Inked by Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman and NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth during the annual GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis, Missouri, the MOA outlines the boundaries between NGA’s operations and the Space Force’s nascent Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) program — putting an end to a two-year turf war over which organization should purchase commercial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance products and deliver them to combatant commanders.

“What [the agreement] really reflects is the quality of collaboration and every echelon that was necessary to work through these procedures,” Saltzman said in a statement. “I’m excited about this because of what it represents, and that’s really industrial strength collaboration.”

Whitworth first shared news of a drafted MOA with the Space Force in April during an interview with DefenseScoop, noting that moving forward NGA will work closely with the service to ensure the organizations weren’t “paying twice” for commercial ISR.

In a statement, Whitworth called the finalized agreement “a new standard for collaboration.”

While the full text of the MOA was not made public, the document outlines a “governance framework” between the intel agency and the Space Force by detailing the roles and responsibilities each organization has in providing commercial ISR to military leaders, an NGA spokesperson said in a statement to DefenseScoop.

Furthermore, a Space Force spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the MOA requires the service to collaborate with NGA support teams to “ensure data purchases and derived products … conform to consistent, mutually agreed upon National System for Geospatial Intelligence standards when applicable.”

The accord also states the Space Force will “coordinate processes and procedures for dissemination and releasability of products,” and submit a report to NGA each quarter that describes the service’s efforts to minimize overlapping efforts, the spokesperson added.

Disputes between the Space Force and NGA first arose when the service kicked off TacSRT in 2023. The program established a marketplace where combatant commanders can directly buy and rapidly receive “operational planning products” — including unclassified imagery and data analytics — from commercial space providers. 

Although Space Force officials have touted the success of TacSRT and begun efforts to scale it, the program caused some tension between the service and the intelligence community.

Under current Pentagon-IC policies, NGA holds responsibility for acquiring commercial ISR products and determining who across the government receives them. At the same time, the National Reconnaissance Office is tasked with buying commercial remote sensing imaging and sharing it across the department and intelligence community.

Space Force leaders have claimed that TacSRT is not meant to step on the toes of NGA and NRO, but instead serve as a complement to the intelligence community’s work.

During a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Saltzman said the program “fills a niche where you have unclassified capabilities that can get quickly into planners’ hands.”

Now that the Space Force has finalized an agreement with NGA, the service is expected to also reach a similar arrangement with the NRO.

When asked by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., about progress on the Space Force’s work with the intelligence agencies on Tuesday, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink emphasized that foundations for collaboration have been laid — but “the devil’s in the details.”

“We’re just starting to feel good now and starting to do experimentation with [TacSRT] now, using tools to allow that to happen,” Meink said. “There’s obviously still a lot of work to go, but I think there’s been great progress made, and the fact that we already have systems that we can start doing testing work and start doing exercise will be critically important.”

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A sources-sought notice about the initiative was published Tuesday on Sam.gov.

The PEO intends to “broaden industry partnership and to procure, on a competitive basis, COCO services” to provide land- and sea-based ISR capabilities for the Navy and Marine Corps and support U.S. and coalition military partners, according to the request for information.

Insitu, which is owned by Boeing, and Textron System have been providing these types of services under basic ordering agreements. According to the RFI, those deals will expire next year, providing an opportunity for the Defense Department to expand the vendor pool.

NAVAIR’s small tactical unmanned aircraft systems program office, PMA-263, “is seeking to identify additional contractors capable of providing COCO ISR services in support of DoD, OGA, and combat and contingency operational requirements,” officials wrote in the sources sought notice released this week. “Contractors would be responsible for resources to produce Sensor Data, such as trained personnel, non-developmental UAS equipment, certifications, operation and maintenance, spares and product support … Contractors shall be capable of providing ISR services on a normal and surge basis, day and night, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

The Navy wants runway independent, “multi-intelligence” capable drones with an operational range of at least 75 nautical miles from a ground control station located at the launch site, 10 hours time-on-station and a variety of sensing capabilities — including full-motion video, electro-optical and infrared sensors, and an electronic warfare “type” sensor or wide area maritime search sensor.

The platforms must be able to operate effectively in adverse weather conditions, austere environments and areas where GPS navigation is degraded, among other requirements.

The RFI comes as the Navy and Marine Corps — and the Defense Department writ large — continue to see an increase in demand for drones and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. Procuring COCO ISR services is a way for the military to augment its capacity without having to buy and maintain additional systems and manage their full lifecycles.

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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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Pentagon officials see quantum sensors as promising capabilities for alternative positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).

However, there are challenges involved in deploying the technology that DARPA aims to tackle with a new program that it’s looking to kick off, dubbed Robust Quantum Sensors (RoQS).

The initiative “seeks to bring quantum sensors to DoD platforms. While quantum sensors have demonstrated exceptional laboratory performance in a number of modalities (magnetic and electrical field, acceleration, rotation, and gravity, etc.), their performance degrades once the sensor is placed on moving platforms due to electrical and magnetic fields, field gradients, and system vibrations. RoQS seeks to overcome these challenges through innovative physics approaches to quantum sensing. The forthcoming RoQS program aims to develop and demonstrate quantum sensors that inherently resist performance degradation from platform interferers and demonstrate them on a government-provided platform,” officials wrote in a special notice and future program announcement recently posted on Sam.gov.

DARPA, which reports to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, hopes to transition RoQS-developed sensors onto U.S. military platforms with associated programs of record to help fulfill requirements. To that end, the agency intends to work with contractors and platform builders to identify systems for quantum sensor integration and also government platform owners to facilitate integration and testing at the end of the program, per the notice.

Pentagon officials and others have been working to mature quantum technology for real-world applications.

Quantum tech “translates the principles of quantum physics into technological applications,” a recently updated Congressional Research Service report explained, including concepts like superposition — or the ability of quantum systems to exist in two or more states simultaneously — and entanglement where “two or more quantum objects in a system can be intrinsically linked such that measurement of one dictates the possible measurement outcomes for another, regardless of how far apart the two objects are.”

Although DOD officials see potential uses for quantum-enabled capabilities in other areas like computing, encryption and communications, sensing is considered by many observers to be the most mature application for near-term use by the Pentagon.

That’s the one “that we know by far the most about,” John Burke, principal director for quantum science in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said in June at a tech summit hosted by Defense One.

Such capabilities could provide an alternative to the Global Positioning System in case GPS is denied or degraded in future operating environments.

“You’ve probably heard about jamming and spoofing concerns, for example. So we’re busily working on other quantum technologies to input positioning and timing at the edge of the warfighter so that they don’t rely on GPS all the time,” Burke said. “So that’s sort of the earliest thing we’re working on. There’s a whole slew of technologies under that umbrella. We’re really pushing out on that. So even this year [in] 2024, we’ve got about $100 million coming out to work just on that area. So we’re really pushing hard on that.”

The Pentagon has been using its Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies (APFIT) program to buy a new generation of atomic clocks that could be put into some “strategic assets,” he said, adding that “the first new wave of quantum technologies is really going out today.”

The CRS report noted that successful development and deployment of quantum sensors could boost detection of things like adversary submarines, underground structures, nuclear materials and electromagnetic emissions — and thereby help the U.S. military find concealed objects of interest and enemy forces.

For ISR there’s “an umbrella of remote sensing capabilities and a lot of different kinds of technologies in there. Things like magnetometers to find magnetic objects. You can imagine a lot of things that the military might care about … may have iron in them or steel, things that are magnetic. So we’re tracking trying to figure how to use those in all kinds of different ways,” Burke said.

Currently, quantum technologies are “a little bit expensive,” he noted.

“But that’s okay for certain strategic missions in the military. So we’re starting from those kinds of missions that go with anything — submarines, strategic bombers, long-range sort of missiles … these kinds of assets, to start inserting new technologies,” he said. “We have these things called magnetometers you can put in systems for like this thing called magnetic navigation. It’s extremely robust. We’re really excited about that. There’s navigation technologies. Once we get those established, we can start building up the manufacturing base, first in the Defense Department. That’s the path that we’ve taken. But I think in the long run, you’re gonna see these kinds of technologies proliferate into civilian” sectors.

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Companies that are part of the Space Force’s Commercial Integration Cell (CIC) will now be able to share and receive information at the top secret security clearance level for the service’s space domain awareness (SDA) and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, according to officials. With the addition of five new CIC members, a total of 15 vendors are now part of the effort.

Started as a pilot in 2015, CIC allows companies that have existing contracts with the U.S. government to receive top secret security clearance and insight into the Space Force’s current operations and planning. Along with the new SDA and ISR mission areas, the effort has previously focused on satellite communications and imagery. 

A key benefit to the program is back-and-forth information sharing between the service and vendors already providing capabilities for CIC’s mission areas, Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess, commander of Space Forces — Space, said Wednesday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

“What that means is, when they’re a member of the CIC, they literally could have a person from their company, as long as they were cleared, sit in the [Combined Space Operations Center] with us,” Schiess said. “Most of them don’t tend to do it. Some come for a little bit, they get their folks trained, and then they go back. But they have the connections there.”

At the same time, CIC serves as a venue for commercial industry to provide feedback to the Space Force about business perspectives, capability requirements and technology solutions, according to officials.

The CIC is one of several ongoing efforts at the Pentagon that are intended to help the department leverage a fast-growing commercial space industry for warfighting missions. One of the key issues for commercial firms has been the ability to receive updated and rapid information about current and ongoing threats in the space domain — which has historically been highly classified.

Schiess did not immediately provide the names of the five companies that have been added as CIC partners, but noted that the Space Force is in the process of approving two more vendors for the cohort by early 2025 — bringing the total number of firms to 17.

Vendors in the program are also encouraged to collaborate and share data with each other, he said. For example, after Russia’s 2022 cyberattack on satellites operated by Viasat, a CIC member, the Space Force and other companies in the program received information about the attack.

“If there were things that that company found out, then they could also harden their ability to do that,” Schiess said. “We could provide information to them on maybe different satellites that are close to them, that might be listening satellites and things. And so we can provide that information to them on a fast basis.”

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The Army published its new space vision in January, doubling down on the importance of the service’s ability to conduct its own space ops and the need to grow its formations. The document emphasized the need for land-centric, expeditionary equipment designed for large-scale multidimensional operations for space missions.

But with an eye on executing the vision by 2030, the organization is working through challenges in meeting demands for new capabilities and more space soldiers.

“As I look at the priorities within the command as we move forward, probably our top priority is how do we deliver that capability responsive to the warfighter?” SMDC commander Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey said this week during a panel at the annual AUSA conference. “How do we continue to get after more tactical solutions that allow our soldiers to maneuver around on the battlefield at different areas, different times [with] smaller weight platforms? … How do we build the expertise within our soldiers so that we’re not borrowing manpower?”

Developing space soldiers

Over the last 25 years, the Army has maintained a functional area of 40 space operations officers, while also borrowing enlisted troops from other military occupational specialties. Given new demands to add and maintain experienced space soldiers, the service is reconsidering that resourcing model, Col. Donald Brooks, commandant of SMDC’s Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence, said.

“Given the increasing dependency on space capabilities of the Army of the future, we realize that this is not enough and it’s insufficient,” Brooks said. “So, this ‘temporary space soldier’ … has proven not able or capable to meet current and future operational demands, and negatively impacts our ability to sufficiently answer the call in today’s operational environment.”

As part of the Army’s larger ongoing force structure transformation, the service plans to grow its space warfighting formations to include nine companies and 27 platoons. Those units will be the 1st Space Brigade, additional multidomain task forces (MDTFs) and new theater-level formations called theater strike effects groups (TSEGs).

Soldiers in the new formations will focus on providing space capabilities — such as satellite communications, missile warning, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — in support of ground forces operating at the tactical edge, according to Col. Peter Atkinson, principal space advisor at SMDC.

“What we’re seeing now is our formations requiring more of those low-density, high-demand skill sets. It’s incredibly difficult to maintain because they’re highly specialized,” Atkinson said in an interview with DefenseScoop on the sidelines of AUSA. “The training timelines for those are great. And so, when you’re looking at the human resources aspects of it, that piece is challenging.”

The Army has already established three MDTFs — two in the Pacific and one in Europe — and plans to activate two more over the next few years. According to the space vision, the MDTFs will be responsible for “employing Army space interdiction forces alongside cyber operations and electronic warfare enablers,” allowing them to destroy adversary space systems.

The service has already sent a provisional TSEG unit to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command to integrate into exercises and inform how SMDC will ultimately field the formation in 2027. The group was recently at Joint Warfighting Assessment 24 in Europe, during which the Army evaluated how the unit can augment the MDTF, Brooks said. 

“One of the great things with the TSEG is the counter surveillance [and] reconnaissance capabilities that are bringing navigation warfare, along with the high-altitude assets that it can bring to the fight,” he said. “And it really does build that, not only capacity, but build additional capabilities to shape and influence.”

SMDC is also “aggressively pursuing” the establishment of a military occupational specialty for non-commissioned officers specific to space careers, as well as an Army space operations branch comprising the enlisted cohort, its current functional area officers and a potential warrant officer cohort, Brooks noted. 

“We need an Army space operations career field and branch to produce and sustain the specialized, highly experienced and talented non-commissioned officer corps and officer cohort capable of integrating space across all warfighting functions and converging effects in support of maneuver operations,” he said.

Demand for new capabilities

As it grows the number of space personnel, the Army is also adding capabilities and equipment in alignment to the two new mission areas outlined in the space vision: integration with joint, coalition and commercial space capabilities, and interdiction against adversary space operations.

Atkinson told DefenseScoop it is imperative that the capability development and fielding is in line with the Army’s near-term growth plan for formations.

“Our goal is to make sure that they receive equipment as part of their activation, as part of their establishment,” he said. “So that alignment is what we’re focusing on right now, to make sure that we don’t have equipment on the shelf that could be waiting for a unit to be established, and then we don’t have units that are established without equipment.”

The service’s integration mission will include providing assured position, navigation and timing (PNT), deep sensing and reliable satellite communications, among others. While it keeps an eye on emerging technologies it can incorporate in the future, there are several prototypes for the integration mission the Army will field in the next few years, Atkinson noted.

A key challenge, however, will be scaling new space-based capabilities at relatively high volumes across the service. In many cases, the Army will require individual systems that can be fielded in the thousands — such as terminals needed for satellite communications, he added.

“The Army’s challenge with terminals is that we have too many, and it’s really hard to scale,” Atkinson said. “You’re talking about tens of thousands of individual terminals, each one unique to that satellite, that specific constellation — whether it’s military SATCOM, whether it’s commercial SATCOM.”

To mitigate delays in soldiers receiving new SATCOM capabilities, the Army is pursuing a hybrid terminal that can access multiple satellite constellations across orbital regimes. The service is hoping to leverage both military and commercial systems, Atkinson noted.

But for the Army’s new PNT capability, Atkinson said the fielding process is likely to be long. Developed by Collins Aerospace, the Mounted Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing System (MAPS) and the dismounted variant known as DAPS are designed to give soldiers assured PNT in GPS-contested environments.

The department started initial fielding of the capability during fiscal 2024, and plans to begin scaling the system across the service in fiscal 2025, according to Atkinson.

“That is a long fielding process. That’s hundreds of thousands of individual items that the Army continues to upgrade to make sure that we have sound PNT,” he said.

Atkinson also highlighted the Army’s prototyping efforts for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN), a ground station that will integrate data from multiple platforms across all domains to assist commanders in making sense of the battlefield.

The service awarded Palantir a $178.4 million other transaction agreement for TITAN in March, under which the company will deliver five “basic” and five “advanced” variants of the ground station over a two-year period.

For the Army’s space modernization efforts, the platform will give soldiers immediate access to space-based ISR at remote locations, Atkinson said.

“There is a tremendous amount of innovation happening with space-based ISR. We’re seeing it in commercial, we’re seeing it in industry and we’re seeing it across the [intelligence community],” he said. “So being able to harness that is going to be critical for the Army.”

The department has been more tight-lipped about specific systems it is developing for its interdiction mission, but they are considered offensive space control capabilities designed to deny adversaries the ability to use space for hostile purposes “by delivering necessary fires and effects at echelon to protect friendly forces from observation and targeting by counter-satellite communications, counter-surveillance and reconnaissance, and navigation warfare operations,” according to the space vision.

Atkinson said the service is trying to outpace emerging threats from China and Russia’s recent growth in the space domain. Although space control isn’t a new requirement, the threat is now pushing the Army to scale more tactical interdiction systems.

“The threat landscape has evolved significantly coming out of [counterinsurgency] and transitioning to great-power competition,” he said. “We have not been focused on a conflict with Russia and China, and when you look at their use of space capabilities, it really threatens our way of life, our way of war and our abilities.”

As the Army carves out its new role in the space domain, it’s working closely with the Space Force and others across the Pentagon to ensure there is no duplication of effort and that each service’s space capabilities complement each other.

“The Army’s not doing space for space,” Atkinson said. “There’s a direct requirement for the Army to protect its forces, to ensure that we can enable our moving maneuver and basic functions. And right now we can’t strip out all the requirements for space and cyberspace.”

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The service has been on a multi-year journey to develop its own high-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platform based on a business jet, somewhat unfamiliar territory for an organization that’s better known for employing ground systems, helicopters and small drones. The ultimate program — the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) — relied on several pre-prototype systems that were contractor-owned, contractor-operated to help determine certain needs and requirements.

Those tools included the Airborne Reconnaissance Targeting Exploitation Mission Intelligence System (ARTEMIS), the Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES) and the Army Theater-Level High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ATHENA) platform.

“Since we deployed ARTEMIS to the Pacific for its validation flights and then onward to [U.S. European Command] … what we’ve learned first and foremost is these are in-demand systems. When combatant commanders get them and Army theater commanders get them, they say, ‘This is a big key part of my collection strategy,’” Andrew Evans, director of the Army’s ISR Task Force, said in an interview Monday at the annual AUSA conference. “Knowing that we have the right type of system out there is very important. We’ve iterated on the system — so ARTEMIS, then ARES and then we’re about to deploy some ATHENA assets as well … We iterated it on these systems and optimize them to the point that we’re addressing theater commander collection requirements.”

Evans said one of the biggest lessons is that while bigger jets can fly higher and see farther — meaning they can collect much more data — the Army must ensure it has the right bandwidth on and off the aircraft.

“We started with insufficient SATCOM capability and then we upgunned that, so we’re in a better position there. We have learned how to optimize collection tracks as a result of this,” he said.

These platforms are necessary to achieve one of the Army’s top priorities: deep sensing. Top service officials have said a fixed-wing jet for ISR, separate from what the Air Force has, is necessary for the Army because it has specific requirements that must be met. As the Army plans to fight against more sophisticated adversaries over greater distances, it must be able to see and sense farther in the physical and non-kinetic realms.

Evans explained that when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, it was a wake-up call highlighting a potential peer competition engaging in larger-scale combat than what the U.S. military confronted during the Global War on Terror.

A subsequent study identified 19 large-scale combat operations gaps, with the first being deep sensing.

“We got our start as a result of what Russia did with Crimea and deep sensing. [It] was all about identifying what the threat was doing in the deep battle, because what happens in the deep battle is all shaping operations that affect what happens in the front end of the battle. We knew we had a significant gap in our capabilities, which is, how do we see into that deep space to affect what’s about to come at you 72 hours or 96 hours later? As a result of that, the Army started to double-down on this concept of deep sensing,” Evans said.

“HADES, the program itself, is just about how do we optimize deep sensing in organic ways for the Army? How does the Army ensure that it’s never caught by surprise? How do you see far enough in, with enough persistence to ensure that you’re informing commanders before they’re faced with the threat that they may not know is there?” he added.

The Army in August announced that it selected Sierra Nevada Corp. to serve as the lead system integrator for HADES, which will be the first Army jet and replace the RC-12 Guardrail. The eventual system will be government owned and government operated.

SNC will integrate a variety of sensors for communications intelligence, electronic intelligence, synthetic aperture radar and moving target indication onto a fleet of Bombardier Global 6500 business jets.

L3Harris filed a protest for the award in September.

Evans noted that one of the other key lessons from the pre-prototypes is how to employ these capabilities.

“One thing that’s unique about something like an ARTEMIS, ARES or ATHENA is you don’t fly them like the Guardrails that the Army used to fly. You can fly them in different ways, in different areas, potentially. And there’s different considerations for how you might employ a high-end system like that. We’re learning, our formations are learning, our soldiers are learning how to do that. Collection managers are learning how to employ these systems as a part of the bigger collection matrix in the theaters,” he said. “All of these lessons that we’re learning are being ported over into how we design HADES.”

The pre-prototype platforms can see three times farther, in some cases, than what the Army has been able to see before, Evans said.

“The idea that we can see three times further, that we can stay twice as long, that our mission availability rate — which is not something most people talk about, but we know when we go out to that jet it’s going to do its mission that day,” he noted. “When you operate an aging fleet of aircraft that the Army’s had with the with the old legacy fleet, we were successful if we could launch eight out of 10 times, 80% operational readiness rate. We say success is 10 out of 10. We’re seeing that every day with the jet.”

Given all these lessons, HADES won’t be what Evans termed a “cold start.”

“HADES is a five-year running start, so when we design the first HADES, it’s with five years of lessons learned. Some people say, ‘Hey, Army, how can you claim that you’re going to architect the HADES and then deliver within 24 months?’ Well, because really we’ve had five years of learning. We’re going to take that five years, architect in over the next two years and then deliver our first HADES by late ’26,” he explained. “We’ll continue to work on HADES. We believe we’ll deliver an initial prototype of HADES by late 2026. We’ll put it into what we call an operational test or user assessment at that point. We’re using the middle tier of acquisition approach for HADES, which means we’re using some flexible congressional authorities, which gives us a lot of room to move fast on this. We’re using an abbreviated [capability development document] as a requirements backbone. We’re moving fast.”

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As part of the Proliferated Space Warfighter Architecture (PWSA), SDA is developing both a missile tracking and custody layer comprising hundreds of small satellites that will be stationed in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and able to sense and track advanced missile threats. The custody layer will be the main sensing capability that conducts ISR — a role for which the Defense Department has traditionally relied on partners in the National Reconnaissance Office or commercial industry.

“Moving forward, we see there are a lot of niche missions where the fine line between what is the tracking mission and what becomes the custody mission starts to get blurred,” Tournear said during a media roundtable at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference. “If you’re going after more and more advanced, specialty-type missile systems, that’s tracking, but it can also be the custody mission.”

The Department of the Air Force has been working alongside members of the intelligence community to migrate some of its airborne moving target indication capabilities into the space domain. The Space Force this year received funding via the department’s new Quick Start authority to begin work for a program known as Long Range Kill Chains, a joint effort with the NRO to develop ground moving target indicator (GMTI) sensors and auxiliary payloads that will replace part of the E-8C JSTARS fleet.

SDA already has some programs underway that will experiment with fire-control solutions for address advanced missile threats, such as the experimental Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter (FOO Fighter) satellites and the Gamma variant of the Tranche 2 data transport layer, Tournear said.

While the agency does not have any near-term plans to work on a solicitation to industry for additional space-based ISR capabilities or programs, he added that it anticipates doing so shortly.

“In the future, we do see SDA building more sensing satellites to be able to do some of those niche missions that aren’t being done by others, to do that sensing aspect for some very, very hard targets and then be able to pull that into our transport layer,” he told reporters.

At the same time, SDA is gearing up to launch the first operational satellites within the PWSA in early 2025, Tournear said. The agency originally intended to put the Tranche 1 birds into orbit before the end of 2024, but it pushed the date back a few weeks due to supply chain problems experienced by some of the prime vendors’ subcontractors.

SDA is also adjusting its acquisition strategy for future tranches of transport and tracking satellites to allow more time for vendors to build their platforms. Previous contracts required industry to have systems ready to launch within two-and-a-half years of the contract date — a requirement that the organization is now extending to three years. Because of that, the agency has moved up when it plans to release solicitations for Tranche 3 PWSA satellites by several months, Tournear added.

“Two-and-a-half years for order to orbit is exceptionally difficult. I think that industry will get there, but it takes time to build up,” he told reporters. “Three years for order to orbit is what we’ve been seeing industry be able to do, even when they’re going as fast as they can.”

Updated on Sept. 17, 2024, at 8:10 AM: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that SDA has delayed solicitations for Tranche 3 PWSA satellites by several months. The agency has in fact moved up when it plans to release the solicitations. This story has been updated to reflect that.

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Under the contract, SNC will integrate a variety of sensors for communications intelligence, electronic intelligence, synthetic aperture radar and moving target indication onto a fleet of Bombardier Global 6500 business jets. The high-altitude ISR aircraft will replace the Army’s legacy RC-12 Guardrail enhanced medium reconnaissance and surveillance system, as well as the Airborne Reconnaissance Low aircraft — both of which have been in service for more than four decades.

“HADES is the centerpiece of the Army’s long-promised aerial ISR transformation strategy,” Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, said in a statement. “HADES allows the Army to fly higher, faster and farther, which directly impacts our ability to see and sense deeper, delivering an organic capability in line with the Secretary of the Army’s number-one operational imperative — deep sensing.”

SNC beat out an industry team comprising L3Harris, Leidos and MAG Aerospace to secure the contract award. The 12-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract is worth an initial $93.5 million and has an overall ceiling of $991.3 million, according to the Army.

The deal marks the second major contract award for SNC in 2024. In April, the company also won the Air Force’s Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SOAC) program to replace the service’s fleet of E-4B Nightwatch or “Doomsday” planes that can serve as mobile nuclear command-and-control outposts in emergencies.

In January, the Army awarded a contract to Bombardier Defense to transform one Global 6500 jet that would serve as a prototype for HADES, expected to be delivered by Oct. 1, 2024. The contract also included options to purchase two additional aircraft over a three-year period.

Since 2020, the service has developed a number of technology demonstrators to inform the HADES program, such as the Airborne Reconnaissance Targeting Exploitation Mission Intelligence System (ARTEMIS), the Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System (ARES) and the Army Theater-Level High-Altitude Expeditionary Next Airborne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ATHENA) platform.

The prototype efforts provided insights into platform and sensor performance, integration and data distribution, while also allowing the Army to better understand doctrine, training, personnel, facilities and sustainment efforts required for those systems.

Along with high-altitude, next-generation ISR capabilities, HADES is expected to be globally deployed within days rather than a period of several weeks that current aircraft are capable of. The Army has also said subsequent increment upgrades could allow the platform to host payloads to conduct electronic warfare, radio frequency-enabled cyber and launched effects.

“This is a great day for the continuing effort to modernize the Army’s aerial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection strategy,” Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition chief, said in a statement. “The thoughtful and disciplined execution of the HADES program strategy will deliver the transformational capabilities we need for the Army’s next-generation aerial ISR aircraft.”

Development of HADES is under one of the Army’s newest cross-functional teams focused on improving deep sensing, or the ability to see and sense targets over vast distances. The team has multiple efforts underway that will serve as foundational capabilities that can be iterated on over time. Those programs include the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) ground system, Terrestrial Layer System (TLS) family of systems, Theater SIGINT System (TSIGS) capability and the Multi-Domain Sensing System (MDSS) family of systems — which HADES is a part of.

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During a recent Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee hearing, Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter told lawmakers that the service plans to field the “first increment” of a resilient command, control and communications capability in 2027. The specific capability he was referring to is a C3 battle management system for moving target indication — one of two programs currently being funded by the Department of Defense’s Quick Start authority, an Air Force spokesperson told DefenseScoop in a statement.

“It’s a rolling timeline. In terms of that first increment of capability — probably in the 2027 time frame, I would say, if you were to talk about something at the level of a network capability,” Hunter said at the May 8 hearing in response to questions from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

Approved by the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act in December, the Quick Start rapid acquisition authority allows the services to begin development on new programs in some cases without a congressionally approved budget. Spearheaded by Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, the authorities look to address delays in modernization efforts caused by the often lengthy period of time between when the services submit their annual budget requests and when lawmakers pass appropriations.

The Air Force has confirmed that two programs have been initiated through Quick Start, including the C3BM system for moving target indication. The other is a resilient national GPS position, navigation and timing capability.

Both programs are considered classified, and the spokesperson declined to provide any additional details beyond Hunter’s comments during the SASC hearing.

The Air and Space Forces want to transition part of the ground moving target indication mission from radars on airborne platforms — such as the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) that was retired in 2023 — to those on space-based systems.

In its budget request for fiscal 2024, the Space Force kick-started a new program alongside the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called Long Range Kill Chains to develop ground moving target indicator sensors and auxiliary payloads to replace part of the E-8C JSTARS mission. Due to classification, the Department of the Air Force has not confirmed whether the moving target indication funded via Quick Start is directly related to the Long Range Kill Chain program.

While the services intend to move fast on deploying new moving target indicator capabilities, Hunter told lawmakers that fielding a fully realized networking system would still take time.

“If you start talking about really being able to do entire mission threads at scale, anywhere in the world, it’s going to be another few years before we can really say we’ve rolled that out to the warfighter,” he said.

In the meantime, Hunter emphasized that the department is incrementally deploying other “meaningful” networking systems prior to fielding the moving target indication system. According to his written testimony to Congress, there are over 50 ongoing programs across the Air and Space Forces dedicated to modernizing their networking capabilities in support of the DAF Battle Network — the services’ contribution to the military’s Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) concept.

For example, the Air Force delivered a cloud-based command and control (CBC2) capability to the Eastern Air Defense Sector in October, and later to the Canadian Air Defense Sector in January. The department plans to deliver more CBC2 systems to the Pacific, Western and Alaskan air defense sectors throughout fiscal 2024, according to the spokesperson.

The Air Force is also deploying Tactical Operation Centers-Light (TOC-L) kits to different locations around the world and integrating them into service- and joint-level exercises. Essentially mobile computers equipped with software and data-management applications, the kits generate air pictures for battle managers by integrating and fusing data from hundreds of feeds.

“Modernizing legacy systems to support modern day mission threads and horizontal integration across stove-piped platforms to close mission threads at speed and scale are areas that we continue to work through in order to deliver the DAF BATTLE NETWORK to the warfighter,” the spokesperson said. 

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