A significant step up in space domain awareness to counter China is a key focus for U.S. Space Command in the next several years.
“One area that I think we have to make some rapid gains in is, we have probably have the least amount of awareness of any domain that any service is responsible for in the space domain,” Maj Gen David Miller Jr., Space Command’s director of operations, told a Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies’ virtual forum on June 26th. “That is based off of, certainly, the legacy approach that we’ve taken where we’ve assumed a permissive environment, but we’ve also not really fielded a globally capable, precision quality, custody- focused space domain awareness enterprise informed by an intelligence sector of dedicated professionals to the level that we need to. That’s a key focus area for me.”
Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman lists space domain awareness as number one in his “theory of success” to prevent operational surprise, attribute potential threats, provide indications and warning, and develop accurate targeting.
Acceleration of space domain awareness would be across sensor, ground processing, and battle management, command and control and communications, Miller said.
Two key U.S. Space Force space domain awareness systems are to be the Northrop Grumman [NOC] Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) and the Space Force/National Reconnaissance Office SILENTBARKER satellites, the first of which may launch this summer (Defense Daily, May 30). Northrop Grumman said last month that it has completed Critical Design Review for DARC.
Artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) may be a key part of a space domain awareness acceleration effort (Defense Daily, May 24). Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, the commander of Space Force Space Systems Command, wants to establish a Space Domain Awareness TAP [Tools Applications and Processing] Lab that would take a Project Maven approach to ease government-industry data sharing.
In April, Guetlein briefed AI/ML companies in Silicon Valley on how they might satisfy Space Force needs. Those AI/ML firms included Anduril, C3.ai Inc. [AI] and Microsoft [MSFT].
DoD leaders have been pushing to increase the resilience of space systems, in part by moving toward using a large number of low Earth orbit and medium Earth orbit satellites and away from the acquisition of a limited number of large, costly satellites–“big, fat, juicy targets” in the words of retired Vice Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. John Hyten (Defense Daily, May 18, 2022).
“The very fabric that we operate our space capabilities within is vulnerable to attack and ill-suited for a warfighting domain,” said Charles Galbreath, a senior resident fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute for Space Studies and the author of a new institute paper, Building U.S. Space Force Counterspace Capabilities: An Imperative for America’s Defense. “The Space Surveillance Network [and] the Satellite Control Network—both have significant gaps and do not provide 100 percent connectivity or awareness of threats in space all the time. Neither one of these is actually suited for the warfighting domain of space.”
The Space Surveillance Network includes four Northrop Grumman Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) satellites, launched between 2014 and 2016, and two GSSAP birds launched on Jan. 21 last year. SILENTBARKER is planned to be a significant improvement to GSSAP.