The timeline for fielding the U.S. Space Force’s (USSF) Unified Data Library (UDL) is uncertain, as the service continues prototyping for UDL to serve as a centralized, cloud-based data repository for space domain awareness/space defense, and likely for the Department of the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) and the Pentagon’s Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) architecture
“UDL is our data link that we’re trying to put a lot of information in and see how we can use all of that data, fuse it in a way that provides maybe capabilities that we hadn’t even really thought of,” Brig. Gen. David Cothern, the deputy commander of USSF’s Space Systems Command, told reporters during the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium in Colorado Springs last week.
“Part of that is the ingestion and the processing of the space surveillance network data, and I don’t really have any timelines on that,” he said. “We’re continuing to prototype through that to see what we can learn and how we can adjust and what we can build onto that in the future.”
Last year, Colorado-based Bluestaq LLC received a $280 million contract to develop the UDL for the USSF (Defense Daily, May 4, 2021). One organization that has been involved in UDL testing and that will use UDL is U.S. Space Command’s Joint Task Force-Space Defense at Schriever Space Force Base, Colo.
SSC said that “latency” requirements for the speed of data delivery will help determine the shape of UDL and edge information nodes and a timeline for the fielding of UDL, which is to permit the rapid flow of needed data to decision makers and military forces in combat.
L3Harris Technologies’ [LHX] Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System (ATLAS) is to pull data from the UDL to help fulfill space domain awareness and other military missions.
Following upon U.S. Space Force’s operational acceptance of Palantir Technologies’ Warp Core tech stack last October to allow the 18th Space Control Squadron to access legacy data feeds, as previously done by the decommissioned Joint Space Operations Center Mission System (JMS) Service Pack 9 (SP-9), SSC is moving to field applications for ATLAS.
Brig. Gen. Tim Sejba, SSC’s program executive officer for space battle management command, control, and communications and space domain awareness and combat power, told reporters last week at the Space Symposium that SSC is “on a very aggressive schedule to deliver [ATLAS] capability this year” and that the first L3Harris application for ATLAS is to begin developmental testing soon.
Space Force expects ATLAS to lead to a dramatic increase in the speed of processing and integrating space domain awareness data from a variety of commercial, civil, and military space sensors.
Omitron and Parsons Corp. [PSN] are subcontractors on ATLAS, which is to replace the Space Defense Operations Center (SPADOC), a space situational awareness computer system established in 1979 at the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado. The Air Force last upgraded SPADOC in 1989.
Begun in 2009, JMS was an Air Force effort to replace SPADOC, but the Air Force canceled JMS in 2019 after it faced technical and cost challenges. JMS was to process and integrate inputs from a variety of sensors, including Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] ground-based Space Fence radar. Omitron was a subcontractor on JMS’ Increment 2–the effort to make JMS operational.
ATLAS is to harness machine-to-machine interfaces to accelerate the provision of space domain awareness data to USSF personnel.
In October 2018, the Department of the Air Force awarded a $53 million contract to L3Harris for ATLAS.