The firm, a Boeing subsidiary, was already on contract to deliver six spacecraft for the Missile Track Custody, or MTC, program, and the new order deal brings its total contribution to 12. The first batch of satellites is on track for delivery in 2026 and the company plans to deliver the second batch of satellites in late 2027, Lindsay Dewald, Millennium’s program manager for the effort, told Defense News.

“We have successfully demonstrated the maturation of our design in all of our review milestones to date, addressed technical concerns that the customer may have and are moving full force into the production and integration test phase,” Dewald said in an interview Tuesday. “The dedicated production line that we’ve stood up for MTC is something that enables us to add additional vehicles and be ready to deliver.”

The $386 million contract is less than the $509 million deal the company was awarded for the first six satellites. Dewald attributed that change to the efficiencies that come with increasing production quantities.

The new order follows Space Systems Command’s decision in May to oust RTX from the program. The company had been on contract to deliver three satellites but struggled to maintain cost and schedule performance.

Speaking Wednesday at SSC’s Space Industry Days event in Los Angeles, Col. Rob Davis praised the program’s quick response to RTX’s removal.

“When one of our two industry partners struggled with delivering on cost and schedule, we were able to quickly pivot and still maintain program progress by turning to the performing vendor,” said Davis, SSC’s program executive officer for space sensing.

The MTC program is one piece of the Space Force’s plan to make its on-orbit missile warning and tracking capabilities more resilient against growing threats from China and Russia. Today, those satellites either reside in geosynchronous orbit — about 22,000 miles above Earth — or in highly elliptical orbit beyond GEO. The Space Development Agency is also launching a fleet of more than 100 satellites in low Earth orbit, less than 1,200 miles above the equator.

Through MTC, the service plans to launch warning and tracking satellites to medium Earth orbit, located between 1,200 and 2,200 miles above Earth, where space sensors can observe a larger area. The Space Force expects to upgrade the satellites’ technology, launching new batches, or epochs, of spacecraft every few years. In August, the service issued a request for proposals for its second MTC epoch.

Millennium’s first 12 MTC satellites, part of Epoch 1, will carry an electro-optical infrared payload built by Boeing that uses advanced sensors to detect and track heat signatures from missile threats. The spacecraft will then use an onboard processing system to analyze that data.

Dewald noted that Millennium is working closely with its suppliers to ensure they can continue to deliver on schedule despite an increased buy from the Space Force. The second batch of satellites, she said, is a “build-to-print” design of the first six spacecraft, which means the focus will be on maintaining a steady production cadence.

“It’s really just continuing the production line — not only at our vehicle level but at our vendor level as well — to deliver on time,” she said. “It’s really building off the relationships that we already have with those vendors to continue to execute additional orders. And our vendors have been working hard to prepare for these additional orders.”

That milestone, according to the U.S. Space Force’s top intelligence officer, demonstrates the evolution and growth China’s space enterprise has undergone in the last decade. But for the Defense Department, the concern is as much about the mission of the spacecraft its adversary is operating as it is about the number of satellites.

“Those satellites are meant to sense, decide and track this force. And with extensively long shot ranges, they have created a formidable weapons engagement zone in the Pacific,” Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon said Oct. 16 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington.

Gagnon earlier this year described the rapid buildup of the People’s Liberation Army’s space capabilities as a “strategic breakout.”

“An adversary arming like this is profoundly concerning,” he said in May at a Mitchell Institute event.

For the Space Force, countering China’s advancements in space is a mission in and of itself, Gagnon told Defense News in an interview on the sidelines of AUSA. The service will need more funding to build the satellites and sensors that can see, track and respond to the PLA’s growing in-orbit fleet, he said. It will also need to craft a clear operational vision from the service that the joint force and international partners can coalesce around.

While the Space Force has made progress in recent years articulating its role within DOD and building partners with industry, the service can only move fast if it has funding to maintain existing capabilities and support new missions, Gagnon said. Nearly half of the Space Force’s $30 billion budget funds “joint force enablers” like positioning, navigation and timing, missile warning and satellite communications that are critical to operations across the land, sea and air domains.

The service needs more funding to maintain those capabilities, Gagnon said, but if it’s going to protect against and respond to aggression from adversaries like China, it needs to expand its space domain awareness and counter-space systems.

“We have to change the architectures and satellites we use today to make them more resilient and effective. But in addition to that, we have to add new missions,” he said. “The aerospace forces of the PLA want to attack our capabilities in space. It’s part of their operational design and doctrine and we expect that they will do it. That’s why they’re building those weapons.”

Air Force and Space Force leaders have been pushing for the service to have a larger share of the Pentagon’s budget. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense News in June that the service’s funding will need to double or triple in the coming years to support demand for space capabilities.

To garner more support from within DOD for its funding needs, the Space Force is drafting a more detailed “North Star” plan for how it will contribute to the joint fight over the next 10 to 15 years, Gagnon said. That force design work is happening now and will soon be led by the new Space Futures Command.

The plan will be informed by requirements from the other military services and will lay out what resources and capabilities the Space Force will need to meet those demands.

“We need that North Star, that plan, written so that they can see what our plan is and then be an advocate for us to gain additional money to make that a reality,” Gagnon said.

Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, told Defense News this summer that the first iteration of that plan should be completed in the fall of 2025.

The Space Rapid Capabilities Office in September awarded initial contracts to 20 small businesses who will compete for $1 billion worth of task orders over the next five to seven years.

The companies span a range of expertise. Aalyria, a spinoff from Google parent company Alphabet, develops software to help organizations manage satellite networks and builds laser communication terminals. A Colorado-based firm, Infinity, specializes in systems engineering. Omni Federal, based in Washington, D.C., develops cloud and cyber solutions.

Col. Greg Hoffman, who leads the Rapid Resilient Command and Control program, or R2C2, said being able to take advantage of the breadth of experience and specialization represented across those firms is important for a program that aims to build a more resilient, capable ground operations system.

“We honed in on this small business approach because they’ve got the right experts to team with us to deliver this satellite operations software that we need for dynamic space operations,” he told Defense News. “There’s so much talent that we’re able to tap into across these 20 companies.”

As U.S. Space Command eyes a future where satellites are designed to maneuver in space, the Space Force’s rapid acquisition team is working to ensure the service’s ground infrastructure is ready to operate those systems.

R2C2 builds on two previous Space Force ground programs: the Space RCO’s Ground Command, Control and Communications program; and Space Systems Command’s Enterprise Ground Services, or EGS, program. EGS in particular sought to bring together the Space Force’s many command and control systems, but its scope was too broad and its requirements too complex.

The service last year opted to narrow its focus in order to deliver the capability more quickly. The program is now focused on developing a system that can operate highly maneuverable satellites — a mission the service calls dynamic space operations.

The Defense Department has traditionally struggled to field ground systems on time, often launching satellites years before their operation segments are ready. Space Force acquisition executive Frank Calvelli has challenged the acquisition community to change that paradigm and field working ground systems ahead of the satellites they’ll operate.

Hoffman said Calvelli’s directive is top of mind for the Space RCO. The program’s use of commercial vendors and focus on Space Command’s real-time operational needs make it different from legacy acquisition approaches, he said.

R2C2 is structured to release new capabilities on a regular cadence — weekly and sometimes monthly, Hoffman said. Startups and small firms are created around a rapid delivery mentality and tend to be unburdened by large overhead and corporate processes. That mindset aligns well with the Space RCO, he added.

“What we want to do is really focus on delivering the software . . . and get it into the hands of testers and operators for that feedback,” Hoffman said. “Being able to work with the developers and the testers and operators is really critical to delivering this sort of nascent capability and doing it on the timelines that our senior leaders expect.”

Early milestones

The program has already logged several successes since it took shape in the summer of 2023. The Space RCO was able to use some existing agreements with small vendors to develop a prototype, which means it didn’t have to wait to get started. That work helped the team prepare its technical approach and its strategy for working with a cohort of commercial companies rather than a larger prime contractor.

The Space Force’s long-awaited commercial space strategy offers near-term action steps to improve the way it procures private-sector space capabilities.

Within the first three months, R2C2 received authority to operate for its commercial cloud capability — a process to validate a program’s cyber approach that often takes two or more years to complete. That early approval allowed the team to start pushing software code quickly, Hoffman said.

The program also demonstrated the ability to load its satellite operations suite into the commercial cloud environment, which it used to simulate operations and then establish a limited connection with a satellite in orbit. That work culminated in August when the program used its prototype to send 11 commands to the satellite, which the spacecraft acknowledged.

Now, with its R2C2 vendors on contract, the Space RCO is working to acclimate them to the program’s requirements — and the DOD environment — so they’re ready to compete for future work. Hoffman said he expects to start issuing delivery orders this fall and winter with the goal of providing multiple opportunities for competition each year.

Over the next year, the focus will be on scaling the capabilities the team has already developed so that R2C2 can start to integrate satellites in the spring time frame. Hoffman wouldn’t identify which satellite programs would be first in line, but noted that they are existing systems that fall within the dynamic space operations mission.

Eventually, the program’s focus will shift to partnering with new programs and ensuring that its schedules are aligned so the satellites can integrate as soon as they’re ready.

“We’re going to line up with their timing,” Hoffman said. “When they need a ground system, we’re going to be ready for all their ground test campaign and pre-launch readiness activities and then for their on-orbit operations.”

The Boeing-built spacecraft has functioned as a testbed for Pentagon and NASA technologies since 2010. The spacecraft’s current mission, OTV-7, began in December with the goal of experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies.

While many details of the mission are classified, the Space Force offered a rare glimpse into the X-37B’s latest endeavor in a press release Thursday, revealing that the spaceplane is preparing to conduct what’s called an aerobraking maneuver.

Although it’s a new move for the X-37B, aerobraking has been used by NASA and other space agencies for years. The technique involves a series of passes that rely on the drag of Earth’s atmosphere. If successful, it will allow the X-37B to change orbits using minimal fuel.

US Space Force sends X-37B craft on another secretive mission

“This first of a kind maneuver from the X-37B is an incredibly important milestone for the United States Space Force as we seek to expand our aptitude and ability to perform in this challenging domain,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in a statement.

The spacecraft will use the aerobraking maneuvers to change its orbit around Earth and dispose of its service module before completing its test mission. The Space Force didn’t provide details on when it expects the spacecraft to return to Earth.

U.S. Space Command has identified a growing need for what it calls dynamic space operations, or the ability for satellites to maneuver away from threats or toward objects in space that operators may want to observe more closely. That’s a departure from today’s spacecraft, most of which are designed to remain in a specific orbital position throughout their service life.

As a result, existing spacecraft have a finite amount of fuel and their gas tanks aren’t meant to be refueled in orbit. The Space Force is pursuing options for new spacecraft designs that include larger fuel tanks and ports for refueling or maintenance, as well as additional spacecraft and other in-orbit infrastructure to provide those services.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the X-37B maneuvers could have significant implications for how the Space Force navigates the environment in the future.

“This novel and efficient series of maneuvers demonstrates the Space Force’s commitment to achieving groundbreaking innovation as it conducts national security missions in space,” he said.

Michelle Parker, vice president of Boeing’s Space Mission Systems said tests like this are “critical” to future space operations.

“There is no other space platform as capable, flexible and maneuverable as the X-37B, and its next demonstration will be another proof point that this test vehicle sets the pace of innovation,” she said in a statement.

The European Space Agency’s Hera mission, to which defense firms Thales and Leonardo contributed technology through their joint venture Thales Alenia Space, took off from Cape Canaveral on Monday riding on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission will study the results of a NASA experiment that was humankind’s first attempt at deflecting an asteroid.

About 30,000 asteroids measuring 100 to 300 meters travel the solar system in orbits that bring them relatively close to Earth, with one such space rock hitting the planet every 10,000 years, according to Thales. The impact of such an asteroid would be equivalent to an explosion of around 50 megatons, equal to the Soviet Union’s Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever tested.

“We currently know of more than 35 000 asteroids that come close enough to Earth for us to keep an eye on,” ESA wrote in post on X, formerly Twitter. “Hera is part of the international effort to answer the question: Could we do anything if we spotted one on a collision course?”

The Hera mission will investigate the result of NASA’s asteroid redirection test, in which the U.S. agency rammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022 to test planetary defense capabilities. Hera will reach the binary asteroid system that includes Dimorphos in October 2026, and gathering close-up data may help turn NASA’s kinetic impact experiment into a potentially repeatable planetary defense technique, Thales said.

Mid-sized asteroids are the ones to worry about, as their impact would be devastating for a populated area, capable of destroying an entire city or create a tsunami, according to Thales. Binary systems, a term describing pairs of two orbiting each other, account for around 15% of all known asteroids, but none have ever been studied in detail, ESA says.

“Hera will provide valuable data for future asteroid deflection missions and science to help humanity’s understanding of asteroid geophysics as well as solar system formation and evolutionary processes,” SpaceX said in a post on X.

Thales Alenia Space provided the communications subsystem for the Hera mission, allowing ESA to track and control the spacecraft from a distance of up to 500 million kilometers away, Thales said. The joint venture also supplied the power unit.

ESA plans to build on the experience acquired with Hera for its future Ramses mission, which needs to launch in 2028 for a rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis, which will pass within 32,000 kilometers of Earth in April 2029.

“If we did detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, a reconnaissance mission like Hera or Ramses would likely be launched as soon as possible to precisely determine the object’s trajectory and rule out a false alarm,” ESA said on X.

Such as mission would also measure the asteroid’s physical properties, which would be essential to determine when and where, and with what power, a deflector mission would need to hit the asteroid to safely divert it away from Earth, according to ESA.

The service awarded Impulse Space a $34.5 million contract for two maneuverable spacecraft on Oct. 4. The company’s Mira space vehicle, which flew for the first time last year, can host multiple payloads and transport them to different orbits.

The Defense Innovation Unit and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory will provide payloads for the missions. A Space Systems Command spokesman told Defense News that the timing is still fluid, but both missions are slated for summer or fall of 2026 as part of a tactically responsive space demonstration series.

The Space Force defines tactically responsive space as the ability to react quickly to the threats that come from operating in an increasingly congested and adversarial space environment. That could mean launching satellites on short notice, maneuvering a pre-positioned, spare spacecraft to augment a degraded system or buying data from a commercial vendor during a crisis.

Since 2021, the service has conducted two tactically responsive space missions, and it’s planning a third in 2025. A demonstration last year, dubbed Victus Nox, showed that the service could work with satellite and launch companies to deliver a spacecraft in a matter of months and launch it with just 27 hours of notice.

The 2026 missions will focus less on satellite and launch vehicle delivery timelines and more on in-space operations.

The first mission, dubbed Victus Surgo, will launch into low Earth orbit on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Impulse’s Helios high-energy kick stage, which will fly for the first time on this mission, will then transfer the Mira spacecraft to geosynchronous orbit.

DIU will co-sponsor Victus Surgo, and the mission will feature one of its payloads.

The second demonstration, Victus Salo, will fly to low Earth orbit carrying an MIT-built payload. SpaceX will launch the spacecraft as part of a rideshare mission.

“Both missions will incorporate a modular interface to reduce the time and effort it takes to integrate and test new payloads to space vehicles,” Space Systems Command said in a statement. “Once on orbit, the two spacecraft will be able to quickly conduct space domain awareness missions using a precise, high thrust and high delta-V propulsion capability.”

The rocket flew from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida early this morning. The flight was previously slotted to carry Sierra Space’s space plane, Dream Chaser, but development delays changed those plans. Instead, Vulcan flew a dummy payload and conducted several engine demonstrations and experiments as part of the mission.

ULA CEO Tory Bruno called the mission “nominal” during a launch webcast, though he noted there was an “observation” related to a solid rocket booster that the company will look into.

ULA is owned by defense giants Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Along with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, it’s one of two companies with rockets cleared to fly national security space missions for DOD and the intelligence community. The company is in the process of replacing its legacy Atlas V and Delta IV vehicles — longtime workhorse rockets for the U.S. government — with the more powerful Vulcan.

That process requires ULA to complete two certification flights of its new rocket, the first of which went off without a hitch in January. Following today’s launch, ULA will collect data from the mission, perform its own analysis and then hand that package off to the Space Force, which will conduct its own review. The service will then compare the data and decide whether to certify the rocket.

Bruno told reporters Oct. 2 that if the Space Force deems it a clean mission, the data analysis process will take a matter of weeks to complete and final certification should follow soon after.

Maintaining that timeline is important both for ULA and the Space Force as the company is scheduled to fly two military missions before the end of the year. One of those, USSF-106, includes an experimental spacecraft called Navigation Technology Satellite-3 that will demonstrate capabilities to augment the service’s GPS constellation.

The second mission, USSF-87, is a classified Space Force launch.

“We do need to certify to support our national security space customer who has missions that are relatively urgent,” Bruno said.

Those two missions will lead ULA into a busy year of launches. Its Vulcan and Atlas V rockets are manifested to fly a combined 20 commercial and Defense Department missions in 2025. Bruno said he’s confident in the company’s ability to meet that challenge, highlighting a slew of construction projects underway to expand its launch and manufacturing capacity.

“My infrastructure is coming together, and I feel really great about that. And, you know, the factory’s crushing it,” he said. “Having said all that, yeah, this is a big deal. This is a big increase in launch rate for us, and there’s a lot of work to get done.”

ULA has spent between $5 billion and $7 billion to develop Vulcan and another $1 billion to build the infrastructure to support it, according to Bruno. The rocket was supposed to start launching military missions in 2022, but faced a series of setbacks, including development and testing snafus involving its BE-4 engine, built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin.

Those delays have put at least two military satellite launches on hold, causing Space Force officials to question whether ULA can manage a projected uptick in the military’s launch cadence. In May, Frank Calvelli, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, sent ULA a letter relaying those concerns and calling for Lockheed and Boeing to pull together an independent review team to review ULA’s readiness.

The team started its work in June and Bruno said it has since finished its review. He said the review yielded “great suggestions” but largely confirmed that ULA is “on a very solid track to ramping up and meeting all of our obligations and plans.”

The review team is in the process of briefing Lockheed and Boeing leadership as well as the Space Force, so Bruno wouldn’t discuss the findings in detail. But he said the process identified new tools the company could use to improve production and operational planning and management and offered ideas to improve resilience.

“Everything they brought to me as recommendations I thought were great ideas, and I plan to do them,” he said.

The partnership is part of Anduril’s vision for an expanded defense space portfolio. The company — which has, to date, largely applied its software and autonomy expertise to other domains — announced in September it plans to build and launch its own spacecraft by late 2025.

Gokul Subramanian, the company’s senior vice president of space and engineering, told reporters Anduril’s focus will largely be on developing payloads and software that are tailored to meet national security requirements. Its deal with Apex is one of several the firm will reveal in the coming months.

“We believe that the US government needs more options to protect our interests in this domain, and that means bringing forward new players, innovative players like [Apex], into this domain,” he said. “This is the first partnership of many that we intend to announce.”

Apex flew its Aries satellite bus for the first time in March, hosting an Anduril-built mission data processor as part of the demonstration. Following the successful launch and initial operations, Anduril chose the firm as its first bus partner.

Subramanian said Apex’s ability to rapidly build satellite buses will help Anduril respond to national security requirements for large constellations of satellites that can track activities in space, process data and send that to users on the ground.

“Our focus is on missionized systems, software, unique payloads — all of those things. That’s where we’re putting our investment,” Subramanian said. “We’re partnering with bus providers like Apex to deliver the bus as part of that system.”

Both Anduril and Apex plan to compete for military missions, including the Space Development Agency’s low Earth orbit missile tracking and data transport constellations.

Apex CEO Ian Cinnamon said SDA’s mission to deliver satellites on faster timelines and at lower price points is “directly in line” with Apex’s focus on rapid bus production.

“We build buses ahead of time, we hold them on inventory and when the payloads are ready, we’re able to integrate them . . . in a matter of weeks instead of years,” he said.

The satellites are designed to comply with U.S. government standards that require operators to remove spacecraft once their missions have ended. But SDA wants to have a backup plan and this week brought on six companies to study commercial options for dealing with defunct satellites in a sustainable way.

“SDA believes industry has concepts and business models to support commercial on-orbit servicing, to include assisted disposal operations, but that no such product or service yet exists,” the agency said in a statement Thursday.

SDA chose Arkisys, Impulse Space, Quantum Space, Sierra Space, SpaceWorks Enterprises and Starfish Space, awarding them a total of $1.9 million to study the issue. The firms will conduct 90-day feasibility assessments, considering the technical trades and engineering requirements for on-demand satellite de-orbit services.

The companies are all developing solutions for debris removal. For example, Maryland-based Quantum Space is designing a platform called Ranger that, among other services, can move a satellite to an inactive orbit. Arkisys, based in California, is building a commercial “port,” which it envisions as a space-based business platform to build satellites in orbit. The port, the firm says, could host orbital transfer vehicles used to de-orbit or dispose of inactive satellites.

SDA Director Derek Tournear said in March that while a commercial service designed to deal with defunct satellites isn’t available today, SDA is interested in the prospect and wants to better understand the business models these companies are proposing.

Not only could the capability serve as a tow service for SDA, but it could allow the agency to shift to lower-cost designs for its satellites and eliminate requirements for certain backup systems that take up space and increase a spacecraft’s weight.

“I want to be able to take more risks on my satellite, not have redundant propulsion, things like that,” Tournear said. “There’s several companies that are working on that, and I hope they’re successful.”

Commercial use of space now dwarfs the military, with thousands of new satellites joining potential menaces such as Russia’s roving Luch Olymp inspector satellite. Defense firms including Safran and space-data specialists such as True Anomaly and Vyoma see an opportunity to help defense departments adapt to the ever-growing volume of extraterrestrial activity, they said at an industry summit in Paris last week.

The number of active satellites in orbit has more than tripled in just four years, according to European Space Agency data. Most of the new space activity is happening in low Earth orbit, where agile spacecraft zip around at 27,500 kilometers per hour, while much of the surveillance by Western militaries is built on systems adapted to decades of tracking relatively static geostationary orbits.

“Space is becoming more and more challenged, more and more competitive, and we have to prepare for problems in the future,” Gen. Philippe Adam, the head of French Space Command, said at the Space Defense & Security Summit on Sept. 17.

In response, France’s Safran is adding ground stations to track satellite radio emissions, German firm Vyoma expects to launch its first telescope into low Earth orbit next year for visual reconnaissance, while Colorado-based True Anomaly in April won a U.S. Space Force contract for a maneuvering satellite that can take a close look at potential adversaries in various orbits.

Governments spent $58.4 billion on space defense and security in 2023, with $40.2 billion contracted to industry, according to industry consultant Novaspace, which organized the summit. Spending included $4 billion for space-domain awareness.

Space is “more and more congested and contested,” said Maj. Gen. Brian W. Gibson, director for plans and policy at U.S. Space Command. “It’s important for all of us, like any other domain, to make sure we don’t lose sight of our military responsibilities for protection and defense.”

Earth has around 10,200 active satellites in orbit, from around 3,000 in September 2020, according to an ESA count, with companies including SpaceX and Amazon planning many more. That’s in addition to more than 40,000 pieces of space debris circling Earth big enough to blast apart your typical satellite.

U.S. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said last week space-domain awareness and counter-space capabilities are critical needs that require more resources in fiscal 2026, while the head of U.S. Space Command Gen. Stephen Whiting said Wednesday that current space tracking is insufficient for future conflict with countries fielding advanced space capabilities.

The U.S. is the biggest spender on space defense and security with $38.9 billion, followed by China and Russia, and France trails in fourth place with $1.3 billion, Novaspace says. Yet whereas defense dominated the first three decades of the Space Age, military payloads now make up a fraction of the total, according to the ESA data.

The European Union expects 50,000 more satellites to be launched in the next decade, mainly into low Earth orbit, or LEO, as cheaper rockets and the development of nanosatellites have made space accessible even to startup firms and universities. That only heightens the challenge of tracking space traffic and spotting bad actors, military leaders at the summit said.

The lack of a full picture of space and the absence of regulation create a “really, really high” probability of miscalculations that could potentially lead to crisis or even war, said Maj. Gen. Isaac Crespo Zaragoza, chief of staff of Spain’s Space Command. He said developing some degree of space awareness is a priority for the service.

“We have no map of space, it’s a drama for the military,” said Col. Ludovic Monnerat, head of space domain for the Swiss Armed Forces.

There’s so little available space-awareness data and so much demand that the market exceeds supply, according to Vyoma CEO Stefan Frey. His company will initially focus on tracking objects for military customers, before expanding beyond defense as its fleet grows to 10 or 12 satellites, Frey told Defense News.

The “new, very dynamic world” of agile satellites no longer allows for planning to take days, and the amount of unpredictable debris in orbit means the latency of observations needs to be reduced dramatically, Frey said. Vyoma will be able to spot most LEO objects every 45 minutes once its constellation is in place, according to the CEO, who said European militaries right now might be receiving observations every four to eight hours.

Space awareness is key to security and stability, and “clearly an area that needs to be invested in,” according to True Anomaly CEO Even Rogers. He expects a future where optical, radio and radar data from space and on the ground is fused into a “rapid, real-time picture of the environment so that operators can make good decisions.”

The challenge of low Earth orbit is the fast speed at which objects move, meaning reaction times of even two hours might be too slow, compared to maneuvers in geostationary orbit that might be planned days in advance, said Philippe de Mijolla, Safran vice-president of sales and marketing for satellite communications and space awareness.

Safran is expanding its network of ground-based radio antennas tracking geostationary objects to add data on low Earth orbits, the executive told Defense News. The company has been gathering experimental LEO data for nearly two months, and expects to start selling the data as part its WeTrack service early next year, he said.

Safran is growing the tracking network to 125 stations from 94, spread across France, the U.S., Thailand and Australia, though de Mijolla said he’ll happily ask his board to fund additional antennas if demand is there.

Militaries have to work with civilian and commercial operators to keep track of it all, according to Adam. “Their concern about security and safety is exactly the same as ours,” the general said. “Civilian or commercial integration is an essential part of our discussions right now.”

Civilian operators require better space-domain awareness to call out unacceptable behavior in orbit, from persistent jamming to a cyberattack or a close approach, said Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, head of government strategy and policy at commercial operator Viasat, which faced of a cyberattack by Russia in February 2022 just before the invasion of Ukraine.

Switzerland’s Monnerat said space needs rules of behavior, and those endangering functionality and safety of orbits should be named and shamed. Safran’s de Mijolla said the ability to attribute hostile actions in space will be an active deterrent that can hopefully prevent conflict there, “something we all want to avoid.”

Governments already rely on industry for space awareness and response, with the U.S. awarding contracts to True Anomaly and Rocket Lab USA in April for rendezvous and proximity operations. Safran provides its radio-frequency monitoring data to countries including France, the U.S. and Switzerland.

France last week turned to local nanosatellite builder U-Space as a partner for two satellites in low Earth orbit, one to provide detailed data on nearby objects and another able to target them. That follows a contract for France’s Hemeria to build the Yoda patroller satellite for geostationary orbit. “We need to be up there to see what’s happening,” Adam said.

Orbital threats include multiple rendezvous and proximity operations, not only by Russia’s Luch Olymp, but also others, said Philippe Rosius, head of the Galileo Security Monitoring Centre within the EU Agency for the Space Programme. And there’s a daily threat of natural or man-made debris in space that threatens satellites, he said.

China and Russia are able to deploy anti-satellite weapons, while India and others have the capacity, Rosius said. Russia’s test in 2021 using a missile to destroy one of its own satellites generated more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital junk that may remain in orbit for decades, according to U.S. Space Command.

Kinetic weapons are the most dangerous and risk creating an unsustainable space environment, which is why the U.S. and some its allies have committed to not testing them there, said Rogers at True Anomaly. “You can’t win so well that you screw up the domain for future generations.” Adam said France wants to avoid putting kinetic weapons in space that would risk creating debris.

The EU in March presented the bloc’s first-ever strategy to protect its space assets, highlighting a need for near-real time monitoring and better capability to identify and attribute threats, citing the “highly political” nature of attributing a menace to a third country and deciding on a response.

“This is really key, to understand these threats, before being able to mitigate them and to take actions to continue operating in space in a safe and secure manner,” Rosius said. “Threats against the space system and the space environment will not cease, and will increase in the coming years. So we need to be ready to continue protecting our critical infrastructure.”

Those capabilities will be crucial to military operations, Whiting said, as both Russia and China have tested and built weapons that could threaten U.S. space operations in the near future. He pointed specifically to Russia’s development of a nuclear space weapon and China’s recent launch mishaps that have created a cloud of debris in low Earth orbit.

“We must heed the clear signals from our strategic competitors,” Whiting said Wednesday in a speech at the Defence Space Conference in London. “When someone tells you what they are preparing to do, believe them. We must prepare accordingly to safeguard our collective interests in space.”

The Space Force, which is responsible for developing and buying capabilities to meet Space Command requirements, has a number of efforts underway to help operators better characterize and track objects in orbit — whether it’s a debris field or an adversary satellite or weapon. The service today relies on the more than 50-year-old Space Defense Operations Center for this mission but plans to replace that capability by the end of next year.

On the maneuverability side, the service is crafting a strategy for how it will build and buy the capabilities needed to support more dynamic space operations. That could mean partnering with commercial companies to refuel a spacecraft or provide a propulsion boost that allows it to travel into non-standard orbits to track an enemy satellite. Space Systems Command, the Space Force’s primary acquisition hub, is planning a refueling demonstration in 2026.

Whiting said current space tracking systems are “insufficient” for future conflicts with countries who have advanced military space capabilities. And while industry has demonstrated some promising capabilities for dynamic space operations, he said the military needs such systems as soon as possible.

“We need these systems delivered on accelerated timelines, at scale,” he said. “Now is the time for all of us to work together across our nations and organizations to identify solutions that deliver national capability by 2027.”

The service’s acquisition arm, Space Systems Command, chose L3Harris, Astranis, Axient and Sierra Space to create design concepts for the program. From that pool, it will select a subset to finalize their designs and build prototypes and then will pick one or more firms to build the first eight satellites. Command officials wants those spacecraft to be ready to launch by 2028.

The Pentagon has become increasingly concerned about GPS signals — used to guide weapons and help units navigate — being jammed or spoofed by adversaries. Russia has taken advantage of this vulnerability in Ukraine, using electronic warfare to jam signals on a regular basis.

The Resilient GPS program, or R-GPS, is meant to augment the Space Force’s current constellation of GPS satellites with a fleet of smaller spacecraft that will transmit a set of signals widely used by the military and civilian agencies.

The service used an accounting tactic provided by Congress to shift funding from elsewhere in its budget to award initial contracts. Known as a quick-start, the transfer authority came in the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, allowing the Defense Department to reprogram up to $100 million in funding to start high-priority programs before they are approved as part of a formal budget cycle.

“Thanks to the Quick-Start authority that was approved by Congress, we were able to field and award contracts for these low-cost satellites in less than six months,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a statement. “This authority allows us to move faster and start new Space Force and Air Force programs.”

The early funding has allowed Space Systems Command to conduct market research, host an industry day, release a solicitation and award the first round of contracts in less than six months.

The Space Force did not disclose the value of those awards. However, it has told Congress it expects the program to cost $1 billion over the next five years. To date, it has shifted $40 million in FY23 funding to support he effort and has asked lawmakers to realign another $77 million in FY25 toward R-GPS.

The House Appropriations defense subcommittee has cast doubt on whether the effort will be as resilient as the Space Force hopes. In its version of FY25 defense spending legislation, the panel proposed denying the service’s request to realign FY25 money and questioned whether quick-start authorities should be used for the effort.

“While proliferation may provide some advantages, it is not clear how these additional satellites increase the resilience against the primary jamming threat to GPS, compared to alternative concepts for position, navigation, and timing systems being pursued elsewhere in the Department of Defense,” lawmakers said in a report accompanying the bill, released in June.

They also took issue with the program’s focus on resilient satellites versus improving the GPS ground systems and user equipment. The Space Force has said the goal is for the satellites to use existing devices.

Once the first R-GPS satellites are fielded, Space Systems Command officials envision updating the constellation with new technology on a regular cadence, similar to the Space Development Agency’s approach to fielding missile warning and data transport satellites as part of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

The service said each new batch of R-GPS capability will include up to eight satellites, but didn’t disclose how regularly it plans to field those spacecraft.

Col. Richard Kniseley, senior materiel leader in Space Systems Command’s Commercial Space Office, said he hopes to establish a pool of vendors for the effort, dubbed Maneuverable GEO, as soon as next year.

“This is going to allow us to onboard innovation, but also, even from a dual-use aspect, exploit capabilities that are already out there,” he told reporters at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference.

While the buys won’t be limited to satellite communications, the Commercial SATCOM Office will manage the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract — which allows the service to establish a group of eligible vendors to compete for various task orders. Any Defense Department agency will be able to use the procurement mechanism to buy satellite services, Kniseley added.

“As people come in with their requirements, we’re able to formulate the best path forward,” he said.

The effort is modeled off a similar program the Space Force started last year called Proliferated Low Earth Orbit Satellite-Based Services. The service initially selected around 15 providers to compete for the contract — worth up to $900 million over a five-year period. The pool has since grown, Kniseley said.

Demand for satellite services from low Earth orbit, which reside about 1,200 miles above Earth, has grown in recent years from both the defense and commercial sectors, but the need for such capabilities from higher altitudes like geostationary orbit is on the rise.

While many commercial companies have focused development efforts on satellites in low Earth orbit, Kniseley said he’s met with several firms who are building solutions for GEO.

The Space Force in particular is interested in satellites that can move in geostationary orbit, providing services from different positions or observing activities in orbit. The service in May awarded Starfish Space a $37.5 million contract to demonstrate the ability to maneuver and service spacecraft in orbit.

Kniseley said this week that the ability to maneuver satellites in space could give the U.S. a significant tactical advantage.

“That’s going to be a game changer for us in the military — where you’re not at a stagnant orbit and you’re able to drift from point to point,” he said, “especially supporting the U.S. in the event of a regional or national war so that we can maneuver more of our capabilities and be more agile to the warfighter.”

The Space Force and the rest of the military services recently submitted their fiscal 2026 funding plans to Pentagon leadership, and the Defense Department will soon begin deliberations on how to spend the more than $800 billion Congress allocates for national security each year.

Speaking with reporters Tuesday at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said that while it’s too early in the budget process to know how the service’s priorities will match up against other DOD demands, awareness of the space environment and the means to protect and fight back against adversary threats are critical needs for the Space Force.

“We have to understand what’s going on in the domain to effectively employ counterspace capabilities,” he said.

Established in 2019, the Space Force is the newest military service, and its $30 billion budget is the smallest in the department. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said the demand for space capabilities is outpacing its limited resources and has advocated for the Space Force’s budget to double or triple in the coming years.

“The Space Force is beginning a transformation that must be executed quickly and at scale,” Kendall said during a Monday speech at the conference. “That takes resources.”

In the near-term, more funding for the service could come through a congressional budget increase, though based on the FY25 funding levels proposed by appropriators in both chambers, a move in the opposite direction appears more likely.

The House Appropriations Committee’s policy bill would, if passed, cut about $900 million from the Space Force’s request. Senate funding legislation would slash around $1 billion.

The Pentagon could also draw space funding from the Air Force or the other services’ budgets, making trade-offs to fund key missions.

Saltzman said he’s not sure how the money will materialize.

“A new mission requires new resources and new funding, so I don’t have a good answer for what those sources are,” he said. “But you know, we’ve got $800 billion-plus, and we’re going to have to make the decisions about where we need to invest to make sure we can do all the missions effectively.”

The Space Force has been working for the past several years to determine the right mix of satellites and other systems that will be needed to adapt to new threats in orbit. Led by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, the service has conducted mission-by-mission reviews that, when stitched together, lay out a vision for its ideal force structure over the next 10 to 15 years.

Counterspace capabilities are a key part of that vision, as is space domain awareness, missile warning and tracking and space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The Space Force views the capabilities it provides as enablers for the other military services, providing key support for maritime, land and air missions. However, in some cases, the other branches are developing their own space capabilities.

The Army in January rolled out a plan to up its investment in space capabilities that support ground operations. Dubbed the Army Space Vision, it emphasizes the need for systems that can interdict, or disrupt, enemy ISR capabilities.

Asked by reporters whether the Space Force is concerned about potential competition from the Army for personnel or funding, Saltzman said he takes a nuanced view of the issue.

“I’m still not of the mindset that this is a zero-sum game and everything has to come out of somebody else’s budget,” he said. “The Department of Defense budget ebbs and flows, and you have to understand where you are in that process.”

It’s not a surprise that the other services want to invest in space systems, Saltzman said, but it’s up to the department to determine whether it makes sense to spread space funding across several branches or focus it within the Space Force’s budget.

“We just have to find the smart way to do it,” he said. “If there’s something that they can do that we won’t do, great. If there’s something we can do that they don’t need to do anymore, great. We can share resources.”

French nanosatellite builder U-Space will supply the demonstrator in partnership with missile maker MBDA, French Space Command boss Maj. Gen. Philippe Adam and company executives said at an industry conference in Paris on Tuesday. They didn’t detail the satellite’s offensive capabilities, though a presentation video showed the satellite targeting another orbiter with a green laser beam.

France wants to avoid putting kinetic weapons in space that would risk creating debris in orbit, and the demonstrator won’t be weaponized, though it may include a “dazzling” capacity, Adam said on the sidelines of conference. Low Earth orbit, or LEO, is the busiest orbital range, with more than 5,000 satellites launched and thousands more planned, according to U.S. Space Operations Command.

“We need to better understand what’s happening in space, and make sure that we can oppose any misconduct in space actively, if necessary,” Adam said at the Space Defense & Security Summit in the French capital. “We need also to take into account what’s happening in lower altitudes. It’s probably about time, if we consider all that’s happening in this lower orbit.”

France expects to launch the demonstrator satellite, called Splinter, in the next 12 to 24 months, Adam said. The overall project, dubbed Toutatis, will also include a low Earth orbit observation satellite called Lisa-1, and the goal is to test operational scenarios.

Several speakers at the conference highlighted the growing threat in space from adversaries including Russia. The general public should realize that access to space is not a given, and an arms race in space would be destabilizing and should be seen as a threat, according to Marjolijn van Deelen, the special envoy for space at the European External Action Service.

“We’re dealing with adversaries whose level of restraint is going down and down,” said Lt. Gen. Bertrand Le Meur, France’s director for defense strategy, foresight and counter-proliferation. The French plan “for us a big step, showing that we are anticipating some potential threats in low Earth orbit,” he said.

Destructive space arms are not a French priority, and neutralizing an opponent in space could mean moving a satellite between an adversary and a friendly asset to prevent hostile action, according to Adam. Dissuasion also requires being able to see what adversaries are doing and make them aware they are being seen, in addition to having the means to intimidate and discourage, the general said.

Nevertheless, “for deterrence to be effective, we also need real means of action, and those means of action have to be known and recognized as effective,” Adam said. He said adversaries already have the means to destroy French satellites.

France still hasn’t launched its experimental patroller nanosatellite Yoda, which is ready and waiting to be lifted into geostationary orbit, according to Adam, who declined to say when that might happen. Originally planned for 2023, Yoda has been delayed due to a lack of available launch slots.

The country is the world’s fourth-biggest spender on space defense and security, behind the U.S., China and Russia, according to space-industry consultant Novaspace, which organized the summit. French military space spending was around $1.3 billion in 2023, dwarfed by the U.S. with $38.9 billion and China with $8.8 billion, and about half the Russian budget, according to Novaspace.

Pan-European missile maker MBDA has been experimenting with laser weapons, and has participated in France’s AsterX military space exercise in the past two years. The Toutatis project will move space defense beyond simulation, said Nicolas Lefort, MBDA’s head of new markets and business development.

“Space defense starts on the ground, and the good news is that we at MBDA already cover that mission very well,” Lefort said. “Our ambition is to bring defense to low Earth orbit, where the threats have now become real. We really look forward to demonstrating that the Space Command can deal with suspicious activities in LEO in the most reactive way.”

A satellite from Unseenlabs with a laser payload established a stable link for several minutes with an optical ground station supplied by Cailabs, according to the ministry, which provided €5.5 million ($6.1 million) in funding for the project. The successful test this summer opens the way to integrating the system on France’s future military satellites, the ministry said.

The point-to-point nature of lasers makes them more secure than radio frequencies, and they can’t be jammed the way radio can, Cailabs CEO Jean-François Morizur told Defense News in an interview on Thursday. Additionally, a laser link can transfer very large files such as detailed Earth images in minutes, something that might require multiple orbits using radio signals, the CEO said.

“Anti-jamming is a big one,” Morizur said. “Low probability of detection, low probability of intercept means you can deploy it in some difficult contexts, you just don’t have the same signature as an RF antenna. Putting that on a ship makes sense, because you then reduce the radio footprint of your ship – both for ship-to-ship and ship to satellite.”

The higher data rates offered by laser are important for intelligence applications, as the growing volume of detailed satellite images of Earth is creating “very, very big files” that can be “quite tricky” to transfer with today’s satellite radio transmitters, according to the Cailabs CEO.

The successful test will make it possible to use space-based laser comms on mobile, land-based, naval and airborne platforms, the Armed Forces Ministry said. While the experiment is not the first for space-to-Earth laser communications, it’s the first using a commercially available ground station, according to Morizur.

The French government is keeping some information around the testing under wraps, including details on the date or who provided the laser payload. The ministry said the Keraunos project contributes to objectives in the 2024-2030 Military Programming Law to strengthen France’s space capabilities.

One of the goals of the Keraunos optical communications satellite project is to mitigate the effect of atmospheric turbulence that can hurt transmission quality, the ministry said. While the laser system used in the test will pass through some clouds, it can’t penetrate heavy cloud cover, according to Morizur.

The changed security situation in the world has accelerated government thinking around space, “one of the battlegrounds,” with a growing realization that space supremacy will be important, according to Morizur. In addition, the reduction in launch costs and cheap access to space are speeding up the space economy, he said.

“The more the space economy is growing, the more you have new tools, it becomes a field like any other, basically, where battle happens.”

The Cailabs ground station used in the test consists of a dome with a large telescope and several smaller ones, with the complexity being in processing the laser light, “that’s kind of where the magic happens,” Morizur said. The ground station can be made truck-sized, according to the CEO. Cailabs competitors include Safran in France and BridgeCom in the United States, he said.

Cailabs has seven ground stations under contract, including the one used in the test for the Armed Forces Ministry and a second one on order for the French government, as well as stations to be built for civilian clients including the European Space Agency and South Korea’s Contec. Most orders are for civilian applications, mainly for imagery, according to Morizur.

Morizur said the market for radio satellite gateways is valued at around $3 billion a year, and while optical ground stations will initially be a fragment of that, over time the opportunity will be “in the billions.”

Cailabs is currently leading in technology, price point and product maturity with its ground stations, and was picked for a number of recent competitive contracts, according to the CEO. The company has set up a team in the United States, where it sees contract opportunities, “and we are looking forward to supporting the U.S. government in many different ways,” Morizur said.

The company, which was co-founded by Morizur in 2013 and which has raised €46 million from investors, is unprofitable for now as it continues to spend on R&D and expansion, the CEO said. Cailabs received more than €10 million in orders last year, and “we stopped calling ourselves a startup a few years ago,” he added.

That’s because the service’s access to communication, navigation and intelligence satellites provides a unique opportunity to monitor non-military factors that often lie at the heart of conflict on Earth, the authors argue.

The report from the public policy research firm highlights the military’s role in disaster prevention and crisis response, pointing to portions of the 2022 National Defense Strategy and National Security Strategy that link national security to humanitarian challenges like food insecurity, energy shortages, climate change and terrorism.

“Although several U.S. government agencies and commercial partners collect and monitor indicators that are potentially related to human security, the [Space Force’s] role as a military service makes it a natural nexus for embedding human security principles and perspectives in the security workforce,” RAND states.

The report comes as Space Force capabilities to track missiles, monitor bad behavior in orbit and support military operations on the ground are in high demand. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense News this summer that to meet current demand and expand into new mission areas, the service’s $30 billion budget needs to double or triple.

That kind of budget growth is unlikely in the near future, and RAND acknowledges this challenge in its study, noting an increasing appetite for imagery and data collection, in particular.

“Such an expansion is likely difficult to justify, given that the Space Force’s capacity cannot meet current operational demand,” RAND states. “Although the [Space Force] can potentially play a leading role in the human security area, it will need to rely on partnerships, likely with both public and private organizations, to provide the needed capabilities and capacities.”

Growing capacity and acquiring new systems will require long-term investment, but for now the service should lean on its relationships with international allies, commercial industry and other government agencies “define metrics related to human security through security cooperation training efforts.”

The Space Force should also develop training for its workforce on how to factor human security into its data collection and analysis, injecting relevant scenarios into wargames and exercises, RAND says.

As a case study on the impact space capabilities could have in preventing or managing humanitarian crises, the report explores the famine in Somalia, where over one million people have been displaced due to drought.

Space capabilities could be used to track environmental indicators like land degradation, water level changes and weather conditions. Satellites could also observe changes in food production, identify whether resources were being hoarded and identify migration patterns and indications of political violence.

“By using space capabilities to monitor such human security indicators as those proposed in this paper, the [Space Force] can help identify human security challenges as they are emerging, thus opening the door to interventions — potentially involving both resources on the ground and in the broader international community,” RAND states. “Such interventions might help prevent the escalation of cascading challenges.”

The company plans to launch the effort, dubbed Q4S, in 2026 using its own research-and development money. The experiment will demonstrate a concept called entanglement swapping — the ability to bring together, or entangle, the quantum states surrounding particles that haven’t previously interacted. The process is required to build expansive, hack-resistant networks in space.

Boeing set out to tackle the entanglement swapping challenge in 2021 with the goal to move as quickly as possible to push quantum technology as far as it could, according to Jay Lowell, chief engineer for disruptive computing, networks and sensors. Through the demonstration, the company hopes to learn more about how to build quantum networks that could prove transformational for a number of industries, including defense.

“We chose a goal that nobody else had accomplished, and we saw no one out there trying to do this,” Lowell told Defense News in a recent interview. “We knew it needed to be done to get where we want to go, which is the development of global quantum networks that connect sensors and computers around the world.”

The U.S. government spends about $1 billion each year on quantum technology development through its National Quantum Initiative, which it established in 2018 to help maintain an edge over China.

In the last decade, China has conducted several significant experiments aimed at reaching breakthroughs in quantum networking. In 2016, the country’s Quantum Experiments at Space Scale demo showed that it was possible to establish quantum keys across long distances. In 2022, it followed up that effort with the Jinan-1 launch, generating keys at a much faster rate.

Lowell described entanglement swapping as “more than twice as hard” as key distribution.

“From an impact perspective, these are the technologies that we need to validate are going to work in order to have the hope of building the quantum networks we want to build,” he said.

The yearlong mission aims to demonstrate entanglement swapping between two sources within a single satellite. Working with its payload and technology partner, HRL Laboratories, Boeing has completed several key design reviews and will run an integrated payload test this month. The payload is slated to be delivered within a year, Lowell said.

California-based Astro Digital, which is building the satellite the payload will fly on, will start production of the spacecraft in 2025.

Boeing’s focus throughout design and testing has been to build backups and contingencies into the system to reduce risk of mission failure, Lowell said.

“There are only a few things that, if they fail, we’re dead,” he said. “We’re pretty confident that if those few things work, everything else will go fine and we will get very useful information out of this experiment.”

If Q4S is able to demonstrate entanglement swapping within one spacecraft, Boeing’s next target is to develop a multi-satellite experiment to prove the capability works within a small, space-based network. Lowell said the company is exploring government and commercial partnerships for the next phase, but could also build the mission with internal funding.

Q4S and any future experiments are part of a broader emphasis within Boeing on demonstrating new technologies as well as how those capabilities fit within the company’s existing portfolio, he noted.

“The better we do that, the easier it is for our customers to understand the context of what it is that they’re getting in a way that’s recognizable to them,” Lowell said. “The better conceived the demonstration is, the closer it allows the customer to see the vision that we have and to start sharing in that vision or even pull us along further towards their vision.”

September was supposed to be the start of a 10-month streak of regular SDA launches to put the agency’s Tranche 1 satellites — which will provide initial operational capability — in low Earth orbit. Those spacecraft will now likely fly at the end of this year or early next, Tournear said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference.

The delays are primarily linked to financial troubles among some SDA vendors who have struggled to scale their manufacturing capacity, he said. That includes California-based Mynaric, which supplies optical terminals to several of the agency’s satellite providers and has struggled to ramp up production.

“These are things we have to work through with our primes, our spacecraft providers, to make sure they can continue to pull that schedule in when they have those kinds of delays,” Tournear said.

The Tranche 1 satellites are part of SDA’s broader proliferated space architecture, which it envisions will eventually include hundreds of missile tracking and data transport spacecraft operating from low Earth orbit, about 1,200 miles above the equator.

SDA started launching its Tranche 0 satellites in April 2023 and as of February has put all 27 of those spacecraft in orbit. That launch plan also hit a snag after supply chain issues tied to the COVID-19 pandemic stalled the first mission by about six months.

A July report from The Aerospace Corporation raised questions about whether these early setbacks indicate the agency’s plan to build and launch satellites on a two-year cadence — refreshing technology with each new tranche — is too ambitious. The study highlights the challenge of continuous modernization and production scaling within a still-maturing small satellite industrial base.

“These examples may become less common as SDA launches and operates more and more satellites, but developing and integrating new technologies without disrupting launch schedules or existing capabilities will not be easy,” it states.

Tournear attributed the launch delays to “growing pains” within the industrial base and the agency, which was formed five years ago. The two-year launch and technology refresh cycle is key to SDA’s model, so he doesn’t see that approach changing. Instead, the hope is that as companies learn and adapt to this model, they face fewer supply and schedule challenges.

If things progress as planned, he added, many of those kinks will be worked through by the time Tranche 2 satellites start to launch in 2026.

“I think as industry grows, they get more into this mindset of production delivery versus program management, which is a different mindset for people doing defense contracting,” Tournear said. “I think we’ll see that they’ll be able to hit the milestones a little easier, but right now we’re in that growing pain.”

Once in orbit, the Tranche 1 satellites are slated to hit their operational acceptance milestone by 2025. SDA is also working to field the ground systems that will operate those spacecraft. An agency official told Defense News those systems are in their testing phase and SDA will hold a readiness review this fall. The agency previously planned to have authority to operate the ground segment in the spring, but is now aiming to hit that milestone before Tranche 1 launches.

Tranche 2 satellites are in the design phase, with companies either completing or approaching a critical design review.

Meanwhile, SDA convened its warfighter council last month to discuss requirements for Tranche 3 satellites, which will fly in 2028. The council is made up of combatant commanders and other military users who sign off on the agency’s capability plans.

For Tranche 3 transport satellites, SDA is seeking more advanced phased arrays, which will allow spacecraft to connect with more users on the ground — particularly tactical forces that rely on an S-band signal.

On the missile warning and tracking side, Tournear said the goal is to achieve global missile defense coverage through its Tranche 3 satellites, which means those spacecraft will be able to track an advanced missile through its entire flight, transmit data and intercept.

SDA hasn’t determined the number of satellites it will need in Tranche 3, but Tournear noted that the agency plans to issue solicitations for those spacecraft next year.

The agency started launching its Tranche 0 demonstration satellites in April 2023 and today has 27 spacecraft in orbit. The systems are meant to observe and collect information on missiles launches and transport data in space and with users on the ground. They’ll also reduce development risks for future SDA satellites.

This week’s test involved two satellites, built by SpaceX, connecting via a laser-communication link through SDA-compliant terminals. The test met the agency’s requirement that the spacecraft make a connection in less than two minutes, Tournear said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference in Arlington.

In essence, the demo showed that SDA’s transport satellites can form an optical network in low Earth orbit.

“From my perspective, we have demonstrated all of the big rocks and burned down all of the risk for Tranche 1 in Tranche 0 based on that success,” Tournear said.

Among the other demonstration hurdles was demonstrating the ability to establish a Link 16 connection from space. Link 16 is a tactical communications system that U.S. forces, NATO and international allies rely on for real-time data exchange. During a demonstration last November, SDA used three satellites from its Transport Layer, all built by Denver-based York Space Systems. The Air Force’s 46th Test Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, supported the mission from the ground.

In early August, SDA pushed the capability further, making a Link 16 connection with an aircraft carrier and a plane on its deck.

Both Link 16 tests were over international waters or airspace as the agency awaits approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration to use Link 16 to broadcast signals from space through the National Airspace System. Tournear said SDA hopes to have those approvals and conduct U.S. tests this year, adding that the FAA’s conservative approach, while prudent, has created schedule issues for the agency.

“It has an impact and it will impact Tranche 1 as we go forward, when we actually want to be able to do a lot of demonstrations after launch to be able to get operational acceptance,” he said.

The other major test for SDA’s Tranche 0 satellites concerns the ability to track missile launches from low Earth orbit. Skeptics thought the clutter in LEO, which is about 1,200 miles above Earth, would make it too hard to spot a dim missile target. However, Tournear said, the agency has used its first handful of tracking satellites to spot a variety of missiles and rocket launches, including SpaceX’s Starship.

The SDA satellites have yet to detect a U.S. hypersonic flight test, but Tournear said his team is working closely with the Missile Defense Agency to find opportunities for the spacecraft to track a flight.

“I see it always being a layered set of capabilities to increase survivability, first and foremost,” Gen. Michael Guetlein said Wednesday at the annual Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “I would say you’re looking at probably the early 2030s for some of that capability to start coming online.”

The service has been working with the intelligence community to develop satellites that can perform the ground moving target indication, or GMTI, mission from space. In fact, the Space Force cleared the program to enter formal development late last month, according to a report from Breaking Defense.

However, efforts to use satellites for the air moving target indication, or AMTI, mission are more nascent. Guetlein told Defense News in an interview earlier this summer that as the Space Force builds out its MTI architecture, integrating the various sensors with new and existing command and control networks will likely be its biggest challenge.

“That requires us to now start thinking about artificial intelligence, it starts you thinking about machine learning, it starts you thinking about new communication pathways,” he said. “I now have to have processing on orbit on the sensor rather than processing on the ground. That’s a new set of technologies.”

The Space Force has started to invest in early studies of the capability, but Guetlein declined to confirm at the conference whether a program would be funded in the fiscal 2026 budget request.

“We are having those conversations about, [with the] scarcity of resources, how much can I invest in ‘26 in some of these emerging areas,” he said.

Balancing the demand for new capabilities with a budget that is projected to stay relatively flat for the next several years is a larger challenge for the service. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense News in a recent interview that the Space Force’s budget, which sits around $30 billion in FY25, needs to double or triple to meet the military’s need for on-orbit support.

With no increase of that magnitude in sight, the service is working to make sure it has its priorities in order, focusing on areas like readiness, satellite communications and improving the resilience of its systems.

“We are definitely sacrificing some because there’s not enough resources to go around,” he said. “We know we can’t buy everything we need, so we are ruthlessly prioritizing all the kit that we’re buying to make sure that it’s the biggest bang for the buck, if you will, during times of crisis or conflict.”

The service is looking for ways to take advantage of partnerships with international partners and commercial companies who are also spending on the capabilities the Space Force needs, Guetlein noted.

“In the past, DOD felt like we needed to own all of our own kit, operate all of our own kit. That way we could guarantee during times of crisis or conflict that that kit was built,” he said. “When you start pivoting towards a great power competition, it becomes all of the nation and all of the world that needs to come together in partnerships, and that’s really where we are investing heavily.”

“Of all the imperatives, this is perhaps the broadest and the one with the most potential impact,” he said in the March 2022 speech. “Our terrestrial forces, joint and combined, cannot survive and perform their missions if our adversary’s space-based operational support systems, especially targeting systems, are allowed to operate with impunity.”

Kendall’s emphasis on resilience in space is underpinned by two ideas that have picked up traction across the Defense Department in recent years. First, capabilities like GPS, satellite communications and space-based intelligence collection play an essential, enabling role in most U.S. military operations. And second, threats from adversaries like China and Russia have put those capabilities at risk.

The creation of the Space Force in 2019 was a step toward strengthening the resourcing and organizational heft of the military space enterprise. In making space resilience central to the secretary’s operational imperatives, the push is expected to get top billing when it comes to divvying up scarce Air Force and Space Force budget dollars.

“We’ve only begun to define, and have not yet fully resourced, the space systems we will need to secure the nation,” he said at the time.

The service has made some progress over the last few years defining a more resilient space architecture, Kendall told Defense News in a recent interview. He said he’s happy with the Space Force’s plan to achieve resiliency through fielding smaller satellites in a more diverse range of orbits.

However, to field those satellites and ground systems, he said, the Space Force’s $30 billion budget needs to grow — whether that’s through internal Defense Department trades or an increase from Congress.

“That budget is going to need to double or triple over time to be able to fund the things we’re actually going to need to have,” he said. “Somebody’s going to have to make some decisions about whether to give us a bigger budget overall for this or do some internal trades.”

A growing budget appetite

Kendall’s call for a larger space budget follows several years of steady funding growth for the Space Force.

The service’s budget has nearly doubled in the five years since it was established, but that increase reflects mission consolidation more than it does new investment, as many space-focused personnel and programs from the Army and Navy as well as the Space Development Agency moved under the purview of the new service.

In fiscal 2025, the Space Force’s requested budget is slated to drop slightly to around $30 billion, due largely to constraints imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which puts a cap on defense spending.

Budget documents show that the service expects its funding to remain relatively flat over the next five years.

Gen. Michael Guetlein, the service’s vice chief of space operations, told Defense News that the Pentagon’s funding outlook doesn’t match the demand the Space Force is seeing from users in the field. Soon, he said, the service’s ability to respond to combatant command requirements in a crisis could be limited.

“We are maxing out our budget today and seeing a flat-line budget in the DOD. It’s got to change,” he said. “We are seeing a threat that is absolutely intent on narrowing the capability gap between us and them. Today, we have margin in that capability gap. . . . If we don’t start increasing our investment in space, we’re going to see that capability gap reverse.”

Defense budget expert Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, echoed Guetlein’s concern that without a boost in funding, the Space Force won’t be able to take on new missions, let alone respond to current demands. That includes the Space Development Agency’s plan to buy hundreds of satellites to track advanced missile threats and form a data transport layer in space.

“The Space Force is trying to get into new mission areas,” he said in a May webinar hosted by the National Security Space Association. “It’s going to cost more.”

In the near-term, more funding for the Space Force could come through a congressional budget increase, though based on the FY25 funding levels proposed by appropriators in both chambers, a move in the opposite direction appears more likely. The House Appropriations Committee’s policy bill would, if passed, cut about $900 million from the Space Force’s request. Meanwhile, Senate funding legislation would slash around $1 billion.

Funding could also come from other parts of the Air Force or DOD budget, requiring the department to make trade-offs in its FY26 request in order to fund key space missions like missile warning, space domain awareness and counterspace capabilities, which include the offensive and defensive space protection measures.

An enduring process

As the Space Force advocates for more funding, leaders have been working in the background to determine the right mix of satellites and other capabilities needed for adapting to new threats in orbit.

That process, which started in 2021, is led largely by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, which has been conducting mission-by-mission studies aimed at crafting the Space Force’s ideal, or objective, force structure for the next 10 to 15 years.

Guetlein said the work being conducted by the SWAC is akin to creating puzzle pieces — and after more than three years, the service has most of those pieces in hand.

That includes a plan for fielding offensive and defensive systems, known as counterspace weapons. Most of these capabilities are classified, but options range from cyber or electronic warfare systems to kinetic weapons.

Both Kendall and Guetlein declined to offer details on the Space Force’s counterspace architecture. Guetlein noted that the service’s plan includes not only systems and technology, but also a strategy for running exercises ensure it’s using these capabilities responsibly.

“We are actually trying to [establish] norms of behavior to ensure that what we’re doing is safe and responsible but at the same time understanding we also have to be effective, which means I need to field credible capabilities to be able to counter the threat,” he said.

The next step is to put the puzzle together. The service announced in March that a new organization, Space Futures Command, would be responsible for that work. Once force design is complete, it will then get passed to the requirements community to identify near and longer term funding needs.

The Space Force plans to submit the first of those objective force designs in the fall of 2025 and will update that work every five years to incorporate any changes to the threat environment or other factors.

Guetlein said the process the Space Force has articulated and the creation of Space Futures Command are a direct response to the operational imperatives Kendall laid out early in his tenure. He expects they’ll continue to drive strategy and decision-making for years go come.

“It’s the foundation of everything that we’re going to do,” he said.

The remarks, which came at the National Guard Association of the United States conference in Detroit, add another layer of complication to an issue being fought over by military leaders, members of Congress and state governors.

But Trump, who is the Republican nominee for president, vowed to settle the issue and push ahead with the idea.

“The time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the U.S. Space Force,” he told about 4,000 group members during a wide-ranging speech. “So as president, I will sign historic legislation creating a space National Guard.”

Congress approves Space Force part-timers, but still no Space Guard

In April, the governors of 48 states and five U.S. territories wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin opposing plans to shift thousands of Air National Guard members into the Space Force.

They argued the move, proposed by President Joe Biden’s administration as an alternative to creating a stand-alone Space National Guard, “reduces governors’ authority within their states and territories, and undermines longstanding partnerships, precedence, military readiness and operational efficacy.”

Among the signers of the letter was Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, now the running mate of Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid to win the White House instead of Trump.

NGAUS officials have supported creating a stand-alone Space National Guard and applauded Trump’s promise. They have noted that roughly 10% of current Space Force manpower for operations come from Air National Guard units, and said the lack of a separate Space Force Guard structure ends up “disconnecting” troops from work.

Pentagon officials have opposed the idea, saying a one-time transfer of some Guard missions to the Space Force would be less expensive and complicated than standing up a new reserve force.

In the past, House lawmakers have included provisions creating a Space National Guard in its drafts of the annual defense authorization bill. But this year, the chamber’s lawmakers included language blocking the Air National Guard shift, while Senate lawmakers opted for a new study on force requirements, punting a final decision into the future.

The two chambers are expected to settle on compromise language in coming weeks, with no clear resolution on the issue.

In his speech, Trump called the creation of the Space Force “one of my proudest achievements in my first term” and claimed that because of that move, “now we’re leading in space throughout the armed forces.”

Space Force officials have requested an end strength of 9,800 personnel for fiscal 2025, less than 6% of the total personnel of the Marine Corps, the next smallest Defense Department branch in terms of manpower.

A lot has changed since then. The number of satellites in low Earth orbit — about 1,200 miles above the planet — grew from less than 1,000 to closer to 9,000. The creation of the Space Force in 2019 and increasing threats from adversaries is driving more demand from military customers in the U.S. and abroad who want more insight into what’s happening in the domain.

LeoLabs CEO Tony Frazier, who joined the company in February after 13 years at Maxar Technologies and its legacy companies, said those shifts have significantly changed the make up of the firm’s customer base, which is now mostly made up of defense clients. In the first half of this year, the company booked a record $20 million in new contracts, the majority of them for military customers.

Frazier recently sat down with Defense News to discuss the company’s evolution, opportunities to support new missions in the Space Force and its international expansion. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What opportunities does LeoLabs see to work with the U.S. Defense Department on existing and emerging missions like on-orbit refueling and satellite servicing or dynamic space operations?

I like to think of our company as building a living map of orbital activity, and it should enable dynamic space operations. We have these six radar sites that have 10 active radars where we’re collecting over a million measurements a day of these objects, which tell us where things are and allows us to predict where they’re going.

We really think of what we’re doing as a way to supplement the architecture. The U.S. Space Force is working to build a hybrid space architecture that’s able to take on these various missions. As you know, they released their commercial space integration strategy in April of this year. Space Domain Awareness was one of the mission areas that was called out as a high-risk mission. In order to be able to get the level of persistence that we need across all the orbital regimes, it’s going to take a combination of government sensors as well as other commercial and allied sensors.

One of the things that really distinguishes LeoLabs is that we have strong coverage in the southern hemisphere. We have active radar sites in Western Australia, in New Zealand, and also strong coverage in Costa Rica and the Azores [off the coast of Portugal]. And that fills gaps in coverage that then allow our customers to be able to maintain custody of these important objects.

As LeoLabs’ customer base has expanded, have you explored new approaches for delivering capabilities?

An evolution with my tenure coming into LeoLabs is that we’re open to all business models that make sense for the customer. That could range from the current model — which is company-owned, company-operated where the customers subscribe to a service — to government-owned government-operated, government-owned contractor-operated and everything in between.

One of the contracts you received this year was with the Air Force Research Laboratory. Can you describe the work you’re doing with them?

We actually have two contracts with them. One is for an [Ultra High Frequency] system and the other is for an S-band system. And what that technology will do is it will allow us to be able to extend our capabilities into other orbital regimes as well as do more sophisticated tracking. Things like non-cooperative launch and more aggressive maneuver tracking are all things that matter in that life cycle. That’s certainly aligned with many of the emerging threats that we’re hearing from the U.S. and our allies.

Beyond the U.S., what other countries are you working with?

Our longest standing customer is Japan. And it’s been great to evolve with them as they’ve gotten more sophisticated in their military space command to really provide foundational capability that supports their operational planning, their tracking of high value assets, as well as their ability to monitor other kinds of objects.

What we’ve seen is that there’s an opportunity to kind of replicate that across other regions. We’ve seen a strong pickup across both Asia Pacific as well as in Europe. We’re not in a position to disclose all the customers, but we’ve seen that result in material contract awards. Of the $20 million that we were able to attract in the first half of the year, the largest segment was from international customers.

The use case that we’re seeing is really interesting. As I mentioned, there’s 9,000 active satellites in low Earth orbit today. The bulk of those are commercial. But we now have close to 1,000 satellites that are being flown by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. So, the real demand signal we’re seeing is that there’s a desire to monitor those objects at very high frequency. And that kind of drives the core service that we provide to those military customers.

The pipeline is very robust. We’re in discussions and evaluations with dozens of countries that have a need for these services.

The XVIII Airborne Corps, which commands the 82nd Airborne Division, 10th Mountain Division, 101st Airborne Division and 3rd Infantry Division, along with other subordinate units, kicked off the targeting system experiments, dubbed Scarlet Dragon, in late 2020, Army Times previously reported.

Since going through at least 10 iterations, with more planned in the coming months and years, the command has developed the Maven Smart System, a combination of sensors and software that allows users to quickly assess a battlespace, gather reams of data and analyze that data using artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify targets and strike.

The evolution of that system was laid out Wednesday at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association TechNet event in Augusta, Georgia.

“What we’re doing is different,” said Brig. Gen. John Cogbill, the deputy commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty, North Carolina. “This is a tool that we can ‘fight tonight’ with.”

Commanders find new ways to leverage network in theater and training

In its first iteration in late 2020, the Scarlet Dragon experiment teamed soldiers from the XVIII Airborne Corps with Marines from II Marine Expeditionary Force. In the training, teams used commercial satellite imagery and an algorithm to identify an inflatable tank in the open on Fort Liberty. The system then passed that data to a Marine missile system, which struck the target.

The “digital target pass” took 743 minutes, or more than 12 hours, Cogbill said.

But in the ensuing years, and with additional tinkering, that target pass can now be completed in under one minute, he said.

The Scarlet Dragon and other technology initiatives began under former XVIII Airborne Corps commander Gen. Michael Kurilla, who went on to take charge of U.S. Central Command.

Cogbill said that back in 2020, Kurilla told his staff he wanted the first “AI-enabled Corps” in the Army. Once Kurilla transferred to lead CENTCOM, he installed a data-centric command approach that included using elements of the Maven system, Cogbill said.

An analysis report released this month by the nonprofit Center for Security and Emerging Technology highlighted some of Maven’s development as well as its use by operational units.

“The ultimate goal is for the system and soldiers to be able to help a commander process 1,000 tactical decisions an hour,” according to the CSET report.

Without Maven, “the firing process is manual and riddled with inefficiencies and the potential for errors,” the report’s authors wrote, “from collecting the data to processing it, seeking permission, matching munitions, and granting permission.”

The XVIII Airborne Corps managed to match the targeting prowess of the time-critical target cell used during Operation Iraqi Freedom, “widely viewed as the most efficient in U.S. military history,” the authors wrote.

But while the OIF targeting cell used more than 2,000 staffers to cover a wide area and numerous targets during the 2003 invasion, the current demonstration managed the same workload with 20 soldiers, the report said.

Experts within the XVIII Airborne Corps are exploring whether the AI and machine learning approach can also help other unit commanders better “see” and “sense” logistics needs, Cogbill said.

That effort would entail providing commanders with a global picture of their supply chains and ways to run scenarios that help them decide how logistics will affect operations.

Scarlet Dragon efforts continue, meanwhile, with an experiment scheduled for next month and a series of events throughout 2025, Cogbill said.

The system is expected make its large-scale Pacific debut during the Yama Sakura training exercise in late 2026, a U.S.-Japanese military command post exercise.