New Space Traffic Management Program Lays Foundation for Future Space Capabilities

In 2009, an on-orbit collision between a defunct Russian satellite and an Iridium communications satellite created more than 1,800 pieces of debris and signaled an emerging need for a space traffic system. Since then, space has only become more congested with the rise of a commercial launch market that has enabled affordable access to space for commercial, civil and military space programs alike. The resulting influx of satellites on-orbit inspired the signing of Space Policy Directive-3 (SPD-3) during the first Trump administration, which declared the need for U.S. leadership in establishing a space traffic system to mitigate the risk of on-orbit collisions through a coordinated data-sharing effort between the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Commerce. This joint effort produced a new program, the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), which late last year achieved initial operating capability in cataloging assets on-orbit and delivering space situational awareness (SSA) to spacecraft operators. 

“TraCSS leverages government and commercial capabilities to provide actionable space situational awareness as a free basic service,” said Col (Ret) Charlie McGillis, Elara Nova partner and a currently-serving member of the TraCSS Independent Review Board. “Safety is paramount in space, especially considering there are tens of thousands of satellites on-orbit today. SPD-3 responded to the growing challenges posed by that increasing volume of space traffic and the greater risk it creates for more on-orbit collisions that can create orbital debris.” 

An increasingly populated and congested space domain not only increases the likelihood of collisions like the 2009 incident, but the orbital dynamics of space makes those collisions exponentially more damaging than collisions in other domains like land, sea or air. 

“Objects in space are traveling over 17,500 miles per hour, so any collision will create a huge debris field that could stay on-orbit for decades or even centuries,” McGillis said, who previously served as the former Director of Intelligence at 14^th Air Force (Space) and a former Senior Vice President at Slingshot Aerospace. “Even a small speck of debris can cause significant damage to other spacecraft and render it unusable. This creates a need for satellite operators to be able to maneuver their assets to avoid other spacecraft, as well as debris, to avoid similar collisions in the future.” 

Augmenting Government Data with Commercial Capability 

The new TraCSS program aims to replace the legacy government-run space traffic system: space-track.org.  

“The Department of Defense stood up space-track.org in response to that 2009 collision, because somebody needed to provide that data from a global perspective,” said McGillis, who currently serves as the Public Sector Vice President at The Provenance Chain Network. “But at the time, it wasn’t a huge drain on DOD resources because there weren’t as many satellites on-orbit as there are today. Now, as the number of satellites on-orbit has increased, so has the difficulty and drain on those DOD resources to serve this effort. The Space Force was founded to defend and protect our space assets, not provide a global space traffic system. That’s why the Office of Space Commerce was created to begin transitioning these capabilities from the Department of Defense to the Department of Commerce.” 

Today, TraCSS is building off the progress made by space-track.org by delivering basic space situational awareness data directly to civil and commercial spacecraft operators. 

“TraCSS has taken a methodical, iterative approach where commercial owner-operators provide their data directly, which was also done on the DOD system,” McGillis said. “A commercial vendor also built TraCSS’ cloud-based infrastructure, which takes DOD data and augments it with commercially provided data. But if you want access to that information as a commercial space owner-operator, you have to provide the ephemeris – or location – of your own assets in space.” 

Commercial Opportunities and Remaining Space Traffic Challenges 

TraCSS delivers its space tracking data through what are called conjunction data messages (CDMs), or standardized notifications about potential close approaches between space objects. Receiving a CDM is seen as a first step toward enabling a satellite operator to maneuver their spacecraft out of the way to avoid a collision. But other challenges remain in creating a safe and sustainable space environment through spacecraft maneuverability. 

“In today’s space environment, you need to be able to maneuver if there’s going to be a close approach,” McGillis said. “The CDMs can come in at a three-day or even seven-day notice, which would give you time to maneuver. But a risk still remains because some satellites on-orbit today don’t have the capability to maneuver, which begs the question about whether policy or regulations need to change to require spacecraft maneuverability.”  

In the meantime, TraCSS is seeking industry input to further augment its effort with other commercial capabilities that can help identify and catalog spacecraft on-orbit through a Collision Avoidance (COLA) Gap Pathfinder program. The COLA Gap Pathfinder program is intended to help tracking efforts adjust to the increased prevalence of “ride-sharing,” or using a single rocket launch to deliver several different types of satellites on-orbit. 

“The hardest part is tracking and cataloging those objects after they’ve been released from the rocket,” McGillis said. “When several objects are released on the same launch, it’s hard to discern which object is which – whether that’s satellite number 1001 or satellite number 1002. Bringing in a commercial capability to fill that need is huge because from a safety perspective, you want to detect, identify and catalog spacecraft as quickly as possible. So this is a great mission for the commercial sector to provide capabilities for.” 

Space Situational Awareness vs. Space Domain Awareness 

Offloading some of the basic space situational awareness capabilities to the commercial sector will also enable the DOD and the Space Force to focus on a similar, but distinct mission area: space domain awareness.  

“Space situational awareness is about knowing where a spacecraft is and the path of its trajectory,” McGillis said. “Space domain awareness adds intelligence information from a military perspective. What is the intent of that object? What are its capabilities? Is it hostile or not? What are its behaviors? Is that a bad actor? So you get into more of what is the intent and the capability of that specific object or satellite.” 

That’s why the TraCSS program’s design is one of the latest examples of how commercial space capabilities can be leveraged by the government to support national security objectives. 

“The government doesn’t want to build something that’s going to be costly, when they can just buy the same product or service directly from the commercial market,” McGillis said. “The way TraCSS is currently organized is in line with serving both national security and economic purposes. It uses commercial innovation to supplement government data and provide warning to those commercial space operators. It’s not unlike how the government manages air traffic control by first providing that data infrastructure and then supplementing that with commercial resources.” 

Opportunities for International Collaboration 

In serving both space situational awareness and space domain awareness missions, however, the need for a space traffic system also requires collaboration with international partners. 

“Space is global – it’s got civil, commercial and a variety of international government assets,” McGillis said. “It’s important that we engage our international partners, so that they understand the capability TraCSS brings to the domain. Likewise, we can coordinate our data with other space traffic systems like the European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking program that takes both national military data, but also commercial data. That coordination between the EUSST and TraCSS is a great example of opportunities for international collaboration.” 

Similarly, the need to establish data-sharing standards and other norms of behavior through international collaboration further reinforces the strategic imperative that the United States be the leader in space traffic management. As it stands today, there is no single, standardized global space traffic system.  

“The inherently dual-nature of space between civil and national security means some countries are not going to want to share their space tracking data to protect a national prerogative,” McGillis said. “China doesn’t share their information with us today, so the only way to track their satellites is through the capabilities that we have today – like TraCSS. So, the United States must take the lead on setting data-sharing standards and establishing norms of behavior, because even when an owner-operator shares their asset’s location, their data format may not be the same.” 

TraCSS as a Foundation for Future Space Capabilities 

In turn, the emergence of a leading space traffic system like TraCSS will enable a foundation for future space capabilities and mission areas that serve both economic and national security purposes. 

“TraCSS is the first step toward a future where spacecraft have the capability to do an ‘RPO,’ or rendezvous in proximity,” McGillis said. “Having a satellite come up to another satellite is an inherently complex mission that requires very exquisite data. But if you can accomplish an RPO effectively, that unlocks opportunities for capabilities like in-space assembly and manufacturing, orbital maneuverability and re-fueling, as well as cleaning up debris on-orbit. TraCSS can provide a foundation for those innovative space capabilities to emerge.” 

In support of the increasingly vital, but inherently complex challenge of space traffic serves as the latest mission area where Elara Nova’s team of experts are uniquely positioned to strengthen government and commercial efforts. 

“Elara Nova brings that voice to all the space conversations that we have, whether it’s in the commercial or government sector,” McGillis said. “Elara Nova can help commercial businesses understand what TraCSS is about and the capabilities that it provides. Whether you’re building a propulsion system or whether you’re launching satellites, you need to understand where you are in space. Everybody has a role in keeping space safe, and we need U.S. leadership in creating this foundational tracking system not only for our economy, but also for our national security.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

Episode 25: TraCSS Delivers Space Situational Awareness to Spacecraft Operators 

Host: Scott King 

SME: Charlie McGillis, Elara Nova partner, former Director of Intelligence at 14th Air Force (Space); former Senior Vice President at Slingshot Aerospace; Vice President, Public Sector, The Provenance Chain Network; TraCSS Independent Review Board member 

00:02 – 01:44 

A 2009 on-orbit collision between a defunct Russian satellite and an Iridium communications satellite created more than 1,800 pieces of debris that signaled an emerging need for a space traffic management system. Since then, space has only become more congested with the rise of a commercial launch market that has enabled affordable access to space for commercial, civil and military space programs alike.  

This influx of on-orbit satellites inspired the 2018 signing of Space Policy Directive-3 during the first Trump administration, which declared the need for U.S. leadership in establishing a space traffic management system to mitigate the risk of future on-orbit collisions through a coordinated effort between the United States Department of Defense – or DOD – and the Department of Commerce.  

This joint effort also produced a new program, the Traffic Coordination System for Space  – or TraCSS – which late last year achieved initial operating capability in cataloging on-orbit assets and delivering space situational awareness – or SSA – data to spacecraft operators. 

Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host, Scott King. Joining me today to discuss TraCSS and the broader challenges in space traffic management, is Elara Nova partner retired Col Charlie McGillis, former director of intelligence at 14th Air Force (Space). Charlie is also a former Senior Vice President at Slingshot Aerospace and currently serves as Public Sector Vice President at The Provenance Chain Network, as well as a member of the Independent Review Board for TraCSS 

Ma’am, welcome to the show! 

01:44 – 01:46 

Thank you! It’s great to be here with you. 

01:47 – 02:04 

It’s great to have you. Now, in September of 2024, the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS, reached a big milestone in achieving initial operating capability. 

But let’s go back to the beginning. Can you describe what TraCSS is and what problem it’s looking to solve? 

02:05 – 05:16 

TraCSS is the first civil space traffic coordination initiative and it was mandated by Space Policy Directive-3, or what we call SPD-3. And this was actually signed by President Trump in 2018 during his first term and it had huge bilateral support. So it leverages government and commercial capabilities to provide that actionable space situational awareness.  

And it does it for free to both civil, commercial operators for space flight safety. And this has been transitioning these capabilities from the Department of Defense. And it’s important to note that this is a free basic service because whether you have one or 1000 satellites that are flying, safety is paramount. And the data is actually used by academia and industry too, to do research. 

But also the Office of Space Commerce through SPD-3 was charged with more than just TraCSS. They actually have a policy and advocacy role as well, where they work with industry, foreign governments, organizations to promote that safe and sustainable operations and to grow the U.S. space commerce. They also authorize and supervise the U.S. commercial remote sensing satellite operations, which has actually changed over the last five years. 

This directive, the SPD-3, it aims to address the growing challenges posed by the increasing volume of space traffic and orbital debris, ensure that safety, sustainability and also leadership in U.S. operations in space.  

And I would like to kind of go back for a minute, because I think it’s important for people to understand, why is this becoming a Department of Commerce mission [when] before what it was all done by the Department of Defense?  

It was actually back in February of 2009 where we had our first ever accidental collision between two intact satellites in orbit. One was a Russian defunct satellite. So not operating, but still up in space, and an active Iridium satellite. So a satellite communication satellite and no warning was issued, right?  

Think about two planes flying. Visual flight rules and not being warned that the other one was actually approaching each other. And, so this collision happened and I talked to the person from Iridium, and he goes, ‘Yeah, I get this call from the DOD and he’s like, you need to come to this classified place, right? Show up at what is Vandenberg now-Space Force Base and had no idea.’ They knew something was wrong with their satellite, but didn’t know that the collision had happened – so huge awakening.  

And at that time in 2009. Not a lot of satellites orbiting. You know, it was about 120 military satellites and about over a thousand active commercial satellites. This is what started what we know today as space-track.org where people can go and get the conjunction data messages and so that’s when those warnings actually started to happen was after that collision event. So it’s important to kind of know that.  

But now today, you fast forward. Tens of thousands of satellites are orbiting in space and so we have to keep that safety paramount and it’s both civil, commercial and government operating in that domain all at the same time.

05:17 – 05:29 

Now, just to add a little more context: can you share what makes a collision between any two objects, whether they be a spent rocket body, a satellite, or other debris, exponentially more harmful in the space domain?

05:30 – 06:29 

That’s a great point. You know, in space, when two objects actually collide. Think about them going over 17,000mph, which is huge and then they collide and it creates this debris. 

Well, that debris stays up there for decades, even could be 100 years. Now satellite owner-operators actually have to be able to maneuver and avoid that debris. And you can actually see I’ve been to the Air and Space Museum where I’ve seen small specks of debris hit like the Hubble Space Telescope or the ISS, and it can cause significant damage. 

Even something very small can cause huge damage to a spacecraft. And I actually liken it to if you have an oil spill and how it permeates the water. From a maritime perspective, that is going to continue and think about the millions of dollars, billions that it takes to clean that up, That’s what it is like in space. It’s that collision. If it happens in space it will have significant impact for decades. 

06:30 – 06:43 

It seems like the keyword that came out of SPD-3 and other supporting documents around TraCSS is “space situational awareness.”  

Can you define space situational awareness for our audience and explain its relevance to national security space interests? 

06:44 – 08:06 

From a space situational awareness perspective, it’s really just about knowing where that spacecraft is? What is its trajectory? Where is it going? 

It’s important to know those things. Just understanding where the objects are in space from a military perspective because you have both civil, commercial and government all operating in that same space and so you have to be able to determine who is who. 

If a conflict begins, you can’t just have like a no-fly zone like you do in the air domain or a maritime blockade. In space, you can’t do that. And so you have to be aware of wherever all those objects are and that’s what space situational awareness is. 

And I know some people kind of confuse SSA space situational awareness with space domain awareness. There’s a huge distinction between the two. When you talk about space domain awareness. 

It actually adds into, for a military perspective, that intelligence information: now what is the intent of that object? What is the adversary doing? Is it hostile or not? What are its behaviors? Is it a bad actor? And so you get into more of what is the intent and the capability of that specific object or that satellite? 

Those are two good distinctions between SSA and space domain awareness.

08:07 – 08:23 

Now civil, commercial, and government assets in space all serve a variety of purposes and missions.  

But why is understanding this difference between space situational awareness and space domain awareness an inherently important step toward protecting those assets in space – no matter their purpose? 

08:24 – 09:24 

I’m going to give a little critique for those of us that are such space nerds, but we don’t do a good job of talking about why space is important. I mean, those of us that are in the business, we understand it implicitly, but the global public doesn’t understand that you actually depend on space every day of your life. 

If you were on your phone, if you use your GPS to get from point A to point B. If you went to an ATM machine and took money out of it – that uses space. If you filled your car up with gas – that uses space. That is a critical piece from an economy perspective in order to understand that we use it every day. 

But it’s also important from a national security perspective. We use space for GPS and targeting and communications and trying to get intelligence like imagery and signals intelligence, missile detection capability, electronic warfare. So there’s a lot of military capabilities space enables – and so we need to protect and defend those assets. 

09:25 – 09:48 

The space traffic management mission began as a responsibility of the DOD. But the TraCSS program actually operates under the Office of Space Commerce, which is housed within the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – or NOAA. 

Can you elaborate on how TraCSS is part of this broader trend of transitioning the space traffic management responsibility from the DOD to the Department of Commerce?

09:49 – 12:35 

You know, as we talked about the historical piece of it with the collision in 2009. Basically, the DOD stood up and said, ‘Hey, somebody needs to do this, from a global perspective and so we didn’t have as many satellites on-orbit. 

It wasn’t a huge drain on DOD assets. But as we’ve seen that number of satellites increase difficulty, not just from a government perspective, but also a commercial perspective, having over 10,000 satellites. It’s a huge responsibility to have that global safety of flight perspective. Between the DOD, they said, ‘Hey, this isn’t really our mission to do this – safety of flight. It’s to protect and defend those assets, those military assets, and provide those capabilities for national security.’ So that’s when the decision was made. ‘Hey, somebody else needs to do this mission.’ That’s when the Office of Space Commerce was stood up, with the direction of SPD-3. 

And then later let’s track through history that that’s when it was just a year later that the Space Force and U.S. Space Command was stood up too, in realizing that there’s more going on in space from a competitive, contested perspective that we’re seeing with China, especially in Russia. From a national security perspective, we need to be able to protect and defend our space assets.  

What we’re seeing happen on orbit today is troubling, not only with the number of satellites China has launched, but the capabilities that they’ve launched. And because you can see it, it’s not like it’s hidden because you can track it in space and you can track that behavior and that intent, whether China has – they have a grappling arm, you know, and they’re able to move a satellite from one position to another and take it to a graveyard or, just recently they, we call it a mothership and a baby. 

You know, they have a mother satellite and they release another object out of that satellite. That’s huge to be able to track those capabilities, the intent of that, if we knew everybody was doing things for public good, we wouldn’t have to worry about it. But we know that’s not the case. 

From a commerce perspective, the decision-making was, ‘Hey, DoD assets that we use today to do space tracking. So today we use radar assets, we use optical assets. And then there’s actually some space capabilities, as well. But it doesn’t give you 24/7 coverage from a space safety kind of perspective. 

And so the thought was, ‘Hey, we need to also use commercial providers in order to do this and to support those commercial operators. It was in order to be able to provide that capability from a commercial perspective and bring it and support a strong commercial aspect of a space ecosystem.

12:36 – 12:45 

Now, Ma’am, you mentioned radar and other optical assets. But can you speak to how the U.S. government, and specifically the DOD, traditionally monitored the space environment? 

 12:46 – 13:54 

The DOD actually uses that same assets as commercial uses: radar, optical, and space-based. They use a system, a legacy system called SPADOC – Space Defense Operations Center system – that analyzes that data and processes it. 

DoD is trying to modernize that infrastructure with a new system called ATLAS — Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System. It’s still not operational yet, but my understanding is it’s on track to achieve initial operational capability (IOC) by the end of 2025. It’s been a long road. 

But, let’s be clear: DOD wants to focus their efforts on adversary satellites. And this is why the Commercial Integration Cell was first stood up, which is what I was a part of for about three years and it was brilliant. General Raymond was the Commander at Vandenberg now-Space Force Base, and he goes, “Hey I’m having to track all these satellites and if I knew where the commercial satellites were, and they told me where they were, then I wouldn’t have to track them and I could focus on that adversary.” This allowed DOD assets to be focused on the adversary and be able to coordinate and share information with commercial partners. 

13:55 – 13:59 

And in what ways is TraCSS different from that traditional approach to space traffic management? 

14:00 – 16:34 

We think about the capabilities that we have today from the infrastructure, cloud-based, being able to do agile software development, being able to field iterative upgrades and capabilities, and being able to do that on a modern infrastructure is huge.That’s what they’re trying to do in ATLAS and it’s taken them a long time because they’ve had to take those legacy systems, make sure everything works before you transition over from legacy to a modern system.  

Whereas TraCSS could start from ground one and build it up, a lot easier so they’re able to ingest that data from the DOD. But also bring in that commercial data, in order to supplement and be able to have that 24/7 coverage and tracking capability. And so today, as you mentioned in the beginning, they have a minimal viable product. They have beta users on it, [it] started in September of ‘24 and now they’ll start to actually onboard other owner-operators. 

The Office of Space Commerce has taken a very, I would say methodical and iterative approach to putting out the capability. They had Pathfinders with commercial data providers and they went out to the customer, the commercial satellite owner-operators: What do you need as this basic service? 

And I think that was brilliant. Anybody that’s selling a product goes out and finds out from the customer, what do you need? Now I will tell you, most satellite owner operators don’t want to pay for things. They want it for free. They’ve been given the data for free and so defining that basic service was a give and take. 

You know, what are we going to continue to do as a basic service for spaceflight safety?  And then what are we going to, you know, what do you as a satellite owner-operator, if you want more data and more analytics, you’re going to have to pay for that, and you’re going to have to go to, you know, a company and, and get that additional [information]. 

So as TraCSS has iteratively built this capability, it will be the same. They are able to today do what we call ‘all versus all.’ So think about all the satellites in space. You take all their data and be able to say, ‘Do analysis against all of those satellites against all the others. And where’s my risk? Where are the riskiest collisions that are going to happen.’  

And then they would spit out a conjunction data message to those operators. ‘Hey, there’s a close conjunction happening and you probably need to maneuver.’ But it really isn’t their decision to maneuver. It’s up to the operator to take that data in and do that maneuver on their own.  

16:35 – 16:48 

Now, realistically speaking, how many of these satellites on-orbit today, have the capacity to maneuver on their own? Can you speak to how TraCSS being built out iteratively might get to a future where this becomes a reality? 

16:49 – 18:58 

It’s a great point. And it’s kind of scary to think of how many satellites are able to launch and they have no maneuver capability. I mean, in other words: they have no propulsion, they have no gas, and they’re not able to maneuver.  

And should that policy or those regulations change? Probably. You know, at least in today’s environment, you should have some kind of capability to do a maneuver if a close approach is coming up, just because as we talked about. If there’s a collision in space, this is a massive impact to everybody that’s operating in space and to everything we depend on space for. So you need to be able to have that maneuverability and be able to move out of the way if there is a close conjunction.  

So most people, you hear you’re traveling at 17,500 mph and you think, “Wow, that must feel like zip, zip—bling, bling, right? And really in space, it’s actually more like moving incredibly fast in slow motion. Because there’s no atmosphere and everything is relative, things happen gradually. So even though you’re speeding around the Earth, you typically get plenty of warning—usually a seven day advance notice or a three day if there’s a close conjunction—and that buffer gives you time to plan and actually execute that maneuver safely, which is crucial in the space environment. 

But some of the other challenges from an Office of Space Commerce perspective, they were stood up under SPD-3. The Office of Space Commerce is actually under NOAA, that causes complications when they’re trying to let contracts because they have to do it under NOAA’s rules and they can’t do it under really Department of Commerce rules. 

The other issue is that SPD-3 is a policy. It’s not a law. Policies can be changed. And so really that formal authorization of having that infrastructure for TraCSS needs to be elevated out of NOAA and into the Department of Commerce. There is some law that has been introduced on the floor called the Safe Orbit Act that would actually do this and formally create and appropriate the funds to do that, which is super important. 

18:59 – 19:03 

In what ways is the space traffic management mission suitable for commercial space opportunities? 

19:04 – 21:00 

The Office of Space Commerce has brought in commercial data companies and also a commercial vendor to build that infrastructure. So it’s been commercial from day one and they’re ingesting the DOD data, but it really is supporting the space commercial ecosystem. And when TraCSS is fully operational, which is expected in early 2026; the intent is to bring down spacetrack.org site, the original DOD space traffic management system, which – if you’ll remember – was instituted after the 2009 collision. 

So from data augmenting the commercial vendor for the infrastructure and then also even the data layer, presentation layer as they are calling it is a commercial vendor, and they’re building it in such a way that it’s modular so that they don’t have vendor lock. They can bring in somebody else from an infrastructure perspective. A new innovative data provider could come in and say, ‘Hey, I have this new capability and we have better data than the other ones have,’ and that data could be bought. 

The balance to me is you provide that infrastructure, from a government kind of perspective. But then you buy commercial sources to augment and sometime in the future, it may be that commercial actually has better capability than the government. 

But from a Space Force perspective, you know, they don’t want to have to be able to build everything that’s costly when they can actually get it from a commercial perspective. So I think it’s in line with both from a national security perspective, but also from an economic perspective and a commercial perspective. 

It’s using the commercial innovativeness that we have, to supplement and provide that warning to those commercial space operators. So fundamentally build the infrastructure? Government. Like air traffic control – and then provide the data, buy the commercial data in order to supplement that and use commercial resources to keep it going. 

21:01 – 21:09 

Now, we’ve discussed the influx of civil, commercial and U.S. government assets in space, but how do international space assets factor into this effort?  

21:09 – 23:16 

Yeah. Super important because space is global, right? And it’s not like you have this contained airspace. And so as we’ve talked about, it’s got civil, commercial and government and that includes anybody internationally. It’s not just U.S assets that are flying in space. The Office of Space Commerce actually engages internationally. 

And that’s one of their roles and because of that Office being established, they bring that credibility from a U.S. space leadership perspective. [That] doesn’t mean that you’re not engaging with other countries, which they are and they, it’s actually interesting. I was fortunate enough to participate in what they call Track 1.5, and it used to be that it would just be government-to-government meetings. 

Well, between the National Space Council, during the Biden administration and then with the Office of Space Commerce, they actually said, ‘Hey, commercial is so important to this, we need to have these Track 1.5 meetings. And so it was government and commercial coming together to engage international partners.’ And I was fortunate to be a part of that for France and Japan 

But they’ve continued that with other countries within the EU, the United Kingdom, India, Australia and others. Being able to engage on a government level, but also on a commercial level with these international partners is very important: one for them to understand the capability that TraCSS brings. What are those capabilities? What are you going to get for free to be able to have safety of flight, but then to also partner with others that want to build similar systems? 

And the one that comes to mind is within the EU. They have a SST. So Space Surveillance and Tracking system and it is similar to TraCSS. And it takes in national military data, but also commercial data. So kind of the same model. That coordination between what EUSST is doing and what TraCSS is doing is a great example of that collaboration internationally.

23:17 – 23:34 

Now, Ma’am, you mentioned that the United States has TraCSS and the EU has SST. But do they have the same standardized data?  

If they don’t, how do they reconcile those differences in how they format and share that data? And what might that mean for the imperative of good communication between these two partners? 

23:35 – 24:36 

I don’t think we’re there yet. I think that we’re close and that’s part of the conversation, that needs to happen. And even when an owner-operator shares their ephemeris, you know, their location, with whether it’s the Department of Defense or Department of Commerce for TraCSS. 

Even that format had to be adjudicated and agreed on. Like, ‘Well, how am I going to send that to you?’ Because they all have different systems and so that data format is really important, but part of this is those conversations between the Office of Space Commerce and EUSST is what is that data format that we want to agree on from an international perspective. 

There are commercial companies that do validation and verification of space data. So if you have two different data sources, you want to be able to determine quickly, which data is more accurate. This is going to be critical and something that the Office of Space Commerce knows and needs to be incorporated into TraCSS at a future date.

24:37 – 24:46 

What about this idea of a universal, internationally recognized space traffic management system.  

Can you elaborate on the possibilities that exist there, but also on the challenges in making that a reality?  

24:47 – 27:04 

From Charlie’s perspective, in a world of space is global, would it be nice to have one international system like air traffic control? Yes. But I think because of the dual-nature of space between civil and let’s just say government national security, that’s going to be hard to do because people are not going to want to be sharing all that data. They’re going to want it to remain a national prerogative. Do I share that data or do I not? Because there’s something going on in space. 

From a space safety perspective. You’re going to have, at least to begin with, these regional, whether it’s EUSST, or TraCSS, or maybe Japan sets up their own system regionally, and so they’re going to have to be able to collaborate and coordinate amongst themselves. 

And so it gets to the data standard that we talked about, what’s the adoption of the technical SSA standards that we need? How are we actually going to share that information? And what’s the direct engagement with those spacecraft operators? 

An example, I would use is if you have a Japanese satellite, do they give their data to the Japanese, you know, whatever that entity is and then that data is shared? They don’t actually have to share it with both TraCSS and EUSST, and you want to make it simple, because once the data is in there, you can share it broadly. And then it is that making sure that you work closely amongst the different players and I think that globally many people want space capabilities. 

An individual country, it’s like a coming out party. It’s like a debutante if you have space capabilities and so being able to actually share that information is super important.  

You talk about a one system, I just don’t see that happening anytime in the near future. Russia has kind of put something on the plate to propose a single centralized SSA system. But let’s be clear, China doesn’t share their information with us today. The only way to track where their satellites are, are through the capabilities that we have today. There is no sharing going on. 

So you would have to come to the table and say, ‘Globally we are all going to share and we’re all going to follow these norms of behavior and these rules.’ And I think we’re a little far off from that.

27:05 – 27:11 

And how does that speak to the imperative that the United States be the one to take a leadership role in space traffic management? 

27:12 – 27:59 

I mean, there are other nations that are taking a leadership role. Probably a few years ago, the UK actually came out with some very strong norms of behavior policy that they introduced to the UN. Amazing to see that leadership come out from the UK. 

From a US perspective, we have been the leader, we have had the global space traffic system and so we need to continue to be that leader, both from an economic and a national security perspective. 

That engagement with the commercial owner-operators in the norms of behavior. TraCSS has been a huge proponent of that, whether it’s their engagement with the commercial side and the commercial owner-operators or it’s with governments, or with the UN. They’ve really been pushing this standard from day one. 

28:00 – 28:12 

In the meantime, the TraCSS program also recently sought feedback on its Collision Avoidance or COLA Pathfinder program? How does this COLA Pathfinder program fit into this broader TraCSS effort? 

28:13 – 30:25 

When TraCSS first started, this was one of the areas that DOD, it was one of their highest priorities, not just to offload space traffic, space safety part of it, but also collision avoidance.  

Let’s go through that mission a little bit so people understand it. You have a launch. And you could have one or 60 [satellites.] And so the hardest part is tracking and cataloging those objects once they’ve been released from the rocket. From a DOD perspective, that was taking a lot of time in order for them to do that. 

Because when you have that many objects, it’s hard to discern which object is which? Is it satellite 1000 or is it satellite 1002? Being able to do what they call COLA, is cataloging those satellites. Being able to bring in commercial capability to fill that gap, is huge because obviously from a safety perspective, you want to catalog them as quickly as possible. 

You know, detect them, identify them and catalog them right after they’re deployed and that takes a very focused capability, in order to do that. And I actually think this is a great mission for the commercial sector to be able to do.  

They can do it much quicker than DOD can because of the additional capabilities that they have. And I’ll be honest, because they don’t have legacy systems. They’re able to get it in quickly and see it. And it’s normally, sometimes they have capability where the DOD doesn’t have capability, like they have an optical telescope, maybe where the DOD doesn’t have an optical telescope in order to see that. 

So from a commercial company, I can now have those capabilities to have broader coverage across the globe. Commercial can put capabilities maybe where the DOD hasn’t been able to put capability. You could put capabilities in Asia and Australia, capabilities in Chile and South Africa. 

Whereas DOD has to go government-to-government and go, ‘Okay, can I? It’s like having a base, right? Can I have basing rights in your country?’ Commercial – it’s a transaction. So you can add that capability. 

30:26 – 30:37 

And so what are some of the other capabilities that the DOD can look to the commercial space industry to provide solutions for? And how does TraCSS lay the foundation for those future capabilities to come to fruition? 

30:38 – 31:46 

Obviously, the space safety. They’re able to add data. I think this COLA mission. I also believe we’re not quite there yet, but we’re getting there from an innovation perspective from a in-space assembling and manufacturing. 

You know, so being able to actually re-gas or have mobile propulsion for a satellite. So now you’re not actually limited to the propulsion that was on the satellite when it launched. Or being able to maneuver a satellite from one position to another or being able to fix a satellite. And I actually see in a future where you could maybe capture the debris in some way. That’ll change the dynamic of how we operate in space. 

TraCSS is the first step of getting to that future, because you have to know where those objects are in space in order to have that capability to do what we call an RPO rendezvous in proximity [operation] – like to be able to have another satellite come up to another satellite – is not a simple mission.  

You have to have very exquisite data in order to be able to do that. TraCSS is the foundation to be able to bring those additional capabilities and that innovation to space.

31:47 – 32:00 

And Ma’am, from your perspective as a partner, what role can Elara Nova and its broad team of partners and consultants serve in supporting the government and its commercial and international partners for the purpose of space traffic management? 

32:01 – 33:02 

Elara Nova brings that voice to all the conversations that we have, whether it’s in the commercial sector or the government sector, or civil. And whether you’re engaging, and having those conversations, on The Hill or with international partners.  

From my perspective, Elara Nova can help commercial businesses understand what TraCSS is about and the capabilities that it provides? And how do they actually integrate with that capability? Whether you’re building a propulsion system or whether you’re launching satellites, you need to understand this and where you are in that ecosystem. Everybody has a role in keeping space safe, no matter where you are in the ecosystem. 

And then from a government or international perspective, it’s being that voice that, ‘Hey, we do need this infrastructure. We do need this foundation from a TraCSS system for U.S. leadership, not only for our economy, but also for national security, and being that bridge, especially on the international side of bringing partners together.’

33:03 – 33:40 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge. 

Commercial SSA Data to be added to the SDA Mission 

The United States Space Force is looking to add commercial capabilities to its space domain awareness (SDA) mission. For decades, the SDA mission was driven by space situational awareness (SSA) data from military-operated constellations like the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) and the Space Based Space Surveillance (SBSS) system. These legacy programs leveraged space situational awareness data to support a space domain awareness understanding of the evolving threat environment in space. Now, the Space Force is engaging commercial space companies to develop a new program, currently known as RG-XX, which is widely viewed as bringing solution-diversity to the space domain awareness mission. 

“SBSS and GSSAP are two of the earliest programs to operationalize space situational awareness data from on-orbit capabilities,” said Col (Ret) Ken Bowling, a partner at Elara Nova. “Space situational awareness is knowing where a space object came from the day it was launched, and maintaining track custody for the entirety of its lifetime. Meanwhile, space domain awareness is overlaid against the kill chain concept: it’s about understanding the behaviors and intent of space objects across all orbital regimes, which is especially important when you’re attributing the source of an attack and enabling your warning systems.” 

An Evolving Threat Environment in Space 

SBSS and GSSAP essentially function as a “neighborhood watch” in both geosynchronous and sun-synchronous orbits, respectively. Together, they help the Space Force develop a space domain awareness picture that tracks and characterizes man-made objects operating in space.  

But the same evolving threat environment in space that triggered the founding of the Space Force, also means the Department of War’s newest military service must expand its resources to better understand, prepare for and respond to, existing and emerging threats.  

“Previously, your satellite only had to survive a tough but relatively benign environment: temperature changes, radiation, micrometeorite hits, etc.,” Bowling said. “But almost no thought was put into your satellite operationally surviving a kinetic or even non-kinetic attack. Programs such as GSSAP and SBSS play a role in that warfighting construct. Now, RG-XX could become something different, but it will be a space domain awareness tool that includes the potential for commercial vendors to provide that capability.” 

The evolving threat and counterspace landscape include kinetic threats like direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) and non-kinetic threats like cyber and electromagnetic warfare attacks that can compromise a satellite’s operations. As a result, the Space Force and its commercial partners are beginning to think differently about how they build and manufacture their satellites to ensure resilience against these emerging threats.  

“The commercial space industry has a business model predicated on satellites succumbing to the environmental effects of space, particularly the radiation,” Bowling said. “When their satellites fail, that’s an opportunity to upgrade the next replacement satellite with new technology. But that’s an operating mindset for a benign environment, like changing a tire. When my car’s tire wears out, I’ll just put on a new tire. But that does not translate into military operations.” 

Changing Requirements for Space Acquisition 

Now, Bowling acknowledges that the analogy of changing a car tire is a loose one. But nonetheless, the point remains that the Space Force is similarly developing and implementing its own DOTMILPF, a framework known as Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, and Facilities. DOTMILPF is a policy approach that other military services have leveraged effectively to procure and acquire weapons systems for military operations.  

“When the Army, Navy and Air Force design weapons systems, they know those weapons systems are going to be engaged by hostile forces in their natural environment,” Bowling said. “Now, in space we not only have to consider operational satellites attacking other satellites in space, but also adversary effects coming from one domain into the space domain, like a ground-launched ASAT.” 

That’s why the Space Force is exploring new ways to better protect its assets on-orbit, similar to how tanks and mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPV) are designed to withstand attacks on land.  

“In a best-case scenario, a car tire can run on a flat, but tank treads and MRAPVs can take a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) round and still keep going,” Bowling said. “That’s the difference between the drive mechanisms built for military uses, versus commercial or personal use. Today, our satellites are not much more hardened than a car tire. We have very little defensive mechanisms to protect them, other than to attribute an attack to a specific adversary because we had custody of that object until it attacked us.” 

While the challenge of hardening space technologies from attack is far more complex than simply reinforcing a car tire to withstand an RPG round, the analogy still reinforces that as it stands today, SSA and SDA data is one of the few tools available to protect and defend Space Force assets on-orbit.  

However, the wide-ranging set of threat vectors in space is further challenging the Space Force and its partners about how to design and manufacture the next generation of satellites.  

“You could theoretically put armor on a satellite to protect it from a kinetic strike, but even that would be difficult because even a paint fleck traveling seven kilometers per second in low-Earth orbit can cause significant damage,” Bowling said. “Then there’s non-kinetic effects: how do you protect your satellite’s sensors from electromagnetic effects? These are just some of the threat vectors the Space Force is exploring as part of the requirements process.” 

Other solutions are being considered, as RG-XX will be the first Space Force program to require a refueling capability. But even then, developing similar solutions are uniquely challenging in the space domain.  

“Satellites carry fuel on board to adjust their orbits, but what if they have to maneuver to avoid a collision or to avoid an adversary?” Bowling said. “There’s a lot of talk about on-orbit refueling. But if satellites are designed to be refueled, then they have to have a common interface standard like a KC-135’s refueling probe. Otherwise, you have to think about launching another satellite to repair a damaged one or replenish the capability altogether with a whole new satellite.” 

Consequently, as the Space Force develops its warfighting mindset for the evolving space domain, the military service is re-evaluating how it optimizes the development and procurement of its assets.  

“Weapon system acquirers are trained to optimize for three pillars: cost, schedule and performance,” Bowling said. “Space systems are expensive and take a long time to develop because they’re simply too important to fail. But we’ve realized that some space technology is already becoming obsolete by the time we’re even putting it on-orbit. So Moore’s Law, which says technology rapidly changes every couple of years, is a persistent challenge.” 

Engaging Commercial for Solution-Diversity 

The imperative to adapt is driving the Space Force to further engage commercial partners for new and innovative solutions. Despite having unique needs for maintaining SSA data around on-orbit assets, there are opportunities for the Space Force to benefit from the information a commercial space company can provide.  

“A commercial satellite might have three or four cameras documenting what’s going on around them for potential insurance liability claims,” Bowling said. “Now, the Space Force doesn’t care about insurance liabilities, but they care about whether a satellite’s failure is the result of an adversary’s attack or threatens the freedom of operations in space. So if a commercial company can provide SSA data to the warfighter on-demand, then the warfighter may benefit from that.” 

Now, the Space Force is actively engaging with commercial space companies to gauge their interest in providing SSA data to the broader space domain awareness mission. In August, the Space Force held an industry day that brought out over 150 companies who expressed interest in RG-XX, which aligns well with Major General Stephen Purdy’s publicly-expressed intention of taking a multi-vendor approach to the program. 

“It’s dangerous for the Department of War to be solely dependent on a single vendor for any critical technology, and so industry days are set up to get feedback about different approaches, trade-offs or requirements,” Bowling said. “If you have multiple vendors, the inherent competition hopefully drives better price solutions for the Space Force. But this solution-diversity also complicates the adversary’s decision-making by driving up their cost for a more advanced offensive capability.” 

While the specific details of RG-XX remain to be determined, Bowling asserts that the Space Force’s approach to the space domain awareness mission is evolving in two distinct ways. 

“One: the Space Force knows that the information GSSAP provides is critical to the warfighting capabilities they need moving forward. Two: the Space Force is going into this RG-XX program with the notion that it is both possible and reasonable for commercial capabilities to be included in the pursuit of space domain awareness.” 

Now, as more commercial space companies enter the emerging space economy and present their own solutions to the Space Force for programs like RG-XX, Elara Nova stands as an interlocutor to help both the military service and its commercial partners develop the necessary space capabilities of the future.  

“Elara Nova has over 90 partners, many of whom have space backgrounds ranging from rocket launch to command and control; payload and satellite development; and operations and sustainment of space capabilities,” Bowling said. “So Elara Nova can provide expertise across the entire spectrum of space operations, from inception to operations and even disposal.”  

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space and aeronautics domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/.   

Episode 31: From GSSAP to RG-XX, Space Force Bringing “Solution Diversity” to Space Domain Awareness

Host: Scott King

SME: Col (Ret) Ken Bowling, Partner at Elara Nova

00:02 – 01:33

To better understand the space operational environment, the United States Space Force has traditionally relied on military-operated constellations like the Space Based Space Surveillance system (SBSS) and the Geosynchrnous Space Situational Awareness Program (or GSSAP), both of which provide space situational awareness data that simply identifies and tracks man-made objects in orbit. 

But space situational awareness data, also known as SSA, is vital to a broader Space Force imperative for space domain awareness, or SDA: which goes another step further in not only identifying and tracking man-made objects in space, but also understanding their intent and behavior, as well.

Now, the Space Force wants commercial space companies to provide their own SSA data to the SDA mission, through a new program, currently known as Geosynchronous Reconnaissance & Surveillance Constellation (or RG-XX). 

Welcome to The Elara Edge! Here to discuss these space domain awareness programs, and the opportunities and challenges of bringing commercial SSA data to the SDA mission, is Elara Nova partner Ken Bowling. A retired Colonel with the United States Air Force, Ken commanded units at both Group and Squadron levels, and brings with him over 25 years of satellite research and development experience, and space situational awareness expertise. 

Sir, welcome to the show!

01:34 – 01:35

Thank you. Glad to be here. 

01:35 – 01:45

We’re happy to have you. Now, Sir, let’s begin with GSSAP. 

Can you introduce us to this Space Force program and its role as it relates to the space domain awareness mission?

01:46 – 03:24

Yeah, I’ll do the best I can. Just keep in mind that everything that I say regarding GSSAP and any other space-based capabilities that may or may not be actively part of the Space Force inventory. My answers and comments today are based upon open source media, not anything that I may have picked up in my time on active duty while I was in the U.S. Air Force, serving in the space community.

So GSSAP has been around for a while. It’s development effort – it was not well known, if known at all, as it was supposed to be. In 2014, roughly, when we were still the Air Force and Space Command was part of the Air Force, it was a capability at Geosynchronous orbit that provided space situational awareness through persistent and, relatively speaking, nearby, meaning it was actually in geosynchronous orbit with other geosynchronous objects such as communications satellites and other things, in such a way that it was able to survey and surveil geosynchronous orbit.

And in recent years it has served its purpose well, according to all sorts of published media on it. And they’re even talking about today – openly – about a next generation RG-XX, follow on or whatever you want to call it. They haven’t given it a name yet, a formal name. And I think it even includes the potential to have commercial vendors provide some of that capability. At least they’re not being excluded from the conversation.

03:25 – 03:42

Now, you mentioned that GSSAP wasn’t well known when it was first fielded by the government. But how has the operating environment in space changed over time, to the point where Space Force officials are not only publicly acknowledging GSSAP’s existence, but openly talking about fielding other space domain awareness programs, as well?

03:43 – 06:56

Yeah, it has and really, the world has changed. Not the least of which has been the threat over time, but also just the way the U.S. Space Force, since its activation as a new service for the Department of War, now, the mindset about space and space warfare and space operations has changed dramatically.

Over the years it was abundantly clear that there was very little space threat, other than the launching of a rocket and a satellite on board was a rough ride, and it was a tough environment to survive and then once you got on orbit, whatever orbit you were in, there were all sorts of things that you had to survive: temperature changes, radiation environments, maybe micrometeorite hits and so forth and so on. Things that were just part of the space environment, and a lot of weapons systems were built to just survive those environments. 

Almost no thinking was put into operationally – how do they survive an attack by an adversary. Not just non-kinetic attack, but potentially kinetic attack and we’ve seen that our eyes were opened in the late 90s when we saw the threat of direct-ascent, anti-satellite weapons, we call them direct ascent ASATs, both by Russia and China and even the United States shot down a failing satellite ourselves and so we’ve acknowledged for a long time that that threat is real. 

We’ve also acknowledged that just overcrowding has become a threat. But now we see, according to open sources, maneuvering satellites that are in and around other satellites deliberately, as one general stated it – General Guetlein – he referred to that looking a lot more like “space dogfighting” than just curiosity by one nation about what’s going on and what you can do in space.

And so with those kinds of thoughts, we have seen a transition in open source conversation about a more warfighting posture for our space capabilities, where things like DOTMILPF and we can talk about what that may or may not mean for this discussion, along the lines of the kinds of things that the Army, the Navy and the Air Force think about when they think about designing weapons systems that they know are going to be engaged by hostile forces in their natural environment: at sea, below the sea, in the air, on the land, and now into space where we have to consider not just adversary effects from one domain, the ground, into the domain of space, but perhaps from space to space. 

Operational satellites attacking other operational satellites is really what we’re talking about as a change. And clearly programs such as GSSAP and any follow-on that may happen, as well as in a low-Earth orbit version like SBSS and like capabilities, can play a role in that future warfare construct. 

06:57 – 07:15

And before we dive any deeper, I think it’s important to clarify the distinction between space situational awareness (SSA) and space domain awareness (SDA). It’s something we’ve covered on the show before, but can you reiterate for us the difference between SSA and SDA?

07:16 – 10:18

Sure. So space domain awareness is defined as the persistent fuzed understanding of space objects, behaviors and intent across all orbital regimes that enable warning – and here’s a big word – attribution, defensive maneuver, targeting and assessment. So my way of thinking about it, as a guy who was grown up in the Air Force and spent the first half of his career in the airplane technology business, is the kill chain.

So SDA is not synonymous with, but it’s overlaid against the concept of the kill chain and the kill chain in the Air Force is: find, fix, track, target, engage and assess. We call that F2T2EA. SDA is very much like that. It’s pretty easy to, for example, attribute when a MiG is on your six or you’re about to shoot down a MiG if you were an Air Force fighter pilot.

It’s pretty easy to attribute that’s a Russian tank, and I’m in my Army tank because we’re fighting tank to tank. Space is a little more difficult, but really it’s not conceptually any more difficult except for that seeing a little Russian flag on a satellite, or an American flag on a satellite, or seeing an Allied flag on a satellite. It’s really kind of hard at the distances satellites operate at.

So assessing and attributing the threat is very, very important. You don’t want to attack a friendly satellite because it’s so far away you can’t see its flag that is flying and if they simply don’t fly a flag, then you’ll never see one anyway. So there’s a lot that goes into space domain awareness, especially when you’re trying to attribute an attack and trace it back to: where did it come from? And that has a lot to do with space situational awareness and there’s the link. 

SSA intends to know where that object came from the day it was launched, and never lose track of it. Maintaining track custody for the life of that object is critically important and that’s the linkage between SSA and space domain awareness. Now there’s overlap there as well, but especially in the kill chain where you have to engage and assess.

And how do you close the fire control loop, knowing that I have to pull a trigger some time or another, and I need to know that I got it in my sights and that can be aiming, if you will, can be part of SSA if you will. And then after you do it, we would call that bomb damage assessment in the Air Force.

But that’s the assess part after a kill chain action occurs. How did we do? Do we need to shoot again? Were we successful? How successful were we?  So those are the linkages. But again SDA is much more than the SSA mission and it’s much more akin to the kill chain mission.

10:19 – 10:28

And so how are these changes in the operational environment in space – affecting how the Space Force and its commercial partners think about developing and manufacturing their satellites?

10:29 – 14:02

The commercial space industry is still fairly much a benign space environment focused activity. So much so, they fully expect their satellites to die on orbit and re-entry in some short amount of time. And they actually have a business model set up on that predicted outcome for their satellites that they will succumb to the environmental effects, particularly radiation on the hardware, because radiation is really, really tough on electronics in orbit. And we’ve known that for decades, and they rely on that, and they rely on it for a good reason. 

One, it’s way cheaper to use parts that are not built for space, but built for inside the atmosphere and under the protection of the magnetosphere of the Earth’s ball. And when they fail, they see that as an opportunity to upgrade the next replacement satellite with new technology, not just replace the satellite, but update and refresh the technology in the satellite.

Instead of having to deal with parts that have gone obsolete, they just replaced the part with a new part, at least for the life of several generations and then when that part becomes obsolete, they’re not worried about it. They just replace it. So that’s a very benign mindset. That’s like changing a tire. When my tire wears out, I’ll just put on a new tire on my vehicle that does not scale into military operations.

No more than a tire on my car scales into the treads on a tank, or on an MRAP combat vehicle. They’re totally different kinds of tires. Ones at best, run flat. The other ones can take an RPG round and still keep going and those are very different drive mechanisms: military versus my tire on my car.

And so it’s more parallel for the commercial world to think like a car tire than to think of it as a tank track or an MRAP tire. Now, militarily, we’re not much further along today than the car tire. We don’t have, other than to know and perhaps attribute an attack to an adversary because we had custody of that object until it attacked us.

We have very little defensive mechanisms. We don’t have any armor. We’re working, and I know we are, because it’s happening all over the DoD on cyber defense capabilities so that our satellites cannot be attacked through cyber means. But I would not claim that they are fully cyber-hardened in every aspect, because what is? 

Electromagnetic attack is another form of attack that we see in the battlefield. We see it with GPS, usually from the ground to ground-based receivers. So the satellites are working fine, but receivers can’t receive a signal because there’s a local jammer jamming the receiver, overpowering it. Well, theoretically, a satellite could be on-orbit and do RF jamming so that that satellite couldn’t receive commands from the ground, just like the GPS receiver in my vehicle couldn’t receive the signal from space. It works in both directions. 

And then kinetic attack, however crazy that seems because especially at low-Earth orbit, we’ve seen a kinetic attack. We’ve seen anti-satellite weapons destroy satellites. We’ve even seen satellites collide with one another inadvertently and the debris field just trashes an awful lot of the orbit and at GEO it may even be worse, or even more troubling, because we have a lot of very strategic assets out of geosynchronous orbit.

14:03 – 14:10

Now, as the Space Force considers how to best protect and defend their assets on-orbit. What requirements that they need to be thinking about?

14:11 – 16:51

Requirements for military capabilities are almost always classified because they’re based upon threats and threats are almost always classified because they’re based on intelligence. And intelligence is classified because of how they discover intelligence. So it’s hard for me to speak about what requirements are out there today. But if the conversation in open source is to be taken, just as it’s stated, a lot of people are beginning to think about: how do we change requirements?

And I can’t tell you specifics. I can give you some ideas, like, ‘Would we ever lower the bandwidth of a satellite that we want to launch?’ And it’s very expensive to lower like a communications satellite – will we want to lower the bandwidth it’s capable of so that we could put some heavy armor. Just think of something is as benign as a Kevlar vest. I’m not talking about tank armor. I’m talking about just something that would absorb a BB, but a BB moving at seven kilometers a second. And that’s what people don’t really understand, is that a satellite in low-Earth orbit is traveling at about seven kilometers every second. You don’t have to shoot it. It’ll just crash into it.

But if you have something coming at a crossing trajectory, it can easily be traveling at anywhere from a few kilometers a second to many. And we don’t put any shielding on those. So are there requirements to protect them from a BB? Even a paint flake from some former mission where the paint came off of a rocket body and it’s still drifting in some decaying orbit, but still, there in low-Earth orbit. But you might run into it or it might run into you.

It happens to the space station all the time. And so some of the things that they think about on the space station are probably informing requirements about kinetic things, and also things like lasers. 

So what would we do about those? What kind of sunglasses do you put on your optics so it doesn’t get burned by a laser? What kind of filters do you put on your antenna? Your apertures? So they’re not overwhelmed by an RF energy source? What kind of filtering do you do? How do you shield front-end electronics, whether they’re optical electronics or their radio frequency electronics, what kind of protections would you put on those? Is a question that I’m sure they’re all asking as a requirements thought process. 

And there are other potential vectors of threats – I’ve already mentioned kinetic. But I’m sure they’re going through those and if I would be doing it, I’m sure they wouldn’t be doing it. I just don’t know what the threats are today – that’s classified.

16:52 – 17:03

Now, RG-XX is the first Space Force program to require its satellites to have a capacity for refueling. How might the ability to refuel change the calculus for maintaining a space domain awareness constellation of satellites on-orbit?

17:04 – 19:02

Almost all satellites carry fuel on board to adjust their orbits to fine tune the orbit. And then if and as those orbits shift and degrade, and all of them do, regardless of whether it’s geosynchronous, middle Earth orbit or low Earth orbit, they all shift. There are some maneuvering capabilities to readjust those orbits. 

Well, what about fueling them for more than just to avoid a collision? How about to avoid an adversary? So some of those things ought to be thought about. And then maybe do you refuel them? There’s a lot of talk about on-orbit maintenance, on-orbit resupplying with fuel.

I mean, if we’re worried about one satellite attacking another satellite as an adversary, what about a friendly satellite refueling another satellite, or maybe replacing a battery? Not that you could do major maintenance. It’s really kind of hard to do anything. But if satellites were designed to be refueled and there was a satellite designed to fuel and they had a standard, a common interface standard, think a KC-135 or a KC-10 or any of the refueling aircraft and all of the recipients of that fuel, they have a common standard about how do they refuel with a refueling probe? For example, and then how about on-orbit battery changes? 

Those are probably the two that I would say. I don’t think we would change a primary payload like an optical system or a communications system. You’d probably just launch another satellite or have a spare. But that’s another thing to think about is how resilient are you on the ground and how rapidly can you get from, ‘Hey, I need to replace or replenish a constellation or at least one satellite I get from there to on the pad and on-orbit. How fast can I do that? How many spares do I need to have in the pipeline on the ground, ready to go? Because I’m worried that I have to replenish GPS, or I have to replenish some other major constellation element that provides critical capability to the warfighter. 

19:03 – 19:20

And with respect to replenishing a capability or maintaining mission assurance, what are the implications for the Space Force’s acquisition professionals who are responsible for fielding the weapons systems that go on-orbit? What are some of the unique challenges and considerations they need to be thinking about?

19:21 – 22:54

For weapon system acquirers. There are many that have been trained to do it. Optimize for different things. Always: cost, schedule and performance are part of the acquisition consideration. Those are the three pillars. Risk is often added as well. For space systems because they have been so expensive over the years as technology went from very nascent to now much more well understood. 

The optimization historically has been on: we’re spending so much money we have to make it last for a long time. We got to get the bang for the buck, and if we’re in for $1 billion for a constellation, what difference does it make that we’re going to go for $1.2 billion? But we’re going to get five more years out of it.

So they were optimized as all systems are, but they’re so expensive. It was like they’re too big to fail. But as you go along, it’s taken so long for us to get this through all the proof that it’s going to work. We realize along the way that some of the technology we’re already putting in there is already becoming obsolete.

So even during the manufacturing, even late in the design phase, they realized we need to change out a part, not because it was bad, but because we’re going to have to make 5 or 10 more of these satellites, and that part is no longer going to be available, particularly electronics, particularly circuit chips and other critical components that are very near and dear to computer technologies.

And as we know, Moore’s Law says they change every couple of years. Everything is refreshed. So that’s been a challenge. We optimized space systems for long life, and at some level we traded off cost to make sure that performance, that long life performance was guaranteed. So that’s been the historic path. Tomorrow’s path is – it’s a spectrum.

It’s not this or that. It’s somewhere along the spectrum. We’ve been over here on mission assurance that satellite cannot fail for 10-15 years. And the Army looks at things differently. And I’m not saying we should be like the Army, but again, on the spectrum, some things are going to get blown up, some things are going to get broken.

And two things are true about that mindset: And think even the Air Force is like this: aircraft have to land and get repaired, and they’re built to have redundancy for battle damage. All of those elements of everything else they can land and pull into a hangar and be repaired. A tank can be brought back and repaired. An aircraft can go into a depot and be repaired, and a ship can go into a drydock or into a port and be repaired. A submarine, same for it. 

Satellites don’t land and they don’t come back for repairs. And I think it is damaged and it breaks the mission. They’re just no more than orbiting rocks. They might as well be a meteor. So the idea about surviving is often tied to: you don’t get a second chance, not even one. Unlike almost all other military combat capabilities.

Where you do get a second chance to at least fix them. You know, if they are destroyed? Well, that’s one thing. But if they’re just broke and they can’t do the mission, you abort the mission or you come back after the mission, you fix it and you go back out the next day ready to fight. Can’t do that with satellites.

22:55 – 23:06

Now, RG-XX is widely-understood to be a commercially driven solution to space domain awareness. But what are the advantages or disadvantages to leveraging commercial capabilities in this way?

23:07 – 27:50

Commercial space situational awareness capabilities could contribute a lot in some ways and in other ways they don’t help much at all. In the ‘help a lot.’ There was a time when there was an open source discussion about commercially launched satellites. It would be in their best interest to take with them localized space situational awareness.

For example, a commercial satellite having 3 or 4 cameras that had short range but high field of view awareness of what’s going on around them and remember commercial entities have to cover insurance and there were a lot of those insurance companies that were interested in knowing whether or not the failure was the manufacturer or whether it was hit by a meteorite or whatever, because there were certain things that were included in those policies, and there were things that weren’t included in those policies.

And then there were other people that just wanted to know, is my capability being messed up by somebody else, or do I have some kind of intermittent failure? And so there was a lot of talk about, for example, for a communications satellite, was there another satellite in its field of view to a downlink station so that it was not able to communicate properly because something was blocking its line of sight. And so knowing that that might or may not be happening was of interest in conversation some number of years ago. I think that still is a valid point. 

Just like cars today, if you drive a modern car today, you have cameras all over it that can see what’s around you. You do it so you can change lanes. You can do it so you don’t change lanes. You can see when you back up and you can see it even when you’re driving forward. And there are people who mount cameras in their car in case some driver in front of them is doing something chaotic, they can record that for insurance purposes.

So if it applies on the ground in the automotive industry today, you might make that same claim applies to commercial assets on-orbit today. So that’s my linkage there. I think if it applies in vehicles, it applies in airplanes. If it applies in those places, why wouldn’t you? If it protects you or provides you some information that is very low cost for the benefit, you may reap from it. A bit of an insurance policy, and if you can provide that data to the warfighter on-demand or at request, then the warfighter may find some very important benefit to that same information that would be equivalent to the Department of Transportation collecting the camera imagery of every car.

Now, there’s a lot more cars than there are satellites, but boy, if they had it, they would be able to keep traffic a lot more regulated than we might imagine. Well, with much fewer assets on-orbit still having more SSA would provide a lot of benefit in a lot of ways to include just basic space traffic accidents, but other things as well, particularly threats and risks that exist on orbit. So the commercial side has that. 

Now, a dedicated commercial space situational awareness asset. Now they have to make a business case. They have to make a business case that building something, which starts with coming up with a design, getting an investor to fund the design to the fruition of production and then launching on-orbit and on-orbit our operations for who knows how long, years perhaps.

What’s the return on investment to that capital or commercial company? That’s a serious consideration. If the government sees that in their business case as more affordable or affordable enough to have it, plus dedicated assets, then I think there’s a lot of people who would agree with that. But the price tag is really going to be the deciding factor.

How much does it cost to fund both a dedicated military version of space situational awareness in any orbit regime, and buying imagery or buying the service from a commercial provider of space situational awareness data simultaneously, or instead of. And what are the operational risks? And of course, a lot of people worry, ‘Well, if I don’t have control of it, it doesn’t feel like it’s part of the military.’

And that’s been a concern about all kinds of military capability provided by commercial. Notice we don’t have commercial aircraft carriers. We don’t have commercial bombers, we don’t have commercial tankers. People talk about tankers, but they don’t have commercial tankers for civilian airlines. You know, how far do you go with commercialization of military essential technology? That is a current and will be an ongoing debate for years to come.

27:51 – 28:01

And to go one step further, can you elaborate on the differences between how a commercial company – compared to the Space Force – and how they would use space situational awareness data?

28:02 – 30:36

Exactly. In fact, the Air Force doesn’t care at all about liabilities associated with who does what to whom.

Now, I will say this. The Air Force is a good steward of space, perhaps the number one steward of space, in that they care a lot about not being the cause of any destructive activity on-orbit. In fact, a lot of the money we’ve spent over the decades was not only – do we not want to fail because we lose the mission, because failure in space leaves a lot of risk for everybody, the entire ecosystem of space, particularly in individual orbital regimes.

So to be clear, the Air Force is probably concerned about liability not because of insurance purposes, but because they have to operate in that domain and it’s a little bit like polluting your own well where you drink water from. You don’t want to do that. That’s my analogy of the Air Force. They don’t want to pollute their own well, where they get their drinking water. In meaning they are very careful about the space environment.

That said, the behavior of adversaries or other space-faring activities is not really the primary concern of the Space Force, although they spend a lot of money and effort. And what I mean by that: they buy ground based radars and ground-based electro-optical systems, space-based sensors, to make sure that, like ships traveling the seas, we don’t want collisions.

We spend a lot of money at sea to ensure lines of communication on sea lanes are open and safe, with the Navy and the Coast Guard, and we do kind of the same role in the Air Force or Space Force. Excuse me. To make sure that the lines of communication and the space lanes of operation, we’ll call those orbits, are available and safe, and the electromagnetic spectrum is protected so that somebody is not inadvertently jamming somebody else in space, we spent a lot of money on those things. 

But in terms of liability, whether or not a communications satellite that is a commercial company that makes money selling bandwidth to like television or radio and if they were being deliberately attacked, that would matter to the Air Force, because that’s an attack. If it’s some kind of accident or some kind of failure that doesn’t threaten freedom of operations in space. But affects the efficiency and efficacy of the business, they kind of don’t care. But if it has to do with operations in space or an attack on a U.S. or Allied commercial capability by an adversary, they would care a lot about that.

30:37 – 30:48

You also spoke of the space domain awareness mission’s inherent relationship with the kill chain. What are some concerns or challenges that might need to be overcome to incorporate commercial capabilities to this mission, effectively?

30:49 – 34:01

So let’s just make an assumption that the sensor technologies are available and maybe they’re fielded. So let’s say they’re on-orbit. The next question is: ‘How do you utilize those sources of information, those sensor sources in space domain awareness? How do you fuze that data? How do you agree that it’s valid?’ 

And I’ll just set aside cyber for a second. Just that is a whole very other discussion. But assuming you know that the data comes from a reliable source that’s done their bidding to be a cyber secure source: ‘How do you know that it’s military quality? How do you validate it? When it’s delivered commercially, you can’t dictate to them to go through a certain developmental testing and evaluation process that a military generated satellite had to go through, or an operational testing evaluation set of wickets that a military satellite has to go through. 

There are operational acceptance things where the warfighter uses military equipment, and then they go, ‘Okay, it’s capable and accepted as a military warfighting capability, and we will now write it into our O-plans as an available capability that a Combatant Commander can count upon.

As he writes his O-plan, as we are supporting him for his warfighting mission in some AOR. Well, how do you do that with commercial technology? So I’m trying to think of an analogy like, theoretically, logistics can be provided for commercially and things like we outsource trucking companies to move cargo, we outsource aircraft companies to move cargo, or we outsource even ships, not military ships, to move supplies to islands like Guam or whatever. 

Logistics is a common user of commercial capability across that spectrum of war communications. We have outsourced some communications capabilities to the terrestrial-based communications providers. But outsourcing space situational awareness, if you’re going to use it in space domain awareness and the kill chain, and there’s going to have to be some serious policy decisions that are going to have to be made about: How do we utilize those commercial capabilities in the kill chain?

I can even see for the intelligence community, broadly speaking, that imagery or other information from commercial assets could be used in intelligence, especially phase zero or prior to phase zero, if you will, prior to hostilities beginning – to do like intelligence preparation of the battlespace, just having awareness prior to the warfight. But once things have gone from phase zero and you’re moving forward in the fight, that’s going to be the big question: is can we use commercial sources then or not?

34:02 – 34:15

And, earlier this year Space Systems Command held an industry day that had over 150 companies expressing interest in RG-XX. 

What’s your reaction to that level of interest from industry for a program like this?

34:16 – 37:25

I’m not surprised that a lot of industry is very interested in this concept of providing whether it’s at Geo, because remember, GSSAP is Geo, but it’s not the only place where we need SSA. I’m not surprised that there were a number of companies that wanted to provide from space domain awareness to SSA at Geo and everything in between, even from the ground.

I’m not surprised at all and I’m really glad to hear it. The real question is industry days are often set up so that they get great feedback from industry about approaches, trade-offs, requirements. Even their questions can inform thinking about doctrine because they’re really first-order questions. We’re talking about the most important thing to understand is not that you want SSA, but what requirement, what military mission, what doctrinal requirement are you trying to satisfy with this?

For people who think GSSAP, they may think, ‘Oh, something that flies around in Geo and looks at stuff. Okay, well that’s cool, but how does it do that? Why does it do it that way? What is it satisfying and could it be done another way? And the answer to that often is found in the creative thinking of industry.

So the reason why we have industry days are to fetch those ideas from the experts or the engineer. The government doesn’t know the answers, but the engineers and the technologists within industry are where the questions come and there’s a lot of long standing large primes that have ideas. 

But there’s also a lot of innovative small businesses, startups with great ideas who think about technology very differently than we have historically because they didn’t know what historically was: what we call “nontraditional space providers,” where traditional said ‘Get a government contract and then you can develop a commercial capability because you’re anchored with money from the government, and now you can afford to spin off the commercial capability.’

These guys never did business with the government. They’re only thinking commercial and so why wouldn’t General Purdy go out and ask them about their ideas? Of course he would, and we are all counting on great ideas coming from industry for whatever this next version is, I don’t call it the GSSAP follow-on, I just call it a space domain awareness tool.

That’s after what we have on orbit and available today, and RG-XX could wind up being something very different, or several things that are very different than what GSSAP is, which is why I hesitate to even put any hard linkage to GSSAP though GSSAP and SBSS were two of the – I wouldn’t say the earliest – but to really operationalize space situational awareness from on-orbit capabilities.

And there have been other things that were experiments. There are things that were experiments that they tried out operationally. There have been things to do this even before those two programs, but really, they were the two bigs that started out early.

37:26 – 37:43

And Sir, you mentioned Major General Stephen Purdy, who as the Space Force’s top acquisition official, indicated he wants to take a multi-vendor approach to RG-XX.

Can you speak to the advantages both for the commercial sector but also for the Space Force, by taking a multi-vendor approach? 

37:44 – 39:48

It’s very, very dangerous, in my opinion. And I say dangerous, not in the danger, like life and death danger, but certainly in terms of taxpayer responsibility to become solely dependent by the federal government and the Department of War on a single vendor for any critical technology and almost anything that goes on-orbit, we’re not going to spend that kind of money for things that are not critical.

So if you have one supplier of the capability, chances are the risk is you’re dependent on that supplier forever and their success and failures always result in a greater or lesser degree of risk for you, potentially budgetary and predictable budgets moving forward. If you have multiple vendors, you get more than one choice and you get a little bit, hopefully of inherent competition.

And as we’ve heard, and sometimes it’s been proven not always proven, that competition drives better price solutions or cost solutions. But what you also get, and this is the part that I am a greatest fan of, is you get solution-diversity and the reason why I like solution-diversity, meaning I solve the problem through the following thousand things.

You solve the problem through your thousand things and we have capabilities that meet the requirement, but we solve the problems differently for an adversary. Those two different solutions provide a more complex calculus for how to defeat those different diverse solutions. 

So one solution might be to jam something like this and the other solution might be to jam something the same way, but it doesn’t work on solution B, it only works on solution A. So you’ve complicated the adversary’s problem-solving scenario, and thus driven up the cost to him to have to have a more advanced offensive capability, because you have inherently put in defense by diversity of design.

39:49 – 40:02

General Purdy also shared that this RG-XX program would be unclassified, in that it will be open and available to Allies and partners through the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales program. 

Why is that significant?

40:03 – 43:32

Classification decisions is strictly within the military’s and the executive branch’s domain. So that’s not my expertise to make classification decisions. 

But we have lots of cases where we share technology, even classified technology, with our Allies and we have Allies that span the spectrum of some cases we share some of the most sensitive classified information with them. And in other cases, it’s military technology. And it’s not even classified. But we still care about it because it’s important. You might even call it controlled unclassified information, but it’s very important either way. Wherever we are on the spectrum – it matters.

I can easily conceive of providing space domain awareness capability, such as even GSSAP today, and other ones like ground-based radars that we have today. I could easily see providing that to Allies. I’m not saying we’re doing it, but I could certainly see us doing it. 

It would make sense in some scenarios if the risks, and I’m not in a position to make the risk decision. But if the risks, according to those who advise the Secretaries of the military’s departments and the Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of War, I should say, and even the president and National Command Authority up to them, any number of technologies that are sensitive have been and are being provided to Allies.

This is no different. Now how do you sell it? Especially first off, do you restrict it? Like so, if it’s commercial capability, how do you restrict it if you don’t want it sold to just anybody? And we have procedures for that. Like you can’t sell an F-16 regardless of how much you want to to any old country in the world, because it’s an American product and you can only sell it when you get the approval of the government to sell it.

Same would be true of this, even if it was commercial technology. We have rules called ITAR, International Traffic and Arms Regulation, but FMS use cases are adjudicated not necessarily under ITAR, but they have some similar similarities where they grade the country, the ally that we are looking at selling the technology to and then how do we insert elements of that we want to protect and how do we protect those elements by still broadly providing that technology to them.

So when you add commercial into there, it’s even more interesting because now that commercial, it might be something the adversary wants to buy a piece of because he’s an ally or he’s not an adversary at moment A but moment B he is, but he’s become dependent on it.

So why would he stick a stick in his own eye if he’s going to be using it? Why would you put salt in your own wound if it’s going to hurt but you don’t want it to hurt? And so when the commercial guy comes in and the world can buy it and they find it valuable, as long as they’re buying and they’re not going to poke a hole in it if it hurts them because they need it to.

So they don’t buy military capability, but they often buy commercial capability for military purposes. And if we’re buying it and they’re buying it, why would they ruin it and or spoil it? And if they become dependent on it, it’s kind of like GPS has a lot of foreign allies, and even adversaries utilize GPS. If you’re in combat and you become dependent on using the U.S. capability, the global utility of GPS, why would you jam it if you need it? As an example, and now translate that to commercial, why would you disrupt the commercial capability that you’re paying for if you need it?

43:33 – 43:46

So to summarize: how do you think this transitional moment from military-operated GSSAP to commercially-driven RG-XX reflects how the Space Force is re-thinking its approach to space domain awareness?

43:47 – 44:37

So I don’t know the details of RG-XX, except for to say, what I’ve seen in open source. But I believe two things are true about how Space Force is evolving. 

One, they’re serious about a warfighter mindset, and they know that the capabilities that a system like GSSAP, including GSSAP today provides is critical to those warfighting capabilities that the Space Force knows they need moving forward.

Secondly, they are going into this with their eyes wide open, with the notion that it is possible and even reasonable, if not preferable, for some commercial capability to be included in that mix. Whether it’s 100%, 50% or 2%, somewhere in some, none, or all. They’re looking for commercial solutions to help them in that pursuit. 

44:37 – 44:47

Then as a closing question here, what opportunities exist for Elara Nova to contribute to complex conversations and military programs, like we discussed today?

44:48 – 45:44 

So Elara Nova is loaded with a lot of space domain talent. We have a large array of space professionals in this company, and that’s just the senior leaders. The partners Elara Nova has well over 90 partners, many of whom, if not most, have either space domain backgrounds in some form from rocket launch to command and control to payload development, to full-blown satellite development and operations and sustainment of space capabilities that Elara Nova can provide expertise across the entire spectrum of space domain from inception to operations and even disposal. And so if I were looking for expertise, I would choose Elara Nova as an expertise provider any time.

45:45 – 46:23

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space and aeronautical domains, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in national security.

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.

Seamless Interaction Between J2 and J3 Vital to Future Military Operations 

From satellite imagery to G.P.S.-guided navigation, intelligence gathered from space has long facilitated military operations across warfighting domains. However, after being identified as a warfighting domain in its own right, space is now becoming the latest focus for the intelligence agencies supporting Department of Defense (DOD) operations. As a result, what was previously known as Space Situational Awareness (SSA) has evolved into a much broader Space Domain Awareness (SDA) concept that means the DOD must not only identify objects in space, but also assess and understand their purpose as well. As such, the emerging SDA imperative is blurring the lines between two previously distinct responsibilities – intelligence and operations – into a whole new, integrated mission requirement: operational intelligence.  

“Intelligence is the foundational component to all military operations,” said Sean Kirkpatrick, PhD, former deputy director of intelligence at U.S. Space Command and partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. “You can’t carry out military operations unless you have a full understanding of the threat environment. So enveloping SSA into a broader SDA concept has driven the operational intelligence requirement to a higher level of fidelity and demand for the warfighter, particularly as the amount and timeliness of information needed has grown.” 

The Evolution of Space Domain Awareness

According to the Space Domain Awareness Doctrine for Space Forces, SSA was traditionally defined as the operational task for, ‘finding, tracking, identifying and maintaining custody of space objects.’ But as a variety of resident space objects (RSO) increasingly populate the space domain, the demand for intelligence about each one has spawned the much greater SDA imperative. 

“Today’s space operating environment is a culmination of technical, geopolitical and commercial factors that are driving an increased need for space domain awareness,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “SDA is larger than SSA because now we need to not only identify the RSO, but also its payloads, spectral characteristics and fuel type. We have to determine what country launched it and how they’re using it, which also becomes complicated by the fact that it’s not just militaries, but also commercial companies and civil agencies launching spacecraft as well.” 

In the historically benign space environment, intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) leveraged space-based assets to facilitate military operations across warfighting domains. 

“NSA and NGA are single source intelligence collectors for signal intelligence and geospatial intelligence, respectively,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “Those two sets of data and reporting are amassed together, along with human intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, to come up with an all-source assessment. That’s how the intelligence community uses a lot of that overhead architecture in space.” 

Operational Intelligence in a Hostile Domain

However, their space-based assets can no longer operate without risk in an increasingly hostile space domain. 

“Attribution of other resident space objects is vital because they could be debris, natural or even man-made,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “If it’s man-made, we need to know who owns the RSO, its intent and capabilities because it may be a threat to our space-based assets. So now we’re in a transition period to take our tools we’ve historically been using from space and applying them to space.” 

For Dr. Kirkpatrick, a successful embodiment of operational intelligence would be the capability for intelligence analysts to identify and provide an accurate understanding of every RSO to operators in real-time.  

“I use the analogy of a screen that has all the RSOs in any given orbit in real-time,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “An analyst could then click on any object and receive a baseball card of all the relevant intelligence associated with it: its thermal characteristics, image structure and spectral distribution, while accounting for any changes occurring in real-time. That information can then be fed into any decision-making tool for the military operators and planners.” 

A Cross-Functional J Code Model

This emerging operational intelligence concept, however, is requiring the military structure to adapt.  

Historically, the United States has delineated responsibilities according to the J code structure of the Napoleonic model: personnel (J1), intelligence (J2) operations (J3), logistics (J4), strategy, planning and policy (J5) and command and control (J6). The J code structure is designed to ensure seamless communications across agencies and military services conducting corresponding duties.  

The space domain, however, is blurring the lines between the previously distinct intelligence (J2) and operations (J3) responsibilities. 

“The effectiveness of any organization is defined by how strong the relationship is between the intelligence director (J2) and the operations director (J3),” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “Military operations can only be executed effectively when the J2 and the J3 are interconnected. So when we stood up the new Space Command, we intentionally designed those units to be co-located at all times.” 

The strategic relevance of space-based intelligence and information to facilitate Joint Force operations further exacerbates the need for seamless interaction between the J2 and J3 units.  

“Once we stood up the Joint Command, we had to start transitioning to Joint Doctrine to make everything consistent across domains,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “What makes this important, for example, is there may be a challenge with custody and tracking of hypersonic weapons for missile warning and defense. As a hypersonic weapon crosses domains, i.e. from air to space or from space to air, there has to be a coordinated hand-off of its custody and tracking.” 

Leveraging Emerging Technologies to Address Latency

Achieving this alignment between intelligence and operations in real-time, however, is complicated by the latency in delivering space-based information to the warfighter.  

“In space, latency and communications is a problem because if something is happening in cislunar that we don’t understand for several hours, it’s going to be too late to respond accordingly,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “Latency is more than just the transit of data from sensor to ground, humans need to be trained to process and understand the data on operationally-relevant timelines. But this can be a manually intensive process, especially given the latency required to analyze, exploit and integrate these large volumes of data together and present it to the Commanders, our Allies and partners.” 

Yet, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine-learning (AI/ML) can accelerate latency timelines so intelligence analysts can understand the operational landscape faster.  

“As we move forward into AI-enabled autonomous weapons systems, the decision-making cycle for intelligence analysts is going to get faster and faster,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “But there’s just not enough people to analyze and understand these overwhelming amounts of data in a time frame relevant to the warfighter, decision-maker or policymaker, because this process encompasses all sources of information: the adversaries’ motivations, capabilities and the operational environment upon which a military operation is about to be planned and executed.” 

Commercial Tools to Facilitate Operational Intelligence

Therefore, the Space Force must be able to leverage and utilize the latest technologies developed in the commercial sector – like AI/ML – to generate a better understanding of the space domain.  

“Commercial companies have an ability to generate space domain awareness from all sources of information very close to near real-time,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “While they may not ascertain intent or geopolitical aspects, it’s going to be beneficial for us to leverage their information and input our own classified information to form a broader picture of the operational landscape, as opposed to trying to generate it all ourselves.”  

Strong military-commercial partnerships for operational intelligence can enable the Space Force to not only keep pace with new and emerging technologies, but also to understand how they can be utilized for military operations as well.  

“The intelligence community must use novel phenomenology to extract information, whether it’s the electromagnetic spectrum, acoustics or thermal imagery sources,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “That means not only inventing a new capability, but also training a team to use these novel capabilities to verify that the information they’re measuring actually matches reality.” 

Verification Requirement for Operational Intelligence

As such, verifying the accuracy of new information and capabilities will also become an increasingly significant strategic imperative for the Space Force. 

“A lot of commercial data analytic houses are going to apply these emerging technologies to assess probabilities, tracking, characterization and predictive analytics that will enable successful space domain awareness,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “Now, the Space Force and Space Command have to figure out how to take those tools and provide verification and validation of that data to ensure we receive the right answers.” 

To this end, the Space Force is embarking on a variety of initiatives to incorporate commercial tools in assessing the emerging operational intelligence requirement. 

“There’s a number of programs that the Space Force is exploring and investing in, but the best approach is that Space Command set up a catalyst campus in Colorado Springs to bring in commercial partners to try out capabilities against data and operators in the DEVOPS environment,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “This will enable the Space Force to quickly transition new capabilities for operational intelligence into the U.S. Space Command.” 

Now, as the operational intelligence requirement materializes, Elara Nova is presenting itself as a resource to support the adoption of new and emerging technologies, as well as operating concepts such as operational intelligence and space domain awareness.  

“One of the biggest opportunities for Elara Nova is education and advocacy, especially for acquisition,” said Dr. Kirkpatrick. “You can’t build capability if you don’t understand the underlying foundational intelligence that drives it, and you can’t operate it unless you have the domain awareness under which you’re going to operate. Elara Nova partners can address these concerns through analysis and thought leadership to ensure that that understanding is inculcated into the culture of the Space Force.” 

Elara Nova is a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain. Learn more at https://elaranova.com/. 

Episode 14: Space Domain Awareness Demands New “Operational Intelligence” Requirement

Host: Scott King 

Subject Matter Expert: Sean Kirkpatrick, PhD; partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy

00:02 – 01:44 

From satellite imagery to G.P.S.-guided navigation, intelligence gathered from space has long facilitated military operations. But after space was declared a warfighting domain, intelligence agencies are now shifting their focus to supporting operations in space.  

For the United States Space Force, this shift is exemplified by the evolving mission concept known as SSA – or Space Situational Awareness – which prioritized identifying and tracking space-based objects as an operational task. However, simply identifying and tracking space-based objects is no longer sufficient, as the DOD must now leverage intelligence to understand their purpose and capabilities as well.  

As a result, SSA has evolved into what’s now known as Space Domain Awareness – or SDA – an emerging imperative that is blurring the lines between two previously distinct military responsibilities – intelligence and operations – into a whole new, integrated mission requirement of “operational intelligence.”  

Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host Scott King and today’s guest is Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy. 

With nearly three decades of intelligence experience, Dr. Kirkpatrick served in a variety of high-profile, no-fail capacities such as Deputy Director of Intelligence at US Strategic Command; Director of National Security Strategy at the National Security Council and the Deputy Director of Intelligence for US Space Command.  

Now, he’s here to share his perspective on the emerging operational intelligence requirement for Space Domain Awareness. 

Dr. Kirkpatrick, welcome to the show! 

01:45 – 01:46 

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.  

01:47 – 01:54 

We’re happy to have you here, Sir. Now, as we get started – can you describe the historical role intelligence has played in military operations?  

01:55 – 04:39 

So intelligence is a foundational component of all military operations, right? You can’t actually really do military operations well – unless you have a good grounding of information of what’s happening in and around the environment. 

Back in tall ship days, what would be considered intelligence was sending scouts out to see where the military adversary was posting, where they were moving, how fast were they moving, an estimate of the number of people that were on the armies that were advancing. Did they have chariots? Were they with spears? Did they have bows and arrows? Where were they and how long was it going to take them to get there?  

And this is what we mean when we say all-source. It’s all sources of information. All that information is then brought together to paint a picture of the entire landscape and environment upon which a military operation is about to be planned and executed. 

Now, interestingly enough, is there’s only two all-source intelligence agencies in the intelligence community and that’s CIA and DIA. DIA was stood up by Congress specifically to service the military. CIA, their principal customer, are the policy-makers, the White House and whatnot, but they also support the military operations as well. 

As time has gone on, technology has been developed and advanced that time-frame, that latency of that information has gone down and down and down and down and down to where it’s almost real-time. That time-frame has now got to be within the decision cycle of the machines that are now doing the decision-making and as we move forward into AI-enabled autonomous systems and weapons systems, that’s just going to get worse. Just the imagery analysts alone are being overwhelmed by the amount of data that’s being collected by the space and air platforms. There’s just not enough people to put eyes on all of that data in a time-frame that is relevant to the warfighter. 

I mean, there’s certain kinds of phenomenologies one can exploit. But what that means is I’ve got to train people how to exploit that data and verify that the answer they’re getting matches reality and then take that data and scale that and that becomes a new intelligence source and method. A new burden, if you will, on the intelligence community to now sustain that. So it’s not just a one-off thing. You now are institutionalizing that.

04:40 – 04:44 

And so what role does the space domain have in enabling the intelligence community to accomplish their mission? 

04:45 – 07:37 

Intelligence and military operations through space and intelligence and military operations in space. There is a delineation there. Space-enabled services that actually project a service onto Earth, the most common example is G.P.S. So G.P.S. is a space-enabled service that provides position, navigation and timing on Earth. 

ISR from space – intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – that enables intelligence analysts to do GEOINT – where are things? What are they? What do they look like? Are they moving? What kind of characteristics do they have? Anything you can get from image or related imagery types of phenomenologies.  

SIGINT – same thing. I have big antennas. I point them at the ground, I listen to signals. I collect those signals and I exploit those signals for a variety of different reasons. So all of those are tools that are used by the intelligence community. All of that information comes together and then they fuze it in order to come up with an all-source assessment. That’s how the intelligence community uses a lot of that overhead architecture in space. 

Now I’ve got to start doing intelligence in space. Today’s space operating environment is really a culmination of technical and geopolitical and commercial factors and these are all being driven by a need for increased access to denied areas, development of commercial business cases. So to do all of that now requires us to have domain awareness in space, not just for military applications, but for all of those other factors. 

Attribution is another big thing. A lot of resident space objects (RSO) that we see. It’s just debris. It could be natural. It could be made. But then understanding the characteristics of that. What is it? Is it man-made? And if it is man-made, now, who owns it? What’s the intent? What’s the motivation? What’s the capabilities? Those are all questions now that we need to ask about objects in space.  

So now you’re in a transition period over the last, say, decade of, ‘How do we take our tools that we’ve historically been using on the ground from space and use those tools in space?’ And how do I marry all that data together? How do I exploit it in such a way that it’s timely? Because in space, latency becomes a problem, communications become a problem. If something is happening in cislunar, and I don’t understand what it is for several hours, it’s going to be way too late to actually do something about it. 

07:38 – 07:43 

That’s an interesting point, Sir. Can you expand on how latency complicates this operational intelligence requirement? 

07:44 – 10:08 

Yeah, so latency is more than just the transit of the electrons or the photons from sensor to the ground. But it’s also the collection of the data, which can often be defined by Kepler’s laws and my access options. So if I have a sensor on one side of the Earth orbiting in MEO, and I have a target on the other side of the Earth orbiting in MEO, I have to wait till I get alignment and then once I collect, I gotta get that data down or I got to process it on board. And then once I get it down, I’ve got to have humans understand what that means, put that with other data and fuze it and how can I do that quick enough so that I can say, ‘Hey, that object, that RSO that was on the other side of the Earth, it’s just a piece of junk or it’s a microsat that somebody dropped off, or it’s an asteroid.’ Being able to understand that quickly and feed that back into decision-making is where the latency comes in and it used to be very manually intensive. 

And then how do you bring in some of these other tools like AI and ML to try and get some of this into a machine decision space and come up with probabilities and tracks and characterization and predictive analytics. And that’s where I think you’ll find a lot of commercial data analytic houses, going down this road of trying to apply all of that. And then what the government has to do, what Space Force and Command and the IC need to do is figure out how to take those tools and provide verification and validation of the data in and the answers out so that you can provide the data assurance that what the answer you’re giving has not been manipulated or is not incorrect, and marry that with any of the classified data sources because commercial is outpacing what the government is doing and they have far greater capabilities from an analytic perspective, so it would be in everyone’s best interest to try to figure out how to deal with that from an acquisition perspective than try to recreate it.

10:09 – 10:21 

Thank you, Sir, can you describe how the changing space environment required SSA – Space Situational Awareness – to evolve into the SDA – Space Domain Awareness – requirement in place today? 

10:22 – 12:14 

Historically up until we stood up, U.S. Space Command, we didn’t really call it Space Domain Awareness. We called it Space Situational Awareness, because up until then, we hadn’t declared space a warfighting domain.  

So what was needed was an understanding of Space Situational Awareness, which is a subset of SDA. SSA is just the: how do I find, fix and track things? But that was about all that was needed and necessary in order to populate the space catalogue, make sure that we knew where we were – so from a friendly force tracking and we knew where adversaries were and that was about it. 

SDA – once we stood up the Joint Command, we had to start transitioning to Joint Doctrine and making everything consistent across all of the domains and so you had air domain awareness, you had maritime domain awareness. So we started moving towards, “Well, what is Space Domain Awareness?” 

And that is larger than just the SSA because now I’m factoring into that: what exactly is that object? I need to know what kind of payloads are on it. I need to know what kind of fuel it has. I need to know who owns it, who launched it, does it have anything else on it, what’s its spectral characteristics, what’s its thermal characteristics? 

And all of that becomes the purview of the intel community to go collect on, to analyze, to exploit, marry that information with the SSA data and then all of that information builds into SDA and this becomes complicated by the fact that it’s not just militaries that are launching stuff, right? I have a vast commercial enterprise that we didn’t have a decade ago and this becomes a very complicated picture very quickly.  

12:15 – 12:39 

Thank you, Sir. And so it seems that the Space Domain Awareness mission is blurring the lines between an operational task and an intelligence requirement.  

Traditionally speaking, military services and intelligence agencies follow what’s known as the “J Code,” a structure to delineate responsibilities across the DOD.  

Can you describe what the J code is, particularly as it relates to both intelligence and operations requirements? 

12:40 – 15:08 

The number structure actually is Napoleonic and we keep it today. It’s all of our Commands, all of our services use the same codes so that you know when you’re talking about a given code – it’s the same functions no matter who you’re talking to.  

The J2 is the intelligence directorate, the J3 is the operations. Those two are intimately linked and the effectiveness of any organization is defined by how well that organization links those two codes and space is even more so and here’s why: the J3 they oversee all operations and that includes air, sea, ground. 

In the space domain, everything is done via remote access, whether it’s satellite, robotics, remote sensing, and it all comes down to data and who can exploit that data and how is it operated? How is it collected? And what purpose is it used? The three runs the space operations. The two – the intelligence component – they run all of the intelligence collection apparatus. 

So, when it was just SSA: the find, fix, track, and ID, a lot of that was handled really via the three. When you start getting into characterization or intent behind an RSO or capabilities, predictive analytics, that really all comes on to the two. If you want to have a complete picture, the two and the three, they have to work together in order to do complete tasking, collection management, data exploitation and fusion on operationally relevant time-frames.  

When we stood up Space Command, we intentionally designed the two and the three to be co-located at all times and it was critical to carry that through in order to fuze that relationship because of the intimate connection between operations and intelligence and then the flip side around of that is you can’t actually do any of those operations unless you have that intelligence. You can only execute effectively when the two and the three are connected, and connected well.

15:09 – 15:21 

And so earlier you mentioned the role of commercial technologies – and commercial companies – in facilitating operational intelligence. 

Can you elaborate on how the Space Force and the DOD can leverage commercial partners to meet the needs for Space Domain Awareness? 

15:22 – 16:42 

Commercial is I think in the next 5 to 10 years are really going to drive what we’re doing in space.  

They need to understand domain awareness as well for their own purposes and they’re not going to wait for the US government or any other government to provide any of that information to them, because, frankly, the government’s limited on what they can do, who they can share it with and how quickly it can happen. So they’re going to build their own capabilities. The tools the commercial industry is trying to get the government and the services to adopt. They’re already using for their own purposes. 

They already have an ability to generate domain awareness in very close to that ideal situation of all-source and near real-time. Now, they’re not going to go down the road, likely of things like intent and geopolitical aspects of that. 

But they will have a lot of the rest of that information already ready to go. And so, at some point it’s going to be more beneficial for us to consider getting that information from them and adding to it whatever we need from a classified perspective to form our picture, as opposed to relying on us to try to generate all of that.

16:43 – 16:58 

Thank you, Sir, and considering the opportunity for military and commercial partnerships to meet the operational intelligence requirement for SDA – what role can Elara Nova and its team of partners serve in supporting the delivery of not only new capabilities, but new operational concepts as well? 

16:59 – 18:23 

Well, I think one of the biggest things is education and advocacy. Operational intelligence is the foundation for everything we do in space and if you don’t do that first – if you don’t ensure those requirements are there and if you don’t understand the environment in which you are operating you will be at a disadvantage – if not, outright fail.  

And to make that successful the J2 and the J3 have to work together seamlessly and all the intelligence agencies that support them – seamlessly. Especially on the acquisition side. You can’t build capability if you don’t understand the underlying foundational intelligence that drives it, and you can’t operate it unless you have the domain awareness under which you’re going to operate.  

So I think advocacy and education, making sure people understand all of that. And then some of these other questions that we’ve raised, whether it’s the role of commercial in intelligence, how can we get that data exchange, and there’s also the considerations of Allies and partners. There’s considerations of foreign adversaries. What can you share? How quickly can you share it? These are all questions that I think Elara Nova and its partners can help address to ensure that that understanding is inculcated into the culture.

18:24 – 19:02 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.