then make use of them later on,” he said. 

York Space Systems has also discussed with SDA ways to mitigate risks outside of supply chain diversification, Wallinger said. One area of improvement could be ensuring long-lead items are aligned with current and future mission requirements, he noted.

“We have had several instances where the second- and third-tier suppliers had stock on hand, but that stock didn’t have the right interface protocols or didn’t have the right form factor, and couldn’t be used to meet the actual mission needs,” he said. “So you had those suppliers spending capital on things that simply had to be completely redone at a cost to the [U.S. government] and us.”

But with plans to only grow the number of military satellites on orbit — not just for the PWSA, but also other programs across the Defense Department — SDA’s work is likely going to create a ripple effect of both growth and demand within the industrial base. The supply chain woes are serving as a “canary in the coal mine” for the national security space community writ large, and will require the entire department’s effort to fix them, Guetlein said.

“Because of the quantities that he’s ordering, he’s now starting to uncover the challenges that we have with the industrial base,” Guetlein said, referring to Tournear. “And these challenges are significant, and we need to figure out how to get after them.”

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The bus will be launched into low-Earth orbit (LEO) onboard a Firefly Aerospace Alpha rocket in the first half of 2025, Jeff Schrader, Lockheed Martin Space’s vice president of strategy and business development, told reporters Wednesday. Although it will carry a communications payload, the intent for the self-funded mission is “to show that we’ve built a system, the [technology readiness level] has been burned down, how long we can actually plan to be able to build those in the future to offer to our customers,” Scharder said.

For decades, the Pentagon has used a small number of large, exquisite satellite buses for its space missions that have become increasingly more costly and time-consuming to build. As demand for space-based warfighting capabilities continues to grow, the department has shifted its strategy and is now focused on buying smaller, less expensive satellites in larger numbers — such as those acquired for the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA).

Schrader said Lockheed Martin developed the LM 400 over the last three years to serve as a “middle ground” between the two options, allowing customers to carry additional power and payloads than smaller satellites while still keeping price tags low.

“For our tracking layer bids, we’ve had to use certain class buses for smaller [electro-optical/infrared] sensors,” Schrader explained. “This allows us to actually maybe grow that a little bit to get more coverage for EO/IR type of missions for missile warning [and] missile tracking.”

The satellite bus is also customizable to support different missions — including remote sensing, communications, imagery and radar — as well as orbits and launch configurations, according to the company.

As a common bus, the LM 400 is “going to have a significant amount of componentry that is exactly alike, no matter who the customer is,” Schrader said. “That allows us to go out to our supply chain, be able to cut long-term agreements with them and be able to put something in a shorter amount of build time, as well as get after a more proliferated approach.”

Development of the LM 400 was driven by Ignite, Lockheed Martin’s self-funded innovation unit that conducts experiments both on- and off-orbit as a way to accelerate space technology for potential government customers. The company’s Pony Express 2 tactical satcom and TacSat space-based 5G missions were also conducted under Ignite.

But LM 400’s demonstration is also being done in partnership with Lockheed Martin’s business needs as the company looks to better position itself to use the bus in future bids on government programs. That includes the Space Force’s medium-Earth orbit (MEO) missile warning and tracking constellation, as well as other classified programs for the Defense Department, the intelligence community and international partners, Schrader said.

“This will be ready as soon as we can get contracts for fielding,” he said.

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