“The place where I think we should be moving faster is counterspace. We need to protect the joint force from the targeting and sensing that China, in particular, is fielding now,” Kendall said Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “And we need more effective and efficient ways of sending a single interceptor against a single satellite.”

Counterspace weapons are capabilities able to disable, destroy or disrupt space capabilities through physical, electronic or cyber means. Although the U.S. has kept details about the types of counterspace weapons it has in development or deployed behind closed doors, the Defense Department has routinely sounded alarms over adversary capabilities — such as China’s work on anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons.

Kendall acknowledged that the Department of the Air Force has done significant work to identify ways to address the problems posed by enemy counterspace capabilities but warned that much more needs to be done.

In its budget request for fiscal 2025, the Space Force allocated $37.4 million in research-and-development funds towards at least two counterspace systems. The first is the offensive Counter Communications System, a mobile electronic warfare device able to block adversary satcom signals. The second is the defensive Bounty Hunter system, which will geolocate satellite communications and detect electromagnetic interference on radio frequencies from allies and adversaries.

As Kendall prepares to depart from his role as secretary of the Air Force, he said there has been “very good progress” made in the last four years in initiating development and fielding for other space-based capabilities.

“We’ve largely moved to more resilient architectures, distributed communications [and] distributed missile warning,” he said. “We’re looking at sensing, we’re looking at [ground-moving target indication] capability moving there.”

With a new administration and leadership coming to the Pentagon when President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, Kendall emphasized the importance of prioritizing development of key space capabilities — including satellite communications, sensing, targeting and missile warning.

“Increasingly, we’re moving capabilities into space,” Kendall said. “The joint force is going to be very dependent upon space, and I think, quite frankly, the Space Force and space capabilities are going to be decisive in a future conflict, particularly with a peer competitor.”

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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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In the past, a service member specializing in air battle management had expertise that was tied to specific airframes — such as the aging E-3 Sentry airborne early warning and control aircraft and the E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (J-STARS). Some of these platforms will be phased out of the fleet in favor of more modern systems that will enable Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), a Pentagon-wide effort to better connect all the services’ sensors and shooters under a more unified network.

Brown, who has been tapped by President Biden to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emphasized that even with changes in platforms and concepts, the Air Force will still need experienced battle managers to work through missions.

“The thing we got to think through is how we restructure our organizational construct of putting that expertise in the right place,” he said Wednesday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “And whether it’s in the air control squadrons that do more of this versus them being tied to an airborne platform — those are the things we’re looking at to be able to make sure we’re putting that experience in the right place.”

In particular, Brown noted that the Air Force will have access to more space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data in the future as a portion of the E-8 J-STARS fleet is set to be replaced with a space-based Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI).

In the Space Force’s budget request for fiscal 2024, it is requesting $242.6 million to kick off the brand new program, known as Long Range Kill Chains. The initiative is intended to expand the GMTI capability to track surface targets in contested environments where current J-STARS platforms are unable to fly.

“Space-based GMTI system will provide actionable information on adversary surface targets to the warfighter through the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) as an integral part of Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept. The [Space Force] is working with the Air Force and the Intelligence Community (IC) in a complementary way to design, develop, and deploy space-based GMTI systems,” budget documents stated.

Adding more space-based surveillance tools will also likely create more observational data for officials to work with than previous platforms did, creating new aspects for the air battle management mission, Brown said.

“We’ve got to look at not only how we do the battle management asset, but also how we do the processing, exploitation and dissemination [of data] that’s associated with it as well. And that’s a paradigm shift. This is an area that we’ve got to be willing to change,” he said.

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