Officially activated July 10, the “system deltas” (SYDs) include one for missile warning and tracking, and another for space-based sensing and targeting. According to the service, the new structure reorganizes part of SSC’s acquisition efforts to focus on a key mission area instead of a functional specialty such as cyber or intelligence.

“SYDs consolidate SSC program offices that design, develop and deliver mission systems under a force design structure for acquisitions,” the Space Force said in a statement. “The SYDs will ensure mission area analysis is continuous and improves upon mission advocacy with a singular focus on mission sets, unity of effort and properly aligned accountability.”

The move follows a similar restructuring done by Space Operations Command (SpOC) — the service’s arm for conducting daily operations — in 2024, when it stood up a new unit structure known as the integrated mission delta (IMD). Like SSC’s system deltas, SpOC’s integrated units consolidate the personnel, training and sustainment functions for a single mission area under one unit.

To ensure there are no gaps between the Space Force’s procurement programs and the service’s operational requirements, the acquisition-focused system deltas will team up with their corresponding integrated mission delta under SpOC moving forward.

“Through unity of effort, the Space Force’s system delta framework allows us to streamline the work between acquisitions and operations accomplished through intimate collaboration with our mission delta counterparts across the field commands,” SSC Commander Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant said in a statement. 

The new System Delta 84 for missile warning and tracking will be led by Col. Stevie Medeiros and partnered with SpOC’s Mission Delta 4, the service noted in a press release. The unit will be responsible for developing and delivering a number of programs — such as the Resilient Missile Warning and Missile Tracking – MEO (MEO MW/MT) effort — that can detect and respond to emerging missile threats, like hypersonic weapons.

Space Delta 810 will oversee space-based sensing and targeting, comprising portfolios that provide environmental monitoring and tactical sensing to warfighters during mission planning and execution, according to the Space Force. It will be led by Col. Dane Bannach and work with SpOC’s Mission Delta 2.

With the activation of the two system deltas, Garrant said in a statement that the Space Force is already working to transition more of SSC’s acquisition deltas into system deltas “in the coming months.”

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Boeing beat out Northrop Grumman for the contract, which includes design and delivery of the first two satellites for the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications program and options for two additional birds in the future. The award supports initial operational capability for the ESS program and is the first step to a “phased approach to rapidly proliferate a diverse satellite constellation” that can conduct strategic command and control, SSC said in a statement.

The ESS space vehicles will eventually replace the nuclear mission of the service’s current Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) system, comprising six satellites in geostationary orbit that provide encrypted communications for both strategic and tactical operations. The constellation will include satellites stationed across multiple orbits, and use highly protected waveform and other classified capabilities to provide secure NC3 to warfighters.

“The U.S. needs a strategic national security architecture that works without fail, with the highest level of protection and capability,” Kay Sears, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space, Intelligence and Weapon Systems, said in a statement. “We designed an innovative system to provide guaranteed communication to address an evolving threat environment in space.”

Boeing and Northrop Grumman built prototype systems under Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA) contracts awarded to both companies in 2020.

Work performed under the new contract is expected to wrap up in 2033, according to the Space Force.

In addition, the service expects to purchase additional satellites as part of its larger $12 billion ESS Space Segment program that “may be awarded as sole source to support full operational capability and attain global coverage, including enhanced Arctic capability,” the service noted in a press release. 

The ESS program is one piece of a comprehensive effort at the Defense Department to modernize all elements of its NC3 enterprise, which includes dozens of capabilities across all warfighting domains. The complex system provides senior defense leaders situational awareness, planning, decision-making and force management capabilities for nuclear operations.

Along with the ESS space vehicles, the Space Force is developing a new ground segment for strategic ops under the Ground Resilient Integration & Framework for Operational NC3 (GRIFFON) program. Lockheed Martin is building GRIFFON under a Software Acquisition Pathway contract awarded earlier this year.

“It’s a critical time to advance U.S. space capabilities to ensure peace through strength,” Cordell DeLaPena, program executive officer for the Space Force’s Military Communications and Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Directorate, said in a statement. “The strategic communication mission requires protection, power and always-available capability, even through adversary attempts to interrupt our connectivity. These satellites will provide connectivity from space as part of a refreshed NC3 architecture for our nation.”

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Meadowlands is a mobile, ground-based offensive counterspace system that uses radio signals to jam adversary satellite communications. Developed by prime contractor L3Harris, the capability provides a significant upgrade to the Space Force’s current platform — the Counter Communications System (CCS) — by adding a software-defined architecture, drastically reducing weapon size and integrating automation.

L3Harris formally passed system verification review for Meadowlands in April. The Space Force then announced that Meadowlands received fielding approval on May 2 to begin training guardians on the system, with next steps being “upgrading the operating system to fulfill remote operations capabilities and multi-system management in the near future,” according to Space Operations Command.

The contractor has already delivered the first two Meadowlands units to the Space Force and the system is now going through government testing, Erik Ballard, L3Harris’s general manager for space antennas, surveillance systems, space and airborne systems, told DefenseScoop in a recent interview. The milestone was completed about six months ahead of schedule, and the company is now on track to deliver even more units through 2025, he added.

“It is more than just a block upgrade, it’s a step-change in capability,” Ballard said.

The first iteration of CCS became operational in 2004 and has received incremental upgrades over the years. L3Harris completed the final upgrade, known as 10.2, in March 2020 after the company received a development contract in 2019 to deliver five Meadowlands systems to the Space Force by December 2025.

L3Harris also received a production contract for Meadowlands in 2021 that includes over 20 additional units, the first of which is expected to be delivered this year, Ballard noted.

“The software-defined architecture … allows us to upgrade it quickly with the changing threat environment much more affordably and much faster,” he said. “I also think that the footprint size — the analogy I like to use … is, for [CCS 10.2], all your equipment fit in a bus and you hooked up an antenna behind it. Now, all that equipment fits in your SUV.”

Meadowlands also adds a significant amount of automation and remote command-and-control capabilities, meaning that a single guardian can do tasks that would have previously required multiple people. 

Col. Bryon McClain, program executive for space domain awareness and combat power at Space System Command, told reporters in April that the automation capabilities of Meadowlands will give the service a significant amount of flexibility.

“Having a system that we can reduce the number of people that are physically sitting by the antenna — turning knobs and pushing buttons — the farther we can separate that,” McClain said during a media roundtable at Space Symposium. “It gives us the ability to centralize how we do business.”

After years of keeping its offensive and defensive counterspace capabilities behind closed doors, the Space Force has recently entered a new era of openly talking about its plans to weaponize the domain against adversaries. In April, the service published a new warfighting framework that outlines three mission areas — orbital, electromagnetic and cyberspace warfare — for counterspace operations.

As the Space Force has conducted operational training on Meadowlands with guardians, Ballard said the process has been “night and day” compared to previous CCS platforms. L3Harris partnered with the Space Force early in the system’s development to ensure military personnel could easily and quickly train on the new Meadowlands platforms, he said.

“Over the last couple of months as we’ve went through government testing, [the training aspect] has really resonated with the users,” Ballard said. “That’s something that’s been in the process for a number of years. And now to hear it in feedback from users — we did the right thing there by starting that earlier.”

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The $1.2 billion other transaction agreement from Space Systems Command (SSC) is for Epoch 2 of the Resilient Missile Warning and Missile Tracking – MEO (MEO MW/MT) program. The constellation is intended to track high-speed missiles from MEO and is part of the service’s broader plans to build a resilient architecture of satellites that can detect missiles from multiple orbits — as well as contribute to President Donald Trump’s homeland missile defense effort known as Golden Dome. 

“Epoch 2 is in alignment with the Chief of Space Operation’s top priority to provide accurate real-time information to decision-makers. This allows for additional resiliency in the missile warning and tracking satellite architecture” Lt. Col. Brandon Castillo, materiel leader for the Epoch 2 program office, said in a statement.

SSC intends to develop and launch the MEO MW/MT constellation in phases known as “epochs” that will be delivered every two to three years, with each iteration featuring improved capabilities from previous increments. According to the service, Epoch 2 satellites will include more mature sensors, optical crosslinks, data fusion, mission management and ground communication capabilities.

The contract with BAE Systems comes after the Space Force was forced to delay awarding Epoch 2 by about three months due to the federal government operating under a continuing resolution and resulting budget uncertainty. Despite the delay, the company is expected to deliver the 10 satellites for Epoch 2 — expected to provide initial operational capability to warfighters — in fiscal 2029, according to SSC.

In 2023, the service awarded RTX and Boeing-subsidiary Millennium Space Systems contracts to each build space vehicles for Epoch 1 of the MEO MW/MT constellation, with RTX responsible for three satellites and Millennium responsible for six. However, RTX was removed from the program the following year due to design performance issues and cost overruns.

SSC later tapped Millennium to deliver six more satellites for Epoch 1 to replace RTX’s space vehicles. Delivery of the first Epoch 1 birds is expected during fiscal 2026, according to the service.

The new MEO constellation is being developed at the same time as the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), which will comprise hundreds of missile warning and missile-tracking satellites stationed in low-Earth orbit (LEO). SSC is working closely with SDA and the Missile Defense Agency through a “combined program office approach” to execute the effort, according to the Space Force.

“Delivering these critical Missile Warning and Tracking capabilities on rapid timelines in a collaborative approach with MDA and SDA is a big win for the Nation and our joint forces,” Maj. Michael DiMuzio, program element monitor and assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, said in a statement.

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The GPS III SV-08 was launched via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It’s the eighth space vehicle for the GPS III constellation to go on orbit. The series of satellites, built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, brings significant improvements over previous GPS constellations by offering greater accuracy and advanced anti-jamming capabilities for military users.

Notably, the Space Force was able to execute the mission just three months after the service notified both Lockheed Martin and SpaceX to prepare for liftoff — a much faster pace than traditional national security launches, which could take up to two years from the initial contract award, said Walt Lauderdale, mission director and chief of Falcon systems and operations at Space Systems Command.

“The volume of data for the Falcon launch system allows us to focus our attention on the most critical areas and confirm acceptable flight risk,” Lauderdale said earlier this week during a media roundtable ahead of Friday’s launch. “This experience over time allows us to leverage SpaceX’s commercial tempo, optimize our own review timelines and utilize previously flown hardware — as with our last GPS III launch.”

Friday’s mission marks the second GPS III launch executed under what the Space Force calls a “rapid-response” schedule, demonstrating the ability to prepare and deploy a satellite on a rushed deadline. In December 2024, the service conducted a secretive mission dubbed Rapid Response Trailblazer that saw the seventh GPS III satellite go into orbit onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 after five months of planning.

Work conducted during the Rapid Response Trailblazer mission and other previous GPS III launches allowed the Space Force to streamline Friday’s launch even more because most of the mission profile and analysis for launch was already completed, Lauderdale said.

“The ability to once again demonstrate a quick-turn launch of crucial capability helps us understand the key aspects that enable such a capability and further prepare for similar mission timelines in the future,” he said.

With adversary advancements in the space domain putting more demand on the Space Force, the service is exploring ways to increase the resiliency of its constellations. While one method has been proliferating large numbers of satellites on orbit to add redundancy, the Space Force also wants to reduce the time it takes to put new systems in space.

One such effort is SSC’s Victus mission series under the Tactically Responsive Space program, which focuses on launching small payloads on commercial rockets with only 24 hours notice. While the recent pair of rapid GPS III missions are separate from Tactically Responsive Space and are geared towards payloads in the National Security Space Launch-class, the efforts share a common goal of reducing overall launch cadence.

“We’re trying to prove that we can quickly respond to an on-orbit failure of a vehicle, but we’re also trying to show the best ways to be resilient,” Col. Andrew Menschner, Mission Delta 31 commander, told reporters Wednesday. “Now that we have the timelines of launch headed to much shorter durations, one form of resilience is having a completed vehicle in the factory and ready to go to respond. Said another way: We don’t always have to have a vehicle on orbit for it to be providing resilience in the constellation.”

The Space Force initially planned to launch the eighth GPS III satellite onboard one of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rockets later in 2025. However, the service announced in April that it would pivot to using a SpaceX Falcon 9 in order to get critical capabilities on GPS III — such as the jam-resistant M-code signal — on orbit faster, Lauderdale said.

“What we’re doing this time is, we’re trying to make sure that we address getting some M-code capability up, and it was an opportunity to work with SpaceX and ULA to make sure we are equipped among all the parties and make sure that we could balance making sure that we can get M-code up there while taking care of both of the companies,” he said.

Menschner noted that because the GPS III satellites are qualified for multiple launch vehicle providers, it provided additional flexibility to switch to the Falcon 9 — a lesson that Mission Delta 31 is passing to others across the Space Force and Pentagon.

Moving forward, Lauderdale said he expects that lessons from the GPS III missions will open doors for other NSSL launches on faster timelines. 

“So what we’re proving out with our GPS teammates shows the capability and capacity that we could do from the NSSL program. Multiple launch vehicles gives us assured access to space,” he said. “And so when we look the future, what we’re demonstrating here is that it is possible, with our current vehicle systems, that if there is a need to get something on orbit quickly, something that is unpredicted at the time we put it under contract, we have a capacity, and we know what it would take in order to make that happen.”

The remaining two satellites for the GPS III series are currently slated to launch onboard ULA’s Vulcan rockets before the end of 2025.

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There has been ongoing debate within the Space Force regarding the military benefit of investing in on-orbit refueling — touted by commercial industry as a key enabler for space mobility that could potentially extend the operational range and capacity of satellites. The service requested $20 million in fiscal 2025 to fund early research and development efforts, but recent comments by leadership have suggested that officials aren’t entirely ready to go all-in.

“I think we’re trying to understand the value proposition of refueling and the trades that come with it. I think it’s entirely appropriate, and we are investing in demonstration and capability with some of our teammates who are peeling this apart — both on the cost side as well as the military advantage,” Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, deputy chief of space operations, strategy, plans, programs and requirements, said Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

In theory, refueling tech is favorable for the Space Force’s large, exquisite satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO), as replacing them could take years and cost billions of dollars. But while Bratton said the ability to refuel spacecraft could lead to extending their time on orbit, other components on the satellites have finite lifespans and will eventually fail at some point.

At the same time, the service is pushing for a future where it proliferates hundreds of smaller sats that are cheaper to build and launch — meaning if one space vehicle fails, another in the constellation could take its place. Operating large numbers of platforms with shorter lifespans also means the Space Force can update its architectures with the latest technologies at a faster pace, Bratton added.

The Space Force is currently analyzing the tradeoffs between both strategies, including both operational and cost advantages, Bratton said. And given ongoing fiscal uncertainty and discussions around budget constraints, he noted that if the service decides to put more funding towards in-space refueling it will likely have to be taken away from something else.

“I don’t have the data together yet. I think we’ll have that this fall, based on the ongoing work and then based on the great demonstrations that are going on out there with [Space Systems Command] that is sort of helping us figure this out,” Bratton said.

To help with those assessments, the Space Force is planning a series of projects in the near future focused on experimenting with in-space refueling. 

The service contracted Northrop Grumman in April for a new mission called Elixir, which will involve developing and integrating a refueling payload onto a satellite and demonstrating the technology in space. Separately, the company also recently received a multi-unit award for its ESPAStar spacecraft that will host the refueling demonstration payload during launch.

The Space Force also contracted Astroscale US in April to conduct two refueling operations in GEO in summer 2026. The mission will “demonstrate the ability of commercial Servicing, Mobility and Logistics providers to deliver on-orbit capabilities supporting the warfighter,” a company press release stated. 

Along with the demonstrations, Bratton said he’s looking for additional wargaming and studies of in-space refueling technology that could help determine its value proposition.

“If that is the advantage that refueling brings, then let’s put that into some wargaming, run it through a conflict,” he said. “How much of a difference does it make if I go to war with refueling [or] I go to war without refueling? How do I quantify that advantage? And then we can measure that against the budget choices we have to make.”

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Kickstarted by DIU in 2021, the HSA program is developing a space-based architecture that can rapidly deliver critical warfighting data by combining commercial-built technologies with military and civilian space assets. Companies contracted under the program will spend the next year prototyping their capabilities at multiple operational demonstrations to lay the foundation for an operational pilot architecture to be ready by 2026, according to DIU.

While HSA is being led by DIU, the Pentagon’s tech innovation arm is working closely with the Space Force, the Air Force Research Lab, combatant commands and other military organizations on the effort.

“Together with DIU we’re accelerating the integration of commercial capabilities through HSA demonstrations and pilot efforts to scale quickly into a resilient, multi-orbit architecture supporting the DoD’s vision for seamless, uninterrupted global communications. These efforts exemplify the power of whole-of-government and industry collaboration in delivering real-world capability at speed,” Lt. Col. Tim Trimailo, director of Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office (COMSO), said in a statement. Trimailo recently took the helm at COMSO following the departure of Col. Richard Kniseley in April.

The 12 new firms added to HSA include Capella Space, EdgeCortix, Eutelsat America Corp./OneWeb Technologies, Fairwinds Technologies/AST Space Mobile, Illumina Computing Group, Lockheed Martin, MapLarge, SES Government Solutions, Skycorp, SkyFi, Ursa Space Systems and Viasat.

DIU already had 12 companies working on the project after handing out initial contracts in 2022: Aalyria Technologies, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Kuiper, Anduril, Astranis Space, ATLAS Space Operations, Enveil, Google, Palantir, Planet Labs Federal, Microsoft and SpiderOak.

The upcoming prototype demonstrations will occur across U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. European Command, U.S. Central Command and U.S. Southern Command, DIU said in a news release. Specifically, the vendors will develop and demonstrate different technologies that enable space-based data collection, transport, processing and dissemination to various military units.

“The HSA network has the potential to increase network resilience by employing multi-path routing of communications to optimize data transport and mitigate adverse effects caused by weather or other obstructions,” the DIU release stated. “HSA seeks to integrate commercial persistent sensing, data fusion, high-performance edge compute and resilient data transport capabilities to significantly enhance real-time access to information.”

The HSA team is also preparing to activate a “live hybrid network for demonstrations, exercise support, and further integration of tactics and warfighting capabilities,” per the release.

Over the last few years, the Space Force has sought to take advantage of the rapidly growing commercial space industry as a way to incorporate the latest technologies and capabilities into its systems. The service’s 2024 Commercial Space Strategy calls for commercial solutions to be integrated into a “hybrid space architecture,” while also identifying seven mission areas where commercial capabilities are most beneficial.

“DIU’s ability to rapidly integrate and deliver a hybrid space network architecture is testament to its process of allowing commercial innovators to solve complex problems at speed and scale by applying their solutions to DOD’s problems,” Steve Butow, director of DIU’s space portfolio, said in a statement.

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Under the newly established indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract, the commercial vendors will be able to bid on efforts over a 10-year period to build satellites and integrate them with experimental technologies for demonstrations. The STEP 2.0 contract has a ceiling of $237 million, and the Space Force expects the first delivery order to begin in January 2026, according to Space Systems Command (SSC).

The service released a request for proposals for the STEP 2.0 program in May 2024, and noted that it was looking to leverage proven space vehicles developed by the commercial space industry.

Vendors selected for the program represent a mix of traditional primes, defense newcomers and academia: Axient, Blue Canyon Technologies, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Loft Orbital Federal, Lynk Global, Orbit Systems, Spire Global, Turion Space Corp., Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory and York Space Systems.

“By leveraging commercially developed spacecraft and fostering industry partnerships, STEP 2.0 aims to accelerate the development of cutting-edge space technologies over the next decade for the DoD and their mission partners,” SSC said in a statement.

STEP 2.0 is housed under SSC’s Space Test Program, which supports the Pentagon and other federal agencies by conducting end-to-end demonstrations of emerging space tech. The new effort looks to fill gaps in the current program’s ability to rapidly acquire, launch and conduct S&T demonstrations, according to SSC.

“The DoD Space Test Program will gain measurable value from leveraging industry insights and capabilities to provide proven spacecraft to host the DoD’s next generation of space technologies,” Lt. Col. Brian Shimek, director of the Space Test Program, said in a statement.

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Under development by L3Harris, ATLAS is the Pentagon’s latest attempt to modernize antiquated systems used by the Space Force to track satellites, spacecraft and other objects on orbit. The software-based platform is the foundation for a broader effort to replace the 1980s-era Space Defense Operations Center (SPADOC) computer system.

“ATLAS is going very well, we expect to go into operational acceptance testing this year,” Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of Space Systems Command (SSC), told reporters last week during a media roundtable at the annual Space Symposium.

ATLAS is designed to integrate and disseminate a range of data types — including space domain awareness, command and control, and intelligence — with the help of automation capabilities to give operators a complete picture of the space domain. The system is one piece of the service’s Space Command and Control initiative, started after the previous SPADOC replacement known as the Joint Space Operations Center Mission System (JMS) was terminated in 2018 due to poor performance.

Although it’s now on track, ATLAS was considered one of the service’s most beleaguered programs by former space acquisition lead Frank Calvelli. The Space Force initially wanted the system operational by 2022, but software integration challenges and lack of trained operators have plagued ATLAS during its development, forcing the service to delay decommissioning of SPADOC.

Furthermore, the program has notched multiple Category 1 deficiencies — designated for problems that could cause serious harm or damage — as well as less severe Category 2 deficiencies.

To tackle some of ATLAS’s key challenges, Calvelli last year directed that the program be moved from SSC — the service’s acquisition arm — to Mission Delta 2-Space Domain Awareness. The organization is one of the newest integrated mission deltas under Space Operations Command (SpOC) and brings the mission area’s personnel, training elements and acquisition professionals for maintenance and sustainment under one commander.

Garrant commended the decision, as it allowed guardians to better understand the complexities of the system and put urgency on developers to deliver capabilities on time.

“The connective tissue with the operators and getting them early time on the system, and even closer connections at low echelons of command between the developer and the operator — that’s probably the biggest success we’ve seen in all of our mission deltas and all of our sustainment squadrons,” he said. “It’s been incredibly successful, I think you’re going to see more of that.”

The new approach was also key for L3Harris in its work to get ATLAS across the finish line, because the company is now working closely with operators to test and integrate capabilities through an agile development cycle, Charles Clarkson, vice president and general manager for the company’s space superiority and imaging division, told DefenseScoop.

To prepare for IOC this year, SpOC is conducting quarterly capability integration tests (SCITs) where test squadrons, space operators and L3Harris work together to analyze ATLAS and deliver additional capability. The service recently completed its tenth SCIT in March.

“We test it in a development environment, and then we also test it in an operational environment, with the operators then being able to provide that real-time feedback to the software development team,” Clarkson said in an interview on the sidelines of Space Symposium. “It’s all about creating closeness to the mission, and then being able to incorporate those requirements to keep pace with the threat.”

L3Harris received a $53 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract to develop ATLAS in 2018. Since then, the company has received multiple extension awards from the Space Force for the program — including a $90 million follow-on contract in January to “meet ATLAS initial operational capability and achieve software stability,” according to the Defense Department.

The contract extension will also give L3Harris the opportunity to improve ATLAS with additional tools and technologies, Clarkson added.

“It’s also looking at then, how do we build on [and] augment capability on top of that foundational layer that was primarily giving operators and warfighters a modern toolset, and just scaling so that we could keep pace with the exponential launches in space,” he said.

Clarkson emphasized that even with the delays, L3Harris did not have to pare back any of the capabilities for ATLAS. The company is also resolving the remaining deficiencies identified during SCITs, he said. An SSC spokesperson confirmed to DefenseScoop that all of the program’s Category 1 deficiencies will be resolved “prior to trial period entry.”

“I don’t look at it and say, ‘Hey, we had a dozen, two dozen, three dozen [Category 1 deficiencies] coming out of a SCIT,’ as a negative thing. What that really means is we’ve actually seen an increase in recent SCITS, and that’s really driven by the fact that it’s becoming very, very real,” Clarkson said. “That’s exactly what we want to see in agile software development, is you identify those deficiencies and you burn them down over the next sprint.”

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Initiated as a pilot effort in 2023, TacSRT established a marketplace where CoComs can directly purchase commercial imagery and related data analytics. In order to expand the program, the Space Force received an additional $40 million in funding as part of the continuing resolution passed by Congress in March. 

“The addition of this money represents a congressional vote of confidence in our efforts to tap into the commercial space market for the collective good,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said Wednesday during his keynote address at the annual Space Symposium.

Saltzman and other service leaders have touted the success of TacSRT in recent months, especially the initiative’s ability to rapidly deliver critical information to warfighters. Through the program’s Global Data Marketplace, combatant commands can put in requests for “operational planning products” that include unclassified data from imagery and sensors collected by commercial space vendors. 

Col. Rob Davis, program executive officer for space sensing at Space Systems Command, told reporters Wednesday that TacSRT data is primarily being used to support humanitarian operations and monitoring of illegal fishing around the world. 

And while the pilot version of TacSRT initially supported U.S. Africa Command, leaders at other combatant commands are leveraging the program’s marketplace as well. For example, U.S. Central Command also purchased commercial data analytics during construction of the Joint-Logistics-Over-the-Shore pier in Gaza, and TacSRT provided U.S. Southern Command with real-time tracking of wildfires in South America, according to the Space Force.

As it looks to scale TacSRT, the service is still figuring out the best ways to operationalize the program, Davis said.

In the TacSRT Tools Applications and Processing Lab, “we are doing the development of additional techniques, partnering with industry, partnering with [Space Force] component field commands … to develop new tools that we can then operationalize, as well,” Davis said during a media roundtable. “We continue, in that more developmental space, to do ad hoc support through that experimental space to answer questions that combatant commands have.”

With plans to expand TacSRT, the Space Force is also working with the intelligence community — including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office — to delineate roles and responsibilities for purchasing commercial imagery. 

Under current Pentagon-IC policies, NGA is responsible for buying analytical models and ISR products from commercial providers, as well as determining who across the government receives the packaged data. At the same time, the NRO is tasked with acquiring imagery from commercial remote sensing satellites and disseminating it across the Pentagon and intelligence community. 

However, the Space Force’s TacSRT pilot caused some tension between the service and intelligence agencies — with some concerned that the Space Force’s acquisition and distribution of space-based commercial imagery is a duplication of NGA’s and NRO’s work. 

But after years of back and forth, NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth told DefenseScoop in an interview that the agency and the Space Force have drafted a “memorandum of agreement” over the relationship between NGA and TacSRT. The service is also finalizing a similar agreement with the NRO, according to a report from Breaking Defense.

Whitworth explained that in his role as functional manager for geospatial intelligence, he is charged with oversight of both the Defense Department’s and intelligence community’s acquisition of space-based ISR from commercial satellites. To that end, his responsibility moving forward will be reporting on the use of commercial imagery in warfighting — including via TacSRT — to lawmakers while also involving the Space Force, he said.

“This fits beautifully into being that integrator, and Congress feels the same way from a stewardship perspective,” Whitworth said. “So getting to that issue [of] we’re not paying twice, keeping that denominator involving TacSRT officially in our world and vice-versa is healthy.”

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