WASHINGTON \u2014 Last fall, the U.S. Space Force gave defense companies an unprecedented look at its initial plan to make missile warning satellites more resilient against potential threats from China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The business fair was unique in a few ways. It offered industry a deeper understanding of the challenges the service expects to face over the next few decades as adversaries advance space and missile technology and test on-orbit weapons. It also paired that analysis with a roadmap of the capabilities the Space Force thinks it needs to protect against these growing threats \u2014 work the service doesn\u2019t typically reveal until much later in the acquisition process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps the most significant feature of that October 2021 meeting was that the models it shared with industry to show its analysis of the space environment and the counter-space threats were all digital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking at the Air and Space Force Conference in National Harbor, Md., last month, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond said the meeting and those models were a first step toward creating what the service calls a \u201cdigital thread,\u201d which is essentially a virtual record of a product that continues throughout its lifecycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea, he said, is for programs to have that thread from the beginning, making it easier to define capability gaps, build a system, test it, inject into a simulated training environment and operate it over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf we do this right, we can take everything from force design to requirements . . . to acquiring the capabilities and testing the capabilities and training our Guardians on those systems \u2014 all using the same digital thread,\u201d Raymond said Sept. 20. \u201cThat\u2019s nirvana. We\u2019re not close to that. But we\u2019ve taken a good step. We\u2019ve done the digital design, we\u2019re figuring out what that digital requirements process is, and I think it\u2019s going to pay significant dividends for us as we move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the thread is central to the Space Force\u2019s vision to be the world\u2019s first fully digital military branch, it\u2019s only one piece. Last May, the service released a vision document that laid out its priorities in this area, which include developing a \u201cdigitally fluent\u201d workforce, connecting its field commands in a virtual environment and ensuring that decision-making is informed by data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lisa Costa, the Space Force\u2019s Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, told C4ISRNET in an interview that as the service\u2019s leader on implementing this digital vision, her team is focused on three critical areas: creating virtual, immersive environments to train Guardians and develop systems; working with industry to procure digital infrastructure; and identifying future problem sets and capabilities to inform technology and research investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the Space Force, Costa said, the drive to be a fully digital service isn\u2019t just about being created in the information age. Pentagon assessments show that China is quickly outpacing the U.S. in space technology development, predicting America could lose its strategic and technological edge by 2032. And as an organization that was designed to operate lean, leveraging tools and processes that have the potential to save time and resources is essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just an opportunity to be a digital service,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really an imperative that we\u2019re a digital service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being formed in 2019 as a data-centric organization has its perks \u2014 one of them being that the service wasn\u2019t inherently burdened with the same deeply entrenched, siloed processes other military branches must overcome to embrace new ways of operating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the last two years, the service created what Costa called the \u201cverticals\u201d of its organization, among them its three field commands focused on training, operations and acquisition. Now, she said, there\u2019s a need for horizontal integration across those offices. One way to achieve that is through creating an immersive, virtual environment that can be used to connect groups, enhance training and make the process of developing and testing a system more collaborative \u2014 the Space Force\u2019s version of the metaverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concept of a metaverse as a way to integrate people and organizations in a virtual space has been popularized in the tech world by companies including Facebook parent Meta, Google and Microsoft. Costa, who publicly floated the idea of a \u201cSpaceverse\u201d earlier this year, said that while it may seem gimmicky, it\u2019s actually a fairly simple way for groups to share information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea translates best to training and operations, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cInstead of [Guardians] experiencing their operational domain via a lot of text on a lot of different screens, we want to reduce that to one screen and have embedded, immersive visualization \u2014 taking information and allowing them to interact with the information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Space Force metaverse, or Spaceverse, could also be useful for the offices that develop and buy satellites and other systems, enabling digital engineering and making it easier for the testing community to evaluate capabilities earlier in the design process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThose are the types of things we need to be leveraging in the Space Force so that our Guardians have reduced cognitive load and they\u2019re able to make decisions faster,\u201d Costa said. \u201cInstead of experiencing their operational domain via a lot of text on a lot of different screens, we want to reduce that to one screen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Space Force wants to learn from aircraft companies and the broader transportation industry who are already leaning heavily on digital ecosystems, she said. As an early step toward creating a Spaceverse, the service awarded a $25 million contract in February to California-based technology company Slingshot Aerospace to create its first digital replica of the space environment that can be used for training, wargaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The contract is focused on addressing some of Space Training and Readiness Command\u2019s virtual training needs, but Costa said it could inform broader efforts to create a digital ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service is also reengineering its major information repository, the Unified Data Library, to make it easier to ingest and access commercial and other unclassified information. And through an effort called Supra Coders, which aims to create a cadre of software experts within the Space Force, the service has trained nearly 100 Guardians as coders and is on a path to quadruple that number by fiscal 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Costa said moves like this not only develop a skilled digital team but also drive a cultural push toward allowing the workforce to help shape the virtual environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[We\u2019re] wanting to empower Guardians at the very lowest level to be able to move data, code locally through our Supra Coder program and be able to develop parts of their own immersive capability,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along with creating its virtual environment, the Space Force is eyeing investments in digital infrastructure like computing power and data storage. The service has traditionally used a \u201cvery old model\u201d of designing satellites that perform their mission and download data to ground stations to store and process it, Costa said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have a lot of assets up there that are decades old. They were never intended to have store-and-compute capability,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s OK. They\u2019re old systems. But we would like to move [processing power and storage] as close to those capabilities as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a growing market for on-orbit computing and storage capabilities that allow satellites to process data and make decisions faster, and Costa said the Space Force wants to leveraging industry\u2019s investment in this area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really see that as an initiative that the Space Force does, or even the government does, as much as I see industry doing because they have monetization models for that,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s one way we can quicken the pace of decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The service\u2019s fiscal 2023 budget includes funding for initiatives including $155 million for a digital technology pilot program and $19 million for an effort called Digital Engineering Interconnected, Cloud-based Ecosystem, which would provide tools to support digital engineering. Funding documents don\u2019t detail how much the Space Force intends to spend on these programs in total.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the Space Force\u2019s technology and innovation team is focused on the near-term work to build a digital service, Costa said she\u2019s also thinking about how to \u201cfuture-proof\u201d its capabilities so they remain relevant as technology changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concept behind this initiative, dubbed Space Futures, is that many of the challenges the service faces could have been mitigated by early investment in forward-leaning technology. Things like cloud computing, on-orbit servicing and a robust space industrial base may have been considered improbable or even impossible 30 years ago, Costa said. However, early awareness and planning for their potential could have helped the defense community hedge some of the technology gaps that exist today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Space Force has hosted four Space Futures workshops that bring together scientists from around the world with expertise in a range of disciplines, she said. That work has informed the Department of Defense\u2019s annual report on the state of the space industrial base helps focus research at DoD\u2019s labs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLook at what we have today,\u201d Costa said. \u201cWe have a lot of very old systems that we never thought needed to talk to one another. They\u2019re siloed. We need to be looking to the future and what the capabilities are, so that we\u2019re building to that future vision.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The service seeks an immersive, virtual environment that can be used to connect groups, enhance training and make testing a system more collaborative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":47821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":23,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[160,163,36,23],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3468],"class_list":["post-49909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-military-space-report","category-newsletters","category-space"],"acf":{"subheadline":"Goal is to create virtual, immersive environments that train Guardians and rapidly develop systems","legacy_arc_id":"6O22DNWOK5A4RFW6LBWIJBSENY","arc_canonical_url":"\/battlefield-tech\/space\/2022\/10\/05\/space-forces-digital-push-focuses-on-spaceverse\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n