The Thinking Agent for Logical Operations and Strategy (TALOS) tool is an AI-powered agent able to study and clone various spacecraft operations into a simulated environment of the space domain, according to a Slingshot news release. Members of the Space Force have already tested and used TALOS during training exercises, and the company is now looking at how the technology can assist the service even more.

“TALOS builds upon years of collaboration with the U.S. Space Force’s Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI) and Slingshot’s proven virtual environments,” Slingshot Aerospace CEO Tim Solms said in a statement. “It embeds AI agents that simulate realistic threats, optimize real-world operations, and support mission command decision-making with unprecedented speed and precision.”

The tool was built leveraging Slingshot’s behavior cloning pipeline, which allows AI agents to learn how to perform a task by directly imitating an example from the real world. According to the company, TALOS is geared towards replicating and simulating satellite tactics, including “representative behaviors, space warfare maneuvers and dogfighting strategies.”

“Once assigned a mission, TALOS evaluates its surroundings, reasons through potential strategies and tactics, and executes its objective within a simulated, physics-accurate orbital environment,” a company news release stated.

Although TALOS is relatively new, the Space Force’s 57th Space Aggressor Squadron — the service’s unit that provides simulations of adversary space systems that can be used during training — recently tested the tool during exercises. Guardians used TALOS to create realistic and adaptive simulations of enemy satellites and their behaviors, as well as during the planning phase of the service’s first Space Flag exercise.

As the Space Force undertakes a large effort to build out its training infrastructure under the Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI) program, service officials have highlighted capabilities like TALOS as important tools for modernization. OTTI is envisioned as a high-fidelity virtual environment that will rely heavily on AI-enabled capabilities that can automatically simulate threats to critical space systems.

The post Slingshot’s new AI-enabled tool helps Space Force train for satellite ops appeared first on DefenseScoop.

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.”

The post Space Force launches new unit structure to align acquisition, operational functions appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Over 700 Space Force personnel stationed at multiple military bases are participating in the exercise, where guardians will test and train on space-based capabilities to conduct orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare, cyber warfare and more. During the event, the service will present threat-informed scenarios simulating a fight with an adversary and allowing for troops to use operational military satellites — as well as commercial assets — to counter them.

“As the scenario increases in challenges and complexity, this gives our blue forces a thinking adversary to spar against,” Lt. Col. Shawn Green, commander of the Space Force’s 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, said Tuesday during a briefing with reporters. “Our goal is to create a relevant, realistic, informed threat replication for blue to fight through so that we can increase the probability of success in war.”

Resolute Space 2025 is part of the Department of the Air Force’s massive exercise known as Resolute Force Pacific (REFORPAC), intended to demonstrate the ability of both the Air and Space Forces to rapidly deploy against adversaries in the Indo-Pacific. It is a central piece of the DAF’s new Department Level Exercise (DLE) series that includes other major Air Force training events, such as Mobility Guardian and Bamboo Eagle, happening concurrently.

The Space Force’s exercise began July 8, and will feature guardians stationed at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, as well as Peterson, Buckley and Shriever Space Force Bases, according to the service. Other personnel stationed throughout the Indo-Pacific will also participate in Resolute Space 2025, which is slated to wrap up in early August.

To simulate enemy capabilities and attacks, Green said the Space Force created a mission planning cell that will synchronize fires across space-based orbital, cyber and electromagnetic warfare — presenting various moves and countermoves that guardians will have to fight through.

Resolute Space 2025 will also integrate with elements of the REFORPAC exercise, which aims to ensure the Space Force can effectively fight alongside the Air Force in the future.

“We are working to fuse our different mission areas with the time-phased scheme of maneuver as part of the larger scenario,” Green said. “We’re doing that by providing space electromagnetic warfare, orbital warfare [and] cyber warfare. And we’re using those types of activities to fuse into this large, globally integrated exercise for live, virtual, synthetic scenarios so that our training is realistic, relevant and challenging.”

Col. Jay Steingold, Resolute Space director, told reporters that the exercise also spans across other key mission areas — including space domain awareness; satellite communication; positioning, navigation and timing (PNT); intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); missile warning; command and control; and military-commercial integration.

Personnel will be able to use on-orbit space assets designed for training guardians, as well as satellites owned by commercial partners during the exercise, Steingold added.

“We have satellites that we are able to utilize to provide training for our U.S. Space Force guardians, whether that be an understanding of how they quote-unquote fly, or in terms of payload capacities and capabilities and general training on orbit,” he said. “We’re certainly leveraging our commercial partners and their capabilities — not only from their developmental standpoint, but also what they bring to bear in terms of cost savings.”

While the Space Force has held exercises in the past, those events were largely focused on individual mission areas and not at the scale of Resolute Space. Steingold said that while large-scale exercises are costly and time-consuming to plan and execute, participating in Resolute Space 2025 is imperative to improving the service’s capabilities, training and overall integration with the joint force and international allies.

“This is the opportunity to really dig in and find out if we have any weaknesses whatsoever, so we can fill them,” he said. “Whether it’s capabilities that our [Operational Test and Training Infrastructure] partners can bring from a training environments perspective, to actual warfighting capabilities that we need to take us further into the future to ensure the safety and security of the space domain.”

The post Space Force training for on-orbit warfare in inaugural Resolute Space exercise appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton has been selected to receive his fourth star and become the next vice chief of space operations, according to a notice posted to Congress.gov. If confirmed, Bratton would take over the Space Force’s No. 2 spot from Gen. Michael Guetlein, who was recently tapped to lead the Defense Department’s sprawling Golden Dome missile defense effort.

Bratton has been serving as the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs and requirements since 2023, where he has been responsible for the service’s overall warfighting strategies, system requirements and budget.

Prior to his current role, Bratton served as the first commander of the Space Force’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), which oversees guardian training, capability testing and creating operational doctrine.

As the Space Force’s vice chief, Bratton would assist Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman in leading the Pentagon’s smallest service and advocating for more resources. In recent months, the Space Force has been given a number of new responsibilities — from critical capabilities moving to the space domain to development of Golden Dome.

Bratton’s nomination confirms that Guetlein will not serve in a dual-hatted position as both vice chief of space operations and direct reporting program manager for Golden Dome. Trump announced in May that Guetlein would lead the DOD-wide effort, which seeks to build a comprehensive missile defense architecture for the U.S. homeland leveraging terrestrial- and space-based systems.

Meanwhile, Gen. Thomas Bussiere has been picked to serve as the next vice chief of staff for the Air Force, a second notice on Congress.gov stated. Bussiere currently helms Air Force Global Strike Command, and previously held a number of leadership positions within the service’s strategic enterprise during his career.

The Air Force has been without a vice chief since February, when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth removed Gen. James Slife from the position. Slife was fired alongside former chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown and former Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti.

If confirmed, Bussiere’s extensive experience with the Air Force’s strategic enterprise would be a welcome one as the service works to modernize all of its nuclear capabilities. While some efforts like the B-21 Raider stealth bomber are going relatively well, others like the LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program have been troubled by growing cost estimates.

Both nominees must be confirmed by the Senate to become vice chiefs.

The post Trump names vice chief nominees for Space Force, Air Force appeared first on DefenseScoop.

The capability — dubbed “Swarm” — is in nascent development, but envisioned as a multi-classification digital environment where guardians from various units can come together against simulated adversaries. According to Maj. Gen. Timothy Sejba, head of the service’s Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), early versions of Swarm were built for the Space Force’s primary mission planning and operational support exercise series known as Space Flag.

“The Space Flag that we just completed here about a month and a half ago, many of the threats that we faced were simulated in that environment,” Sejba said Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “You had crews from across the Space Force that were actually executing over a two-week period to understand how they would actually perform in the environment.”

Sejba noted that the environment is currently only available to STARCOM on-prem, and that the service is focused on delivering the “initial aspect of Swarm” by the end of 2025. At the same time, the Space Force is planning to move the capability to the cloud sometime in the next two years so it can scale the size and scope of its future training and test exercises, he added.

“We’re quickly building not only the red threats that we need to represent, but also all of the blue systems that are coming online over the next several years,” Sejba said. “Then we’re quickly moving it to the cloud so we can get to a distributed training capability that allows each of those guardian units to actually be able to [train] from their home stations, but do it over and over.”

That means guardians from multiple units in different locations can simultaneously train in the simulated environment and prepare for more complex threats, such as fighting against multiple adversaries at once, he noted. 

Swarm is part of the Space Force’s broader effort to modernize and build out its training infrastructure — a task that is both one of Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman’s top priorities and a significant challenge for the Pentagon’s newest service. The service’s flagship development program is the Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI), which seeks to combine digital, cyber and live-training ranges under one system.

Developing OTTI from scratch, however, has been a challenge. Sejba highlighted that while the other services have had decades to build their test and training infrastructures, the Space Force has only had a few years to do so.

STARCOM also recently divided the OTTI effort into two distinct paths, Sejba noted. One tackles the need for a distributed training capability that is being built out by Swarm, while the other focuses on developing a high-fidelity, realistic simulation environment — a system akin to the Air Force and Navy’s Joint Simulation Environment (JSE), which is used to train pilots for complex combat scenarios.

“Something like JSE is something that we will eventually need. I would argue we probably need it sooner rather than later so that we’ve got our own capability to do some of this high-end testing [and] training,” Sejba said. “When I explore something like JSE, in that kind of environment you can very quickly translate that to what that might look like for space and the kind of high-end training that you’d be able to do for guardians in the near future.”

Sejba acknowledged that a limited budget likely means it will be several years before STARCOM has a true JSE-like training environment, but the Space Force is in the meantime leveraging prior work done by the Air Force and Navy to develop the system.

“We know what it’s going to take to be able to adopt that environment,” he said. “We’ve done plenty of research to see if that’s the right environment for us to go forward with, and we certainly know what some of the other services need also from a space effects standpoint.”

The post Space Force developing new cloud-based digital environment for training appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Beauchamp began working for the department in 2015, and most recently served as the director of security, special program oversight and information protection within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force. In that role, he oversaw the Air and Space Forces’ highly-classified special access programs (SAP) and worked on insider threat mitigation.

But Beauchamp’s 29-year career spans across multiple positions at the Department of the Air Force, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). By and large, he either led or was involved in several critical events within the national security space — so much so that someone once described him as “the Forrest Gump of the national security world.”

“He goes, ‘You were kind of there in all the big happenings of your time of your career. You were right in the middle of all these things that were the big developments. Sometimes you were there in the background of the scene, and sometimes you were there front and center doing the thing,’” Beauchamp told DefenseScoop in an interview on July 3, his last day at the Pentagon, recalling how a colleague described his tenure.

After graduating from Lehigh University in 1992, Beauchamp was hired as a systems engineer for General Electric Aerospace’s programs with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He would eventually move to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) — the precursor to the NGA — after it was founded in 1996 as an operations analyst supporting work to collect imagery and targeting data in the Balkans during the Yugoslav Wars.

In 2000, Beauchamp became NIMA’s senior technical advisor for studies and analysis when he was 29 years old, making him the youngest person to be hired for a senior executive position within the agency since it was founded. Almost immediately, he was tasked with developing a congressionally mandated strategy that would convince the government to purchase imagery from commercial vendors.

At the time, the IC held a monopoly over space-based imagery and data, and the industry market was only just beginning to take hold. Beauchamp described the assignment as “trying to sell milk to people with their own cows.”

“Why would the NRO want to encourage the government to buy commercial imagery? They’re the judge to build and operate imagery satellites,” he said. “So I figured out what it would take in terms of investment to get industry to buy and build satellites sufficient to meet the government’s demands, because the national satellites were not meeting all of the government’s demand for mapping data.”

But after developing a business case for the strategy, Beauchamp said the government was largely opposed to implementing it. He decided to shelve the strategy after one final unsuccessful meeting held on Sept. 10th, 2001, he said.

“On the 11th of September, [Congress] called me up,” he said. “I’m in my office, we’re watching pictures of the [Twin Towers] smoking, and my phone rings and it’s the congressional staff saying, ‘You’ve got your money. Could you spend more?’”

Beauchamp’s $830 million plan was funded by one of Congress’ post-9/11 supplemental packages and created ClearView — the first program that allowed commercial companies to provide satellite imagery to the IC. Once U.S. forces had entered Afghanistan, Beauchamp also moved to purchase all of the overhead imagery of the country, he said.

“What we really wanted to do was make sure that this imagery that was being collected wasn’t being used by the Taliban to target our forces,” he said. “So I basically stitched a camouflage net made out of $100 bills over the country of Afghanistan in order to keep our forces safe.”

Today, commercially derived imagery is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Companies like Maxar, BlackSky and Planet Labs all have several lucrative contracts with the federal government to provide space-based data for national security, weather and other needs. 

“So this industry, would it exist? Maybe. But would it have blown up the way it did? Probably not, if we hadn’t done this,” Beauchamp said.

The next several years of Beauchamp’s career would be spent at the NGA in various roles focused on strategy and acquisition. In 2012, he began a joint duty assignment as the ODNI’s director of mission integration under then-Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper — a job he noted was one of the highlights of his career. During his second day on the job, U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, were targeted by militant groups, leading to the death of four American citizens.

Once Beauchamp’s team finished the assessment of the attack, he was immediately thrust into the fallout of the classified document leaks by Edward Snowden in 2013. His oversight led to a massive reform of the IC’s compartmented access programs and yet another overhaul of the government’s policy on commercial imagery.

“All of a sudden, now I’m convening people on the analytics side [and the] collection side, trying to figure out how to make up for the losses and capability that Snowden revealed,” he said. “And part of that is doing a reform of the IC’s compartmented programs, because they had way too many of them in overlap.”

Toward the end of his three-year assignment, Beauchamp started working with former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work on a “side project” focused on standing up a new organization to pivot the Defense Department away from counterterrorism operations in the Middle East and towards great power competition, he said.

Beauchamp’s time in the intelligence community came to an end in 2015, when he was picked to be the Department of the Air Force’s deputy undersecretary for space and director of the principal DOD space advisor. There, he had two critical tasks, he noted.

“One, I’m working with all the international relationships with other countries who want to cooperate with us in space,” Beauchamp said. “At the same, I’m trying to convince the Americans to shift from space as a sanctuary from which you provide services, to space as a domain for warfighting.”

At the time, the Pentagon was reluctant to expand operations in space out of fear of being the first to weaponize the domain. But Beauchamp argued that the idea wasn’t about weaponization, and instead protection of critical space-based capabilities.

“It’s almost like before then, we were deliberately not protecting them so as you didn’t look like you wanted to start something,” he said. “And I was like, ‘This is not an option anymore.’ The Chinese had already demonstrated they could shoot down their own satellites, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing to us?”

Part of Beauchamp’s work was to develop a plan for how the Pentagon could make its space systems more resilient — many of which have become central to the Space Force’s operations, he noted. And when the first Trump administration decided to stand up the Space Force, Beauchamp was at the forefront of the effort to convince officials to approve the new military service.

Beauchamp would then transition to the Department of the Air Force’s office of the CIO, first as its director of enterprise IT in 2018 and later as the deputy CIO in 2020. His main focus was preparing the DAF for transitioning to telework operations as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, as well as consolidating the department’s enterprise licenses and creating a plan for modernizing base-level infrastructure, he noted.

“The overall trend line was eliminating the county option of uniqueness that was taking place at every base, and replacing it with a core set of enterprise services that were provided centrally,” Beauchamp said. “Big things like moving to zero trust — you can’t do those things if every base and every two-letter has their own architecture independent of everybody else’s.”

Today, the DAF has a strong path forward on modernizing its IT infrastructure, but Beauchamp said the true challenge will be convincing the department’s major programs to rely on enterprise services instead of building their own networks.

“It’s going to allow them to consolidate and collapse multiple redundant networks and really reduce the amount of money we’re spending on sustaining all this infrastructure,” he said. “When you modernize those networks, you also improve your cybersecurity, because the more deviation you have, the more gaps are created between the different baselines and different versions of software.”

Moving forward, Beauchamp said he will be taking time off but is open to other opportunities in the future.

“I’m excited for whatever the next challenge might be,” he said. “I’m interested in talking to folks who do exciting things, and to see who needs somebody like me to solve big problems.”

The post Winston Beauchamp retires from federal service after 29 years at Air Force, IC appeared first on DefenseScoop.

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.”

The post Space Force awards Boeing $2.8B deal to deliver next-gen nuclear communication satellites appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Dubbed “Dragoon,” the satellite was one of the multiple payloads launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Monday via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the company’s Transporter-14 smallsat rideshare mission, according to SDA. The spacecraft is the first of 12 prototype satellites developed by York Space Systems under SDA’s Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES) program to go on orbit.

In 2022, York Space Systems received a $200 million other transaction agreement from SDA to develop and deliver 12 T1DES platforms that were slated for launch beginning in fiscal 2026. However, the company accelerated delivery of the first payload to prepare it for Monday’s mission “in response to an identified agency need,” York said in a statement.

“The Dragoon mission showcases exactly why our rapid mission delivery model matters,” Melanie Preisser, York’s general manager and executive vice president, said in a statement. “When SDA needed this capability sooner, we didn’t just accelerate, we delivered. That kind of responsiveness is what today’s defense posture demands.”

SDA did not provide many details about the specific demonstration that the recently deployed Dragoon satellite will conduct on orbit, but noted in a statement that the payload will enable “tactical data delivery to warfighter platforms to support capabilities like targeting, missile warning and tracking of advanced missile threats” and “support integration with tactical [SATCOM] system capabilities from low Earth orbit.”

Broadly, birds developed under the T1DES program will augment the Tranche 1 transport layer of the agency’s future mega-constellation known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) and inform requirements for future programs.

“T1DES will demonstrate mission payloads and configurations for potential proliferation through future tranches of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture in an effort to lower latency of tactical data delivery and enhance beyond line-of-sight targeting capability,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said in a statement. “We’re very pleased to see this prototype space vehicle launch four months ahead of the original T1DES baseline schedule and before the first launch of Tranche 1’s operational space vehicles.”

The PWSA is a planned LEO constellation comprising hundreds of satellites carrying data relay, communications, missile warning and missile-tracking capabilities that will be launched in increments — known as tranches — every two years. The first operational batch of PWSA payloads known as Tranche 1 were expected to launch in September 2024, but supply chain bottlenecks and recent leadership instability have forced the agency to push the mission to late summer 2025.

The remaining 11 T1DES satellites are on track to launch sometime in fiscal 2026, SDA said in a statement. Once deployed, the constellation “will conduct demonstrations and experimentation of TACSATCOM, advanced waveforms, and Integrated Broadcast Service (IBS) capabilities, which are key for future connectivity of joint warfighters around the globe,” according to the agency.

SDA is also pursuing a second batch of experimental birds for Tranche 2 of the transport layer — an effort known as Tranche 2 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T2DES). The agency intends to leverage its new vendor pool established by the Hybrid Acquisition for Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (HALO) program to contract the effort.

The post Space Development Agency accelerates launch of first experimental tactical SATCOM satellite appeared first on DefenseScoop.

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.”

The post Space Force receives first two units of Meadowlands offensive satellite jammer appeared first on DefenseScoop.

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.

The post Space Force taps BAE Systems for next phase of MEO missile-warning satellite program appeared first on DefenseScoop.