Speaking during his keynote speech at Space Symposium on Tuesday, Spacecom Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting outlined ongoing initiatives to deter and defeat adversaries. The efforts are framed by the combatant command’s new “elements of victory,” and include moves to operationalize new capabilities, develop new technologies and draft two new strategies — one focused on experimentation and another on AI and machine learning.

“Over the past year at U.S. Space Command, we’ve developed elements of victory: our best military judgement for what we think we need to win in a conflict,” Whiting said. “These five elements of victory are informed by lessons learned in other domains — from the best thinking across our Joint Force, exercises and modeling and simulation — and they tell us what we need for war-winning advantage and how we will win.”

Part of the initiative focuses on getting new capabilities for warfighters across Spacecom’s different mission areas. For example, Whiting said the command is working to operationalize a data-fusion system that can create a single common operating picture for missile warning and missile defense missions.

Announced last year as a pilot program to improve data-fusion capabilities, the effort looked to address Spacecom’s ability to digest and view space domain data from multiple systems on a single screen. Since initiating the program, the command has focused on developing a data integration layer for missile warning and missile defense systems and is now demonstrating the capability, Whiting noted.

“Now we’re moving forward with operationalizing this system and placing it on our [Joint Operations Center] floor,” he said. “In the coming months, we’ll be adding additional missions to that program.”

At the same time, Spacecom continues to support research and development of technologies to enable what it calls “dynamic space operations” — or the ability to quickly and continuously maneuver systems on-orbit in order to address emerging threats in that domain.

While the command has repeatedly stressed the need for more maneuverable satellites, the Space Force has put only small amounts of money into research for the capability — and whether or not that funding will continue in future years remains up in the air. Whiting stressed, however, that development of space maneuver capabilities is imperative for Spacecom, especially given recent advancements in China’s ability to freely move their on-orbit satellites. 

To support development, the command will co-sponsor an effort with SpaceWERX — the Space Force’s technology innovation arm — that focuses on sustained space maneuver, according to Whiting.

“We will soon be identifying 10 proposals for $1.9 million each in funding over a 15-month period of performance,” he said. “This effort will continue to invest in the most promising technology from commercial industry to help us solve the sustained space maneuver challenge, so we can bring this joint function to the space domain.”

Other Spacecom initiatives include the deployment of an additional next-generation mobile radar for space domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific; working with organizations across the Pentagon to field more agile command-and-control capabilities; and meeting new demands for offensive and defensive space control.

Along with additional technologies, Whiting said Spacecom is drafting two new strategies that will help the command better prepare for conflict in space. 

“To ensure we maximize our readiness for day-to-day operations so that we are ready for conflict, we are operationalizing the command’s first-ever experimentation strategy and artificial intelligence and machine learning strategy,” Whiting said. He added that the priorities for these strategies focus on space fires, operational space command and control, missile defeat effects, enhanced battlespace awareness, cyber defenses and the command’s business processes.

The post Space Command moves to support new capabilities, strategies for warfare in space appeared first on DefenseScoop.

The Defense Innovation Unit awarded a $32 million contract to Rocket Lab’s national security subsidiary, and SpaceWERX will award a $30 million deal to Colorado-based startup True Anomaly to provide technologies for the Victus Haze project, according to a release from Space Systems Command.

The U.S. military is looking for industry to demonstrate the ability to deploy a space vehicle within 24 hours of tasking and have the system ready for operations in less than 48 hours after it reaches the intended orbit.

Victus Haze is unfolding amid concerns about threats to U.S. satellites and their support systems from adversaries’ counter-space weapons — such as anti-satellite missiles, directed energy systems, electronic warfare and cyber attacks — as well as other spacecraft and debris.

The initiative also comes as the U.S. military is looking to the commercial sector for tech that could aid its missions.

DIU, headquartered in Silicon Valley, is partnering with the Space Safari acquisition program office and SpaceWERX on the effort.

“The commercial space industry is advancing at an unprecedented pace that will provide the Space Force additional options to quickly respond to adversary aggression,” Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough, Space Systems Command’s materiel leader for Space Safari, said in a statement.

The announcement about the contract awards came a day after the Space Force unveiled its new Commercial Space Strategy.

The two vendors tapped for Victus Haze will help prove out capabilities that could be used for future tactically responsive space operations “in direct support of urgent Combatant Command on-orbit needs,” Birchenough said.

Rocket Lab and True Anomaly “will both demonstrate their ability to build rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO) capable space vehicles (SVs) and command and control centers with a delivery target no later than fall 2025. Once the build phase is completed the mission will enter several successive phases to include hot standby, activation, alert and launch phases. While this is a coordinated demonstration, each vendor will be given unique launch and mission profiles,” according to the SSC release. “Both SVs will quickly begin operations after reaching orbit. Once on orbit, the operations teams will conduct a variety of scenarios to demonstrate [space domain awareness] and characterization capabilities.”

Rocket Lab will put its system into orbit using the company’s Electron reusable small launch platform launched from Wallops Island, Virginia or Mahia, New Zealand. True Anomaly’s vehicle will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California via a “rapid rideshare,” per the release.

“We recognize the significant opportunity to leverage the commercial space industry’s innovations to counter China as America’s pacing threat,” Col. Bryon McClain, SSC’s program executive officer for space domain awareness and combat power, said in a statement, adding that Victus Haze “will demonstrate, under operationally realistic conditions, our ability to respond to irresponsible behavior on orbit.”

Space Safari aims to begin delivering more advanced tactically responsive space capabilities for the joint force by 2026, according to DIU.

The post Rocket Lab, True Anomaly win contracts for US military’s Victus Haze project appeared first on DefenseScoop.

“Without engagement with [commercial industry], we don’t even know how to write the best requirements that we can. And so I would just ask that, don’t let the bureaucracy scare you,” said Col. Edward Ferguson, chief of Spacecom’s advanced warfighter capabilities and resources analysis division and director of the command’s Space Technical Analysis Group (STAG).

Speaking on Thursday during a panel at Fed Supernova, a defense technology event in Austin, Texas, Ferguson said that on many occasions the tech brought forth by a commercial space company wasn’t a solution or method Space Command had even thought was possible.

“A lot of times, my mind’s blown. Like, I didn’t even know I could ask to do that … I didn’t know that somebody had solved that problem,” Ferguson said. “Please, come show us what the realm of the possible is, because there’s a good chance that we didn’t even know we could ask for that.”

With the recent standup of the Space Force and restoration of Space Command, the Defense Department has sought to take advantage of the rapidly growing commercial space sector and break down bureaucratic hurdles that can stifle innovation.

Spacecom has a branch solely dedicated to industry engagement that helps the command write relevant requirements that can then be developed by the services, Ferguson said. 

“If we write requirements for ‘unobtainium’ — that doesn’t help anybody,” he said. “We have to be familiar with what the technology is that’s out there so that we ask for good requirements, valid requirements that we can give to [Space Systems Command] and they can go find stuff for us.”

The Space Force also has its own Commercial Space Office underneath its acquisition organization, Space Systems Command. The service can also tap into its innovation hubs dedicated to partnering with technology startups, such as AFWERX and SPACEWERX.

After rebranding the Commercial Space Office in April to focus on a broader range of missions, the office is now interested in tapping into the current commercial space market as well as creating new markets, Jeremy Leader, deputy director of the organization, said during the panel.

“It’s not just what we go out and buy commercially, but when we build things where we’re a monopsony or we’re the only customer, we build them in a manner that helps create a future marketplace where we can be one of many customers,” Leader said. “We just have to be very conscious about how we do that and not create barrier after barrier, but ensure that the barrier of entry is as low as possible across as many mission areas as possible.”

Leader pointed to in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing as one area where the Pentagon can be an early customer to a nascent commercial market. By getting those companies up and running now, the Space Force can help lay the groundwork for future on-orbit servicing businesses.

Accelerating space-based capabilities through commercial partnerships is imperative to maintaining space superiority as adversaries like China continue to proliferate their own technologies on orbit, Shawn Phillips, chief of the Air Force Research Lab’s rocket propulsion division, said during the panel.

“We have to really team with industry to deliver a capability now,” Phillips said. “That’s the only success we have right now.”

At the same time, it’s critical to find a balance between adopting capabilities that address current threats and developing future tools, he added. Gateway organizations like AFWERX and SPACEWERX are critical in cultivating technologies that will address mid- and long-term challenges, he said.

Despite the bureaucratic hurdles, Ferguson said all the organizations at Space Command and the Department of the Air Force are aiming to “make the solution as easy as possible.”

“Find the right commercial office — there are a bunch of them,” he said. “We’re all committed to solving this problem of [effective space order of battle and architectures]. And so if we don’t have the solution … we will point you in the right direction to be able to get that taken care of, because this is absolutely something that we can’t do on our own as the department.”

The post Spacecom plea to commercial industry: ‘Don’t let the bureaucracy scare you’ appeared first on DefenseScoop.

This envisioned technology incubator would be modeled after the Air Force’s premier innovation-driver, AFWERX — and other Pentagon-led organizations inspired by it, including SPACEWERX and DISAWERX.

Specifically, Section 6722 of the legislation would require the U.S. Director of National Intelligence to work with CIA and National Security Agency leaders to comprehensively assess “whether the [IC] would benefit from the establishment of a new organization to be known as ‘ICWERX,’ the mission and activities of which would incorporate lessons learned from AFWERX of the Air Force (or such successor program), the Defense Innovation Unit of the Department of Defense, In-Q-Tel, and other programs sponsored by the federal government with a focus on accelerating the adoption of emerging technologies for mission-relevant applications or innovation.” 

A report on that evaluation would be due to several congressional intelligence and defense-focused committees within roughly 6 months of the NDAA’s passage. 

Among other requirements, the assessment would need to include all the companies that have provided the IC with artificial intelligence capabilities over the last 5 years, a review of avenues for small- and medium-sized companies to provide such solutions — and whether the formation of ICWERX would “provide the intelligence community with greater access to innovative companies at the forefront of emerging technologies.”

Officials involved would also need to pinpoint “any areas in which the intelligence community lacks resources, authorities, personnel, expertise, or institutional mechanisms necessary” to incorporate “the technological innovations of emerging technology companies, including in software and hardware.”

Both chambers of Congress have approved this provision in the NDAA, which is currently awaiting President Biden’s signature.

The post Lawmakers question whether the intelligence community needs its own ‘WERX’ tech incubator appeared first on DefenseScoop.

The company was selected for a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project to help the Space Force fully unleash machine learning within its OSAM-aligned production environments, according to an announcement published Tuesday.

OSAM enables the building or repair of systems and components at the operational edge, on orbit. While predictive algorithms to support such processes can be built virtually anywhere on Earth, operationalizing those machine learning models in space is necessary to maximize their value.

“The whole point of this for them is to get to outcomes faster across a whole range of use cases,” Wallaroo CEO and founder Vid Jain told FedScoop in an interview on Monday prior to the announcement.

He explained that the enterprise platform his company has developed “facilitates the last mile of the machine learning journey.” In transportation, the last mile typically refers to the last leg of a process that moves people or goods from a specific hub to a final destination. 

“There’s all this incredible potential [for AI], but only in around 10% of use cases or examples do people realize it — and one of the big stumbling blocks is exactly that last mile,” Jain said. 

Most “machine learning journeys,” as he referred to them, begin with capturing, aggregating and cleaning data from multiple sources. Once that data is in good shape and usable, the next step is developing algorithms and models that identify patterns in it, assign probabilities, and then predict something based on that information. From there, the model needs to be integrated into existing product workflows.

“That turns out to be much harder than people expect — and then once you get that working, the reality of it is your data changes” over time, Jain noted. For that reason and others, adjustments need to be made continuously to keep up with altering patterns of data as they and the network evolve. 

“We’re focused on that. We’re focused on helping the machine learning and AI teams get their models into production, get them running very efficiently, giving them the tools to monitor the models and understand how effective they are, and giving them tools to quickly change and update the models as they need changing,” he added. 

The Air Force and several Fortune 500 companies already lean on the company’s platform, but this is the first time Wallaroo is working directly with SpaceWERX and its parent organization.

“The mission of the [Space Force] is to organize, train and equip Guardians to conduct global space operations that enhance the way our joint and coalition forces fight, while also offering decision-makers military options to achieve national objectives,” SpaceWERX Director for Science, Technology and Research Joel Mozer said in a statement. “To do this effectively, we must invest in AI and ML capabilities that can be deployed in the cloud at the edge. Wallaroo has demonstrated their AI/ML Enterprise Platform, and I believe this platform — with its uniquely modern, interoperable, and integrated architecture — is positioned exceptionally well to deliver game-changing capabilities” to the Space Force.

Executed in collaboration with Catalyst Campus (CCTI), the project could involve use cases spanning satellite life extension, on-orbit refueling, active debris removal, predictive maintenance, and the reuse of materials to underpin manufacturing in space, according to Jain.

“It’s an enabling technology that allows you to be bolder, allows you to do things you couldn’t do before,” he said. 

Wallaroo was launched in 2017 with support from investors that aimed to accelerate dual-use technologies for both the government and commercial sectors. In working with the Air Force and others more recently, Jain said he’s witnessed federal agencies increasingly become more strategically data-driven. 

“I think when we were looking at the topics that we were interested in about two years ago, machine learning was not as prominent. It was basically more data foundation-level. I think what’s changed in the last six months is we’re seeing a lot more requests — whether it’s Space Force, the U.S. military or even other parts of the government — we’re seeing a lot more around, ‘Hey, I’ve got some data scientists and I’ve got data, now what do I do?’” he said. “Which is where we come in. And so I think that’s only going to accelerate and I think there’s so many different use cases that we can help.”

The post SpaceWERX explores machine learning for on-orbit servicing, manufacturing appeared first on DefenseScoop.