APOGEE STAFF
Once a satellite reaches orbit, it can circle the Earth at speeds of 17,000 kilometers per hour. But getting it up there, through the military acquisition process, can be slow going. “Traditionally, we don’t launch until the paper outweighs the rocket,” one defense contractor quipped. Now, new endeavors — including the purpose-built Space Development Agency (SDA) — are speeding things up.
Military allies are poised to work with the U.S. as it embarks on this race, all with an eye on the rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a space power. The United Kingdom Space Command, for example, has officers embedded within many U.S. space defense groups, providing it access to the “pioneering approach taken by the U.S. Space Development Agency,” said a U.K. Parliament special report issued in January 2023. Pipelines to the SDA are among the next steps possible after India’s signing in June 2023 of the U.S.-led Artemis Accords for space exploration, according to an analysis from the Space Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The SDA was the Pentagon’s answer to the lengthy procurement cycles plaguing the adoption of emerging space capabilities,” the agency says on its website. Satellite systems built for “persistent, resilient, global, low-latency surveillance” are needed to maintain a competitive advantage in space, according to a Department of Defense memo that establishes the agency. “We cannot achieve these goals, and we cannot match the pace our adversaries are setting, if we remain bound by legacy methods and culture.”
The SDA does things differently. Rather than one or two or a group of satellites placed in higher orbits, like the 5-ton Milstar secure communications systems dating to 1994, the agency debuted by laying out plans for an entire network of microwave oven-sized satellites in low Earth orbit, hundreds of them, with delivery in five batches — called tranches — every 30 months from 2022 through 2030. Big legacy contractors kicked off the program, but the agency reached out to smaller companies to assure continued production and keep prices down through competition. The most recent tranche drew more commercial interest than ever, SDA Director Derek Tournear told SpaceNews in March 2024. The network launches with existing capabilities rather than waiting for better ones to develop. At the same time, it seeks out newer technologies through a broad agency announcement each year so it can slide them into the existing deployment plans. Fixed-price contracts have replaced squishier cost-plus agreements with their tendencies toward mission creep, and prices remain steady at about $45 million for a top satellite package. Anything, in other words, to stay on schedule.
“The SDA is an example of how government is pushing things forward,” Janet Grondin, CEO of aerospace engineering services company Stellar Solutions, told Apogee. The agency’s slogan: “Semper citius,” Latin for “always faster.” The first batch of satellites, Tranche 0, is up and operational with 27 satellites, Tournear said. The network is called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, or PWSA. The SDA partners with U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to choose its commercial partners and capabilities because they’re the experts. Among all the tasks satellites carry out for national security — communications, navigation and reconnaissance, for example — the SDA was charged with improving missile warning and tracking. These also are the top spending priorities in research and development proposals from the U.S. Air Force and Space Force.
Today, scarcely a national security space program surfaces that doesn’t contain “rapid” in its description. As the PWSA builds out, a related SSC program office — Space Sensing Resilient Missile Warning, Missile Tracking, Missile Defense — is scheduled to launch six space vehicles into medium Earth orbit (MEO) by late 2026, the command announced in November 2023. MEO stretches from about 2,000 kilometers to 36,000 kilometers above the Earth. As with the SDA tranches, these space vehicles will be deployed every two to three years in phases known as “epochs.” Epoch 1 will consist of nine space vehicles. “This unique development strategy encourages ongoing competition, driving innovative technologies into each Epoch,” the command announcement said. Added Space Force Col. Heather Bogstie, the program’s senior materiel leader: ”We are rolling out these capabilities as fast as possible.” A multi-orbit approach delivers a more resilient capability, with the smaller LEO satellites serving up data faster because they’re closer to Earth at about 1,000 kilometers up and with the larger satellites in higher MEO and geosynchronous orbit (GEO) providing wider coverage. Together, the satellites’ features will include in-orbit demonstrations, frequent technological refreshes, and improved data collection and analysis. Fire-control sensors will provide pinpoint coordinates to help warfighters target a missile. Technology to kill the missiles of the future, perhaps the latest maneuverable hypersonic varieties, could be retrofitted into the network once that capability is developed. More satellites also means the network survives if some stop working. “Military users like to have a Plan A, a Plan B and even a Plan C,” Caleb Henry, director of research at Quilty Space, told SpaceNews for a March 2024 report.
In the same way these missile warning programs work with private enterprise to speed things up, SSC is hiring contractors on another front to deliver at virtually the snap of its fingers. The push culminated in a mission called Victus Nox — Latin for “conquer the night.” In September 2023, after getting just 24 hours’ notice to complete final spacecraft operations and mission preparations, Firefly Aerospace of Texas launched its Alpha rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and deployed its payload. Firefly had no idea when the call would come. Alpha had flown only twice before. The payload, a small satellite from Millenium Space Systems designed for threat determination, was delivered within months of order rather than years, and it became operational within 37 hours rather than weeks. The mission wrapped up and the satellite left orbit five months later. The previous responsive space launch record was 21 days, set in June 2021 by the SSC. The new program’s next phase, Victus Haze, is scheduled for 2025 and will be designed to deliver capabilities while under threat. A third phase, Victus Sol, is planned for the following year and a fourth phase after that.
Firefly planned to compete for Victus Haze but didn’t expect to win the job, then-CEO Bill Weber told Apogee. And that’s OK, he said. Space Force made it clear it aims to diversify its faster-to-space initiatives among commercial providers to ensure a resilient capability. As Weber predicted, contracts for Victus Haze were later awarded to Rocket Lab National Security and True Anomaly. Still, future missions will benefit from the lessons Firefly is sharing after Victus Nox, he said. Chief among them is standardizing as much as possible — the administration of a project as well as the launch, the payload and the payload housing known as the bus. “That will greatly aid in the ability to license it, put it in queue, track it and give the thumbs up, go. Get off the pad and go,” Weber said. “At some point, we have to quit monkeying around with the rockets and the satellites to make them better.” There’s a constant desire to tweak, he said. “We had to lock Alpha down long before we were ready to launch and just say, ‘No changes between now and when we go.’ And I think that’s critical.” Some subset of the market will always require customization, but a growing share will be predictable and configurable, defined by software rather than hardware. “You will have a standard package that serves a half a dozen needs, for example, with three or four or five providers,” Weber said. “At that point, we are responsive in a bunch of different areas and you are moving more toward adding to the capability the warfighter has. Combatant commanders can say, ‘I need that capability in that region, and I need it within the next 18 hours.’” Lt. Col. Mackenzie Birchenough, a leader in Space Force’s faster-to-space initiatives, echoed the call for standardization — getting manufacturers to make parts modular, interchangeable and interoperable — during a panel discussion in April 2023 at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “We try not to start from scratch, but pull buses off the production line,” Birchenough said.
Other lessons from Victus Nox, Weber said, include checking and rechecking processes so they can be run in parallel rather than in sequence without sacrificing required safety standards. “There was a time where we allowed team No. 1 to go down and do their thing and team No. 2 waited until team one retracted before they’d go do their thing. It really just took a bunch of fireflies to say, ‘Why? Why don’t we merge team one, two, and three together and do it all at the same time?’ So parallel process everything you possibly can. You can’t get to speed without it.” Finally, he said, digital simulation also saved time on Victus Nox. Advances in technology enable this and they just keep coming, as predicted in the rule of thumb known as Moore’s Law — that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years with minimal rise in cost. “We can do things simulation-wise, digitally, that we couldn’t do 18 months ago,” Weber said. “Or five years ago or 10 years ago. We can now take full advantage of it.” Time from order to launch will fall below 24 hours, he predicted. “I think some of it is going to be the [launchpads], and the vehicle will need to be reengineered. Like completely automated. It goes upright and it launches with that kind of precision, so you have less human touch. There’s just a certain amount of, ‘You got to baby the rocket,’ with technicians, guys and gals that go down there and check it, touch it, connect it, and that sort of thing. I think we can get down to 12 hours. I think our team believes that. And then maybe faster than that.”
The Victus programs are part of the tactically responsive space initiative (TacRS) of SSC’s Space Safari program. The program partners with the Defense Innovation Unit, the Pentagon agency charged with accelerating adoption of leading commercial technology. Working with materials you have at hand was the trademark of MacGyver, the resourceful genius of TV fame and an apt inspiration for TacRS, Space Force Gen. Michael A. Guetlein said during a January 2024 interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Which just means, ‘How do I throw everything at it, plus the kitchen sink, to guarantee that capability?’ said Guetlein, vice chief of space operations. “That’s how we’re going to get that down to minutes.” TacRS will prove its value by plugging gaps in space capabilities during the years it will require to build out the PWSA, Space Force Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess told reporters in February 2024 at the Air and Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium. “Say we’re not in a proliferated architecture yet, and something is taken out or we have a failure or something like that,” said Schiess, who heads his service’s component within U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM). “This gives us the ability to go out, put something together and put it on orbit and maybe get a capability back way faster than we could have.”
Another Space Force group with “rapid” in its title is the Space Rapid Capabilities Office (SpRCO). The agency operates largely in secret and is free from some of the red tape involved in traditional acquisition. Guided by a high-level board that includes the Air Force secretary, much of the office’s work involves fulfilling the warfighting needs of USSPACECOM. The office is charged with updating the Satellite Control Network, 19 antennas stationed around the world that control government satellites. SpRCO also orbits satellites, including three that were part of a military payload launched into GEO from the Kennedy Space Center in January 2023. Two carry space situational awareness sensors and the third provides secure space-to-ground communications, Kelly Hammett, SpRCO director, told SpaceNews for a February 2023 report. Hammett hinted at possible missions for the office during a panel discussion about in-orbit refueling and servicing at the Space Mobility Conference in Orlando, Florida, during January 2024. The Space Force is taking steps toward extending the life of satellites on orbit — traditionally seen as “untouchable” once they’re launched — and Hammett suggested that new, updatable spacecraft might be deployed quickly and cheaply. “The original and first units of new systems don’t have to be exquisite, they don’t have to have everything you need,” he said. “You can bring fuel, you can bring resupply, you can bring new payloads. We can go fast. We can bring that once we’re already up there.”
Wherever the demand for an on-orbit service industry finally originates, Tournear of the SDA said his agency would be eager to take advantage of it — in part, for its potential capacity to safely deorbit satellites whose useful lives have ended. Currently, satellite operators have to deal with this on their own. “I think there is a real market for that,” Tournear told SpaceNews. “Take my satellites out and deorbit them so I didn’t have to worry about that level of mission assurance. That would allow me to drive my price down and I could use that price savings to pay one of these companies to do orbital servicing.” The mission evolves in other ways for the SDA, too: The nimble space architecture envisioned as a tool for missile warning and tracking may also be tasked with connecting warfighters on the battlefield through the Link 16 tactical datalink communication system. Link 16, used by the U.S., NATO and other allied forces, lets military aircraft, ships, and ground forces exchange text, imagery, and voice in real time. Initial tests sending data through space via the PWSA were successful, the SDA announced in November 2023. More tests are planned.
An often-quoted philosophy written as nine tenets serves as a blueprint for these and other space defense agencies working to accelerate beyond legacy systems. They were issued in October 2022 by Frank Calvelli, Air Force assistant secretary for acquisition and integration. No. 1 on Calvelli’s list: “Build smaller satellites, smaller ground systems and minimize nonrecurring engineering.” Three priorities underlie the tenets: Drive speed into acquisitions to deliver new capabilities faster than adversaries and maintain the technological advantage space affords; make the space architecture more resilient so it can be counted on during times of crisis; and integrate the space architecture with other warfighting domains and across the Air Force’s “Operational Imperatives” to give warfighters a strategic edge.
Weber, who served Firefly as CEO from September 2022 through July 2024, said he is seeing growing acceptance across government and industry of the changes required to get to space faster. “The voices of, ‘We’ve done it this way because we’ve always done it this way, why mess with it, I wrote those procedures in the early ’70s and late ’80s — those voices are much fewer and farther between. There is a willingness to change because technology and availability is allowing it and demand is requiring it.” What’s more, younger people are taking over the workforce in commercial space. “With an average in our company of 29 years old, people don’t know what they can’t do,” Weber said. “They go and solve problems, technically and procedurally, because they’re not constrained by, ‘Well, this is the way it’s done.’ So, I think I’d say we’re growing our way out of the problem.”
Success, defense leaders say, means maintaining a strategic edge over the adversary recognized as the U.S. military’s “pacing threat” — the PRC. The faster-to-space initiatives, as with most of the Space Force’s annual budget, fall under research and development. “China is advancing very quickly and they’re not stopping, so we really need as a priority to get to a next-generation capability,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters during a budget briefing in March 2024. “And you can’t even start to buy that until you’ve done the research and development. So, I’m trying to protect — in both the Air Force and Space Force to the extent that I can — the pace at which we’re doing research and development and the number of projects that we’re doing to get to that next-generation capability.”