The Information Warfare Training and Research Initiative Detachment is a hybrid wing-level organization designed to connect airmen from multiple locations as they accelerate readiness. It is a subordinate unit of the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The wing provides intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, communications, and nuclear command and control.

The new detachment, also known as Detachment 1, will conduct training and research events to help prepare the Air Force for operations in the information environment and electromagnetic spectrum. It will also operate out of the 67th Cyberspace Wing at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas.

The detachment is the result of three years of experimenting by Air Combat Command, the Air Force Research Laboratory, Secretary of the Air Force Concepts, Development and Management office, and academic groups to improve the service’s approach to information warfare training and research. Those teams collaborated to conduct 22 information warfare events all over the world, helping them develop its new model.

“We’ve adapted a ‘build, learn, correct, repeat’ model,” Col. Christopher Budde, chief of ACC’s information warfare division, said in a statement. “We are experimenting with sustainable processes and events in quick succession to scale conceptual ideas, operationally test them, then integrate these processes across the larger federated enterprise.”

The new model allows the Air Force to conduct training events more often while integrating personnel from all over the globe. The group’s most recent event saw airmen from 34 organizations spread across 23 locations collaborating on an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission.

“The distributed nature of the events means they can be conducted more frequently, can be ongoing, and members can participate in multiple iterations,” Budde said. “If a unit is unable to participate in an event, they can jump back into a future iteration when available, but the challenges in the information environment continue, and the teams have to respond with the capabilities available.”

The ground experiment tested one of the key pieces of hardware needed for the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR) Project, an innovative system that would use a satellite to collect solar energy on orbit, convert it to radio frequency, and then beam it to users on Earth who could convert it back into energy to power equipment carried by dismounted soldiers, vehicles or even a forward operating base. Lab officials see the effort as a way to get reliable solar power to remote military forces without having to carry around large solar panels with them.

AFRL and Northrop Grumman were able to test the components of the “sandwich tile,” a solar panel that can convert the energy collected in RF. The panel has two layers: One of highly efficient photovoltaic cells to collect solar energy, and a second that enables the RF conversion and beamforming.

“The SSPIDR Project office is very excited about this baseline capability being exercised in the laboratory environment,” said SSPIDR deputy project manager Melody Martinez in a statement. “Converting solar energy into RF energy at the component-level is a pivotal step to realizing space-based solar power beaming on a larger scale.”

“The successful conversion of sunlight into RF energy in a lightweight and scalable architecture is a significant step forward in delivering the technology building blocks to achieve the Arachne mission,” said Jay Patel, vice president of Northrop Grumman’s remote sensing programs business unit, in a statement.

Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor on the effort, having been awarded a $100 million contract in 2018 to develop the payload. The sandwich tile will be an important part of Arachne, the space-based demonstration that will attempt to beam energy to Earth after converting it to RF. Arachne is expected to launch in 2025.

“Earlier today the Russian Federation recklessly conducted aa destructive satellite test of a direct ascent anti-satellite missile against one of its own satellites. The test has so far generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris that now threaten the interests of all nations,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said during a Nov. 15 press briefing.

Astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS were forced to take cover approximately every hour and a half as the station’s orbit intersected with that of the debris.

“Russia’s dangerous and irresponsible behavior jeopardizes the long-term sustainability of outer space and clearly demonstrates that Russia’s claims of opposing the weaponization of space are disingenuous and hypocritical,” said Price, adding that the State Department has repeatedly raised concerns over anti-satellite testing with Russia.

The anti-satellite, or ASAT, collision appears to have occurred in an orbit around 500 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, according to satellite trackers, and about 80 kilometers above the International Space Station’s orbit. However, an impact could have pushed debris into new trajectories that could threaten the ISS.

LeoLabs, a space debris-tracking company, identified the satellite in question as Cosmos 1408, noting that the debris was in the location it would expect the Russian satellite to be otherwise.

“We share the concern that our State Department colleagues stressed earlier today about this test,” said Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby in a press briefing. “The most immediate concern is the debris itself, which is now floating out there and could become a hazard, including to the International Space Station. So there’s concerns about the debris itself. And obviously, you know, writ large we watch closely the kinds of capabilities that Russia has seems to want to develop, which could pose a threat not just to our national security interest, but the security of other space-faring nations. And again, we’ve been very clear: We would like to see norms for space so that it can be used responsibly by all space-faring nations.”

Kirby also told reporters that the Department of Defense did not receive an advance notice from Russia prior to the test.

This isn’t the first time that an alleged direct-ascent anti-satellite test resulted in dangerous debris. China tested an ASAT missile on one if its weather satellites in 2007, an event that resulted in thousands of pieces of debris. Nearly a decade later, debris-tracker CelesTrack put the number of pieces at almost 3,500, with only 571 pieces decaying. According to NASA, debris in low Earth orbit can travel at approximately 15,700 mph, so even the smaller pieces of debris are a concern.

More recently in 2019, India conducted an unexpected ASAT test, using a missile to destroy one of its own satellites in low Earth orbit. That test also created debris, although the government claimed that any debris would decay and fall out of orbit within weeks due to the low altitude of the test.

Unintended collisions in orbit can also result in debris. The last major collision of that type occurred in 2009, when an Iridium commercial communications satellite and a decommissioned Russian satellite collided in low Earth orbit, creating more than 2,000 pieces of trackable debris, according to the Secure World Foundation. That number doesn’t include smaller debris that is difficult or impossible to track, even though very small objects travelling at high speeds can still be dangerous to other spacecraft.

Russia has conducted multiple ASAT tests in recent years, according to U.S. Space Command, although those tests stopped short of hitting satellites on orbit. Other Russian space activities, such as operating in close proximity to American satellites on orbit and having one satellite eject a small object at high speeds on orbit, have also drawn condemnation from U.S. space officials.

Price said the U.S. would not tolerate such “reckless” activity from Russia, although he wouldn’t outline what measures the U.S. would take in response beyond collaborating with partners and allies.

The cooperation between the Air Force Research Laboratory and the U.K.’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) is part of a four-year Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence Collaboration (AAIC) Partnership Agreement signed in December 2020. While AFRL is the lead agency for the partnership, the Office of the Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, the Navy and the Army are also participating. This was the first event in a series of planned demonstrations.

The demonstration took place simultaneously at AFRL’s Information Directorate in New York and Dstl’s Salisbury location in the U.K. on Oct. 18. During the event, the two countries simulated a combat scenario with U.K. and U.S. forces adjacent to one another. Using a common platform, operators were able to share data and machine learning algorithms to support wide-area situational awareness, giving brigades better information for decision making.

“The October 18 event demonstrated how the U.K. and U.S. can integrate AI technology to create the first end-to-end Machine Learning (ML) research, development, and deployment ecosystem enabling rapid data sharing, algorithm development, evaluation, and deployment. AI will play a critical role in accelerating decision making to meet the pace & scale of the future battlespace,” said AFRL project lead Lee Seversky.

The U.K. was able to showcase its model cards, which allow commanders to rapidly understand and select the best machine learning algorithms to apply to a mission. The U.S. was able to use the government-owned StreamlinedML, an open platform where users can build machine learning workflows, evaluate models and then deploy them. AFRL said the two countries used 15 machine learning algorithms, 12 data sets and five automated machine learning workflows during the event.

“This collaboration with AFRL & the U.S. services is crucial to drive the very latest AI technology into military operations and innovative research in both nations. The demonstration is just the first step toward our ambition of deploying novel AI that can learn in the field into an experimental trial environment, something that hasn’t been done before and is only possible due to this collaboration,” said Todd Robinson, who heads up the U.K.’s involvement in the partnership.

So said a bald child in a toga to Keanu Reeves in the 1999 sci-fi flick “The Matrix,” which (spoiler alert) depicts a dystopian future where most of humanity exists within a digital simulation.

It’s also the title of a manifesto on digital acquisitions by the former assistant secretary of the U.S. Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, Will Roper. Released in 2020 and littered with Matrix references (and designed with a green and black color scheme reminiscent of the movie), the 19-page document outlines how and why the Department of the Air Force must use digital simulations and models to design and build its systems.

“The last area that we have to have strategic agility is in being able to computerize or virtualize everything about our development and production, assembly, even sustainment of systems so that we can finally get past the tyranny of the real world and take learning and feedback into the digital one,” Roper said in a Matrix-themed presentation nearly a year ago.

The promises of a digital ecosystem — faster development, integrated assembly and the ability to test systems before they’re built — are appealing to the Department of Defense, which frequently struggles with cost overruns and significant delays for its space systems.

Roper has since left government, but the digital revolution continues, and the U.S. Space Force wants to lead the way.

In May, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond announced the new service’s intent to be the world’s first fully digital service, adopting digital engineering practices to transform how the military designs, buys and builds systems.

The Space Force has abandoned Roper’s Matrix-heavy framing, but it’s using the same basic framework: hyper-realistic simulations of the environment in which its satellites will operate, and digital twins to help design and build architectures, constellations, satellites, payloads, ground systems and more to ensure operators can deliver the space-based capabilities needed by war fighters around the world.

It’s an ambitious vision, but the Space Force is taking steps to implement it, and industry says it’s ready.

Enter the Matrix

The digital revolution begins at the very start of the acquisition process: force design.

That step is the big-picture determination of the Space Force’s needs and the best architecture to address its mission. The Space Warfighting Analysis Center (SWAC) will use high-fidelity simulations that can realistically depict the orbital environment, space and terrestrial weather, threats and the effects it anticipates encountering to create that force design, which can then be distilled into a set of requirements.

According to SWAC Director Andrew Cox, these simulations have to represent three main elements with high fidelity: the threat; the physical and engineering constraints; and the cost.

“The reason those three things are important is because as we are at the headwaters, feeding requirements into the budget process that’s run by [Lt. Gen. William] Liquori. We don’t want to hand him force designs that he’s building requirements off of and budgets off of that are unrealistic, that are not affordable and that are vulnerable,” Cox said at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference in September.

Liquori, who serves as the Space Force’s deputy chief of space operations for strategy, plans, programs, requirements and analysis, said those force designs and “performance envelopes” then move to his requirements team.

“The intent will be to put a wrapper on those to make a digital requirements package,” he said. “And then we pass that onto the acquisition community, who then will take and move that into digital engineering.”

Typically, the requirements would then go to the Space Force’s acquisition community, the vast bulk of which exists under Space Systems Command. The command would then look to industry for solutions.

But even here, the Space Force is doing things differently. The Space Warfighting Analysis Center is inviting industry to join its officials in an October classified business briefing, during which they plan to share the simulations and models that informed the force design. That will give contractors interested in working with the Space Force input at that big-picture level, using a common framework of the threats and the mission.

Fleshing out digital models

When the requirements are officially set, they’ll go to the acquisition community, which will work with contractors in a digital engineering environment. Instead of relying on the 2D blueprints that drove the space race in the 1950s and 1960s, digital engineering uses 3D virtual models.

So digital models are just 3D blueprints, right? Yes, but they’re much more. Experts say what they really do is put those requirements and designs into a single, shared, sophisticated place across the space enterprise.

“When we talk about the concept of digital, think about it from the standpoint of really understanding how to drive speed and effectivity along the entire value stream — whether you’re talking space, whether you’re talking aircraft, whether you’re talking computers and IT,” David Ray, senior vice president of the space business unit at SAIC, told C4ISRNET.

Perhaps the most significant promise of digital engineering is the ability to test systems in the design stage, well before they hit the factory floor. These digital twins of the real-life satellite are so detailed and accurate the Space Force can test them in a virtual version of space to see if they work.

“That granularity, what that does is allows you to validate and test as early as possible in the life cycle,” AGI’s digital engineering lead, Mark Visco, told C4ISRNET. “So what happened in the past, people were putting test and evaluation at the end. So they’d build everything, test it, and ‘Crap, it didn’t work’ or ‘That design was bad.’”

“Well now we can simulate with that level of real fidelity of: ‘Here’s what you’re actually going to try to build.’ I can test it virtually with computers — you know, within months of my design — and say: ‘Oh, that design is not going to work.’ And I can wring out all of the design flaws or all of the design shortcomings along the way before I start bending any metal or before I start creating circuit boards,” Visco added.

And at any point, said Liquori, the Space Force can take the digital twin and plug it back into the model-based systems engineering environment, replacing the placeholder system to see how it executes the mission.

The hope is this will address the common complaint about the Pentagon delivering systems that, well, don’t deliver.

Another promising aspect of model-based system engineering is the ability to quickly modify the design as requirements change, giving additional flexibility to contractors. That’s something Bill Gattle, L3Harris Technologies’ president of space systems, discovered through the firm’s work on the Missile Defense Agency’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor.

“You can put a new requirement in and it will change the requirements, tell you what requirement is different, and it will tell you what hardware just broke or what you have to fix. So it’s all interconnected, and you can do that in a day,” Gattle said. “Versus today, if you were to do that on a mechanical system that we’ve built five years ago, [it] would take us weeks to figure out what exactly that requirement is without all that stuff.”

New artificial intelligence tools also speed up the design process, automatically running through a dizzying number of engineering options to find the best system for a user’s needs. In one instance, recalled AGI’s Visco, his company was able to use digital modeling to go through tens of thousands of design options with a customer. By inputting the customer’s requirements and priorities, the model automatically updates to offer the best design options. That sort of design work was virtually impossible in the analog days, Visco added.

Today, humans aren’t needed for whole steps of the design process. Engineers can take advantage of generative design, where they feed requirements into a software tool that automatically designs a piece to fit a need. The process is mostly used for simple tasks, like designing a physical arm to hold an antenna on a satellite, but that frees up human engineers to tackle harder problems, like designing the actual antenna.

“We’re doing our first usage of those generative designs and building them into systems today. We’re in those infancy steps,” said Lockheed Martin’s Johnathon Caldwell, the company’s vice president of business innovation, transformation and enterprise excellence.

There’s even talk, said Gattle, of the Space Force switching requirements late in the design process to see how well companies’ digital engineering solutions can respond.

But it’s not just the Space Force that will be able to interact with digital twins. An important benefit of digital engineering is collaboration without in-person meetings, said Ray. Engineering teams from dispersed locations can simultaneously access the digital twin. When one team plugs in a new part to the digital twin, other teams can see how the change affects or breaks their contribution.

Video game training?

The digital revolution doesn’t end with acquisitions. Lt. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s chief operations officer, said those virtual environments and digital models will be integral to the service’s efforts to train guardians — the title given to Space Force personnel.

The service must build a virtual test and training infrastructure to give operators experience with systems and validate their tactics against a “formidable array of threats that they will face in the field,” Saltzman said.

“Finally, the virtual environment must include digital twins of our weapon systems, realistic space weather models, and interactive simulators that connect red/blue forces,” he explained Sept. 21 during the Air Force Association conference. “What I have in mind should look more like an augmented reality video game. We need to take advantage of this moving technology. We need to put our operators in their domain to interact with the system and see/feel the effects of the consequences of their actions.

“Because our live operations are a virtual experience, a virtual training environment can be very realistic,” Saltzman added.

Comparing this theoretical virtual environment with a popular football video game his son plays, he said the training would be like the franchise mode, where users build a team and set the tactics, but don’t have to control individual players. Likewise, space operators don’t need to learn how to control satellites with a joystick. What they do need to do is learn how to build the right set of capabilities and formulate the best tactics to use against any given opponent.

“Imagine a game where you’re immersed in a struggle to preserve your mission — say satellite communications — against an adversary attempting to degrade relations. You make decisions. The game executes the tactics. We get real time feedback on what is working, what is not. You adjust. You make more decisions. All the while, player two — the red team [causing a satellite communications] jam — is executing their tactics to deny your block communications. Someone wins, someone loses. Both debrief, and we learn from their mistakes,” Saltzman said.

Just like the virtual environment the Space Warfighting Analysis Center will use to design capability architectures, this training environment will host digital twins of Space Force systems, high-fidelity effects, a realistic depiction of space weather and the orbital environment, and terrestrial weather that could affect missions.

Paul Tilghman, the senior director of Azure Spectrum Technologies at Microsoft, agrees with Saltzman.

During the Air Force Association conference, he said the Unreal Engine, a game creation platform that serves as the basis of hundreds of video games, could be adapted by the Space Force. With the right inputs, it could be used to create a digital environment with accurate physics, weather and threats.

The adoption of cloud computing in gaming could also point the way for the Space Force. Cloud gaming, wherein processing of data in video games is conducted at remote servers, enables users to play games without owning the newest console or expensive hardware. If the Space Force’s digital revolution is to be as ubiquitous as officials insist, it could be more sensible to rely on the cloud rather than install advanced hardware to run the high-fidelity simulations for every user or location.

“This is a big opportunity where I think computing power from the cloud can help,” said Tilghman, whose employer sells cloud services to several space companies.

Industry adoption

The Space Force announced its digital intentions in May, but digital engineering has been around for years. Its use within the DoD, however, is limited. Roper’s manifesto describes only three programs as “radically digital”: the T-7A Red Hawk aircraft, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent weapon system and the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter.

“Space Force has the … unique opportunity that they’re trying to stand up a new service,” Caldwell, the Lockheed executive, said. “It doesn’t have to have all of the heritage bureaucracy … and I think they’ve done really well at trying to take advantage of the moment.”

The space industry, Caldwell added, is at various stages of “crawl, walk, run” when it comes to adopting digital engineering. Even at Lockheed Martin, he said, diverse programs have different levels of digital involvement. For instance, while the company has integrated digital processes throughout the Next Generation Interceptor Program, others only use parts of the digital thread.

Other contractors agreed digital adoption varies across industries, companies and even internal programs.

“I’d say better practices are evolving. Everybody is on a journey,” Visco said.

Independent of government prompting, Visco added, AGI hired an independent firm to analyze the benefits of introducing digital engineering. The researchers found it could improve the cycle sixfold, so what would normally take six years could be done in one.

Carol Erikson, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of digital transformation, said the company has long worked to adopt digital tools, starting with major aircraft programs and moving into other areas. In developing the Enhanced Polar System Control and Planning Segment a decade ago, the company found digital engineering enabled it to find and correct defects far earlier, saving time and money.

“We have taken what we learned from EPS CAPS and other early adopter programs and scaled those digital engineering capabilities in order to apply them to [the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent], our Protected Tactical SATCOM, Evolved Strategic SATCOM and Next-Gen OPIR programs,” Erikson said.

Finding flaws

During a tour of Lockheed Martin’s facilities outside of Denver, Colorado, company officials showed off tools used to bolster digital efforts. Within Lockheed’s so-called Accelerator Environment — a small, open-floor room effectively serving as a 24/7 playground for engineers and interns to test new ideas — the company is exploring ways to broaden its digital practices. Among the technologies under exploration are new virtual reality systems that let users interact with digital models in a 3D space, and smart tools that can upload manufacturing data to the cloud.

By going through the motions of assembly in virtual reality, engineers can identify potential problems and address them before manufacturing begins. In an example demonstrated in the Pulsar Accelerator, users took control of an internal panel, bringing it inside a space vehicle to see whether it could fit into a tight space. In this instance, technicians discovered fasteners on a panel didn’t fit the rest of a design, said Darin Bolthouse, senior manager of the Collaborative Human Immersive Lab at Lockheed Martin Space.

“It would have been something they would not have found [before assembly],” he said.

The company can convert any of its digital models for testing in the virtual reality environment. A small or medium model can be converted in 10 minutes, said Bolthouse, although larger, more complicated designs can take longer.

Lockheed engineers are also exploring how to integrate smart tools with digital models.

Take torquing, for example. When building a satellite, technicians go from fastener to fastener, torquing each to specification with a wrench and recording the measurement by pen and paper. Then a second technician double checks the torques. It’s the definition of a nondigital process.

With the new smart torque tool, the process is partially automated and digitized. A green light on the smart tool signifies the torque — or the applied force — is within specifications, and the measurement is uploaded to the cloud without the need to double check.

Lockheed wants to eventually be able to directly insert those torquing measurements into a digital model so engineers can see how the system is built in real time. And artificial intelligence tools would look through the torque data to identify anomalies and test how products hold up.

The first steps into the Matrix

Space Force officials say the nascent service is making headway on implementing its digital agenda.

“Those data standards are being developed. The platform is being developed. The hardware stack is being developed so we can all communicate on a common framework,” Space Systems Command chief Gen. Mike Guetlein said at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “And now we’re starting to talk about: What does that digital platform look like that’s going to drive us all going forward?”

One of the key pieces will be the new, cloud-based “Digital Engineering Environment,” in which vendors can share digital twins with the Space Force and other industry partners. Space Force officials said the classified version was coming online at the time of their announcement in May, while an unclassified environment was expected to be ready in early fall.

The service’s digital priorities are already reflected in its major satellite contracts. Shortly after the May announcement, the Space and Missile Systems Center (since redesignated as Space Systems Command) awarded contracts to two companies — Raytheon Technologies and Millennium Space Systems — to design digital models of missile warning satellites to be tested in high-fidelity simulations. Those tests will show if the service can improve its missile warning architecture by placing the satellites in a new orbital regime.

But challenges remain. Contractors point to the need for universal standards and more granularity for the digital models to help unlock the full potential of digital engineering. But they also say the private sector will resolve those issues if the Space Force continues to incentivize the adoption of digital engineering in its contracting.

“I think it works itself out as long as Space Force is still continuing to push the agenda,” Ray said. “I think Space Force is paving the way for the entire DoD.”

The Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared constellation is being built to augment and eventually replace the Space Based Infrared System as the Department of Defense’s main missile warning satellite program. Like SBIRS, the Next Gen OPIR, which was initiated in 2018, will use a combination of infrared sensors in geostationary orbit and highly elliptical polar orbits to detect missiles all over the globe. The Space Force plans to spend $14.4 billion on the program through 2025, according to the report.

While the military has prioritized launching the first geostationary satellite in 2025, the GAO finds the program is at high risk of schedule delays.

“Despite early steps to speed up development, the Next Gen OPIR program faces significant technical and managerial challenges — such as developing a new mission payload and serving as the lead system integrator for the first time in this area — that are likely to delay the initial launch,” reads the report, which notes significant delays often lead to cost increases.

The GAO adds that although military officials are aware of those risks, they continue to tell Congress the program is on track with no anticipated cost overruns.

While the Next Gen OPIR report was released publicly on Sept. 22, the GAO completed its assessment months earlier, initially issuing a classified version in March 2021. The unclassified report omits information the Department of Defense determined was too sensitive for the public.

The U.S. military has a history of delays and cost overruns with its major satellite systems. Next Gen OPIR’s predecessor, SBIRS, was delayed nine years and ultimately cost three times as much as initially estimated, the report notes. Upgraded elements of the GPS system have also experienced significant delays, requiring temporary fixes while ultimately delaying the delivery of new capabilities to the war fighter. Both SBIRS and the new GPS ground segment triggered a Nunn-McCurdy breach — a statutory threshold designed to catch massive cost growth within government programs and force a reassessment of the acquisition process.

While addressing these consistent delays and cost overruns was one of the reasons for creating the Space Force in 2019, lawmakers have recently begun to express frustration with the new service’s perceived failure to make significant progress on reform. In a virtual May hearing, House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense chair Rep. Betty McCollum criticized the Space Force for not adequately addressing the issue.

“In the 16 months since Space Force was established, significant progress has been made in standing up this operations unit,” said McCollum. “However, while progress has been made on the operations side, progress in addressing long-standing acquisitions issues has been disappointing so far. Too often over the past two decades, the space acquisitions programs have been delivered late, over budget, and sometimes billions of dollars over budget.”

Even before the establishment of the Space Force, the Space and Missile Systems Center — operating under the U.S. Air Force — made significant attempts to speed up delivery of Next Gen OPIR. Instead of the typical decade-long development cycle for exquisite satellite systems, the military pushed for a rapid prototyping approach that would speed-track development to just five years. Using a new middle-tier acquisition process, increasing the program’s budget and funneling money to it through multiple reprogramming requests, the Air Force tried to push the launch of the first Next Gen OPIR satellite up to 2025.

The GAO report acknowledges several deliberate choices made by the Air Force and Space Force to reduce risk on this accelerated schedule, such as the decision to fund two competing subcontracts for the mission payload and the development of an interim ground system. However, the report finds those efforts will likely fall short of the program’s goals due to the remaining technological challenges.

In addition to any technical challenges, the report finds that there are managerial issues that could lead to delays. According to the GAO, the Space and Missile Systems Center — since replaced by Space Systems Command — is understaffed, making it difficult for it to fulfill its role as lead integrator for Next Gen OPIR. Space Force officials told the government watchdog a new support contract in 2021 will allow them to staff up appropriately.

The GAO makes two recommendations for the Space Force in its report: provide more realistic and transparent estimates to Congress, and create a formal plan for interagency coordination on OPIR. The report notes the Department of Defense has said it intends to provide more detailed information to lawmakers.

The $6 million, 10,685-square-foot Wargaming and Advanced Research Simulation (WARS) Laboratory will house wargaming and simulation branches for both the directed energy and space vehicles directorates.

“We in the Department of Defense are concerned about competition with our adversaries across all domains of warfighting,” said Space Vehicles Directorate head Col. Eric Felt in a Sept. 15 statement. “The WARS Lab will advance three strategies AFRL is pursuing to deter conflict, which we call ISP — innovation, speed and partnerships.”

The WARS Lab will use digital engineering — which the Space Force is pushing to implement with space system and architecture designs—- to test out new technologies and see how they might operate. The facility will host more than 90 workstations in an auditorium where engineers from across the Department of Defense can collaborate in digital environments.

“I am excited about our vision of a virtual range becoming a reality,” said Teresa LeGalley, program manager for wargaming, modeling and simulation. “We are asked to determine military utility of directed energy, which means we need to insert high energy lasers and high powered electromagnetics into a battle space, to determine how they can be used to complement the weapon systems operators already have.”

“With digital engineering we can explore more concepts faster, without waiting for the ‘real thing’ hardware,” Felt said. “This lab will promote the use of digital engineering, saving time and money, and will provide the opportunity for partnerships within AFRL, with industry and our allies. We are better working together.”

The WARS Lab is expected to open in spring 2023.

The Department of Defense has invested heavily in upgrading the space-related infrastructure at Kirtland, home of AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate, and 450 square feet of the WARS Lab will be dedicated to the directorate. AFRL’s other investments include a $4 million Deployable Structures Laboratory, a $3.5 million Skywave Technology Laboratory, and a $12.8 million Space Warfighting Operations Research and Development Lab.

It is teaming with NewSpace New Mexico to launch the Unite & Ignite Space innovation hub with $11 million in federal funding. The Space Force also opened the $17 million Rendezvous and Proximity (REPR) Satellite Operations Center in July.

Those traditional systems have largely served government space systems well. Once they reach their intended orbit, most satellites don’t need to move very much. Propulsion systems are generally used to readjust satellite positions when they drift out of their assigned position or to avoid collisions, while occasionally transporting those satellites to new orbits to continue their mission.

However, future U.S. military missions may require much more maneuverability and power. Future U.S. missions will need more electrical power to more frequently change orbits, transfer other objects to new orbits and operate beyond Earth’s orbit, according to a Sept. 9 solicitation from the Defense Innovation Unit, a DoD organization that helps match mature, commercial solutions to military needs.

Moreover, the shrinking size of many space systems driven by the increased capabilities of small satellites and cubesats imposes volume constraints on future propulsion systems. In other words, the military wants more power, but not by simply building bigger propulsion systems or adding more solar panels.

To that end, DIU’s government customers are looking for lightweight, long-lasting commercial nuclear power solutions that can provide greater propulsion and electric power for small and medium-sized spacecraft. Interested companies that can show a plan for prototype development within three to five years could be awarded other transaction authority contracts to support laboratory-based prototyping of such systems, followed by a path to flight-based testing. Responses to the solicitation are due no later than 11:59 p.m. ET on Sept. 23.

This isn’t the military’s first time dipping its toe into developing nuclear-powered spacecraft. Most recently, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency issued contracts to three companies in April to design a nuclear thermal propulsion system for space. The program, known as the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, seeks to build nuclear thermal propulsion that can enable rapid maneuver in space, particularly for cislunar operations.

General Atomics, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin are the prime contractors on that effort.

Meanwhile, companies are beginning to offer commercial services that can refuel satellites or supplement them with their own propulsion systems. SpaceLogistics, for example, introduced a Mission Extension Vehicle that can latch onto a customer’s satellite on orbit and then maneuver it around with it’s own propulsion system. Orbit Fab, which recently saw investments from Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, is building gas stations on orbit. These efforts provide another option for getting more maneuverability and service life out of existing propulsion systems.

Located anywhere from hundreds of miles to tens of thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface, the machines are difficult to reach physically. For years, engineers have designed satellites with the expectation that the hardware and software they put on orbit with a satellite is all they’d get. That incentivized exquisite satellite designs, built to last many years in space before finally being replaced by a satellite with upgraded technologies.

That mindset has started to change in recent years. Companies including Northrop Grumman and Astroscale are pioneering new on-orbit services that could enable everything from supplemental fuel for maneuvering to satellite repairs using mechanical arms. On the software side, companies are embracing software-defined payloads that the military can reconfigure for new uses using the hardware on orbit.

The U.S. Space Force is investing in those efforts. And the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is investing in robotic arms that could revolutionize the ability to repair satellites in space. On the software side, the GPS III satellites, the latest generation launched by the military, feature a 70 percent digital mission data unit, the main piece of the navigation system. GPS IIIF — which will follow after the GPS III series — satellites will feature fully digital navigation payloads built by L3Harris, give operators on the ground more flexibility in how they use the satellites.

But there’s only so much you can change with software alone, and in the end on-orbit GPS satellites are limited by their hardware. However, that may soon change.

Later this year, Lockheed Martin will launch a pair of small cubesat experiments that could pave the way for on-orbit hardware upgrades for GPS satellites, and possibly other Space Force satellites. In short, the company wants to take new hardware (be it a new sensor, data storage, a processor or something else), integrate it with a cubesat, and then plug the cubesat into the GPS satellite via a port on the bus on orbit. Perhaps the cubesat remains connected for the remainder of the satellite’s service life, or perhaps it undocks once a specific mission is complete.

“When we and others build satellites today, they launched with what they’ve got. That’s starting to change with things like software definition,” David Barnhart, Lockheed Martin director of space technology demonstrations, told C4ISRNET ahead of the 36th annual Space Symposium. “But this is essentially significant because it’s the first time that you can really effectively upgrade the hardware.”

The two 12U cubesats — each around the size of a four-slice toaster — that make up Lockheed Martin’s In-space Upgrade Satellite System, or LINUSS, are part of a series of demonstrations that will lead up to the first on-orbit upgrade, which will take place with the 13th GPS IIIF space vehicle. LINUSS will launch into geosynchronous orbit where it will test the precise orbital maneuvers that will be needed to plug the cubesat into the GPS satellite. Lockheed Martin expects to complete the LINUSS mission in two months, although the cubesats could be used for additional experiments in the weeks and months afterward.

The key enabling technology for this satellite upgrade approach is the company’s Augmentation System Port Interface. ASPIN is the docking part where the cubesats will plug into the satellite bus.

“So I kind of think of it like a USB port,” said Barnhart. “You buy your computer, you bring it home, and you want to add something. Like maybe your computer doesn’t have a camera or you want a better camera so you plug in the USB device, and all of a sudden your computer has a new capability it didn’t have out of the box. And that’s kind of the same concept with ASPIN.”

Barnhart added that the ASPIN capability will be part of the baseline for the LM 2100 bus, which Lockheed Martin will use for satellites it’s building for GPS and the Space Force’s Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared missile warning system. Future satellites built on that bus will be able to use the on-orbit upgrade capability. Importantly, other companies will be able to build technologies that can plug into ASPIN, meaning that third-party companies can theoretically upgrade Lockheed Martin-built GPS satellites with their technologies.

“All of our LM2100 buses are very long life, and so we’re trying to ensure that they are technically relevant, you know, throughout the entire lifetime by being able to bring up new capability early in the mission, midway in the mission, even at the end of the mission lifetime, by swapping in and out hardware,” said Barnhart.

“And it’s really not just in-orbit upgrading, it’s the possibility of being able to test sensors on production systems in an easier way. [It] is a huge benefit to our customers,” added Barnhart.

The company has several demonstrations planned to build the capability for GPS IIIF space vehicle 13. Barnhart said he expects the company to release a full road map later this year.

In addition to the maneuvering demonstration, LINUSS will also test new high-performance onboard processing capabilities, low-toxicity propulsion, inertial measurement capabilities, and 3-D printed components. It will also showcase Lockheed Martin’s software-defined satellite technology, SmartSat.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond detailed three fundamental parts of the initiative: building a digital headquarters, establishing digital fluency and enabling digital engineering.

Raymond said the service had just hired a new chief technology and innovation officer who will help lead the push for a digital service. The Space Force has designated the Technology and Innovation Office as the lead on digital transformation — starting with a digitally focused headquarters. With just 600 people, the Space Force headquarters is relatively small, leaning on the Air Force for many supporting functions. Raymond has previously noted that with such a small staff, the Space Force headquarters has to use digital tools to remain effective and operate quickly.

On the second point, Raymond said the Space Force already started training guardians to improve their digital skills.

“We’ve given licenses out to all of the guardians in the Space Force where they can go in and take courses and become more digitally fluent, understand software, understand the implications of that,” he said during a media roundtable. “We’ve gone through the first tranche of that and now built other courses and put those out for them to take as well.”

In separate remarks, Raymond noted that the Space Force’s recruiting effort has been strong, allowing the service to choose guardians who are top tier and ready for the digital environment in store for them.

The Space Force has also made progress implementing digital engineering, said Raymond, although he didn’t go into details about what the service had done.

Lt. Gen. Mike Guetlein, who heads up the recently established Space Systems Command, said his new field command is fully embracing the digital push.

“Those data standards are being developed. The platform is being developed. The hardware stack is being developed, so we can all communicate on a common framework,” said Guetlein in a separate media roundtable. “And now we’re starting to talk about: What does that digital platform look like that’s going to drive us all going forward?”

When the Space Force first shared its digital plans in May, it announced it was building a Digital Engineering Ecosystem where the government can work with industry partners in the cloud to review programs, share digital twins and experiment with new technologies. At the time, the Space Force said the unclassified version was already coming online, with a classified version expected in the late summer or early fall.

While that digital modeling environment is still being established, the Space Force is already able to share the virtually recreated space environments it use for simulations. That way, commercial partners can see how their satellites and space systems will operate in the Space Force’s plans.

“And now with the stand up of the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, we’re actually sharing the models that we’re using to do our simulations and the models that we would expect your digital twins to be plugging into. So the industry can now play with their designs and understand environments that we think they’re going to be challenged within space,” explained Guetlein.