“If you can’t be enthused and excited about what’s going on in space today, maybe you need a new job,” joked Thompson. His passion for space and technology was clear as he explained that the reestablishment of the National Security Space Council, paired with investments in space technology and innovation, are first steps to ensuring superiority in the space domain.

Alignment with today’s leaders across all branches of the government and the National Security Policy is where it all begins. The policy, published for the first time since 1999, declares that unfettered space access, along with the freedom of action in space, is essential for our economic and national security. It also further cements the space domain as a warfighting domain.

“For better or worse, space has become a warfighting domain,” explained Thompson. If war extends to space the military must be ready with leadership aligned to take action. Thompson attributes the increasing readiness of the Air Force to Secretary Heather Wilson, who was instated a year ago and, since taking the position, has not stopped championing space as an important warfighting domain. This desire to increase readiness has also led to additional investment in space and mission assurance for satellite systems.

“It was almost $7 billion dollars more that was added to the Air Force budget across the years from ‘19 to ’23,” said Thompson who went on to explain that $5.5 billion was also internally realigned totaling $12.5 billion dedicated to space innovation.

“That’s a huge step. That’s a major investment. We have more work to do as we always do, but it really does send a message to any potential adversary that we will protect and defend our space capabilities,” said Thompson. But that step is just one of many, as multiple important questions remain for the Air Force and DoD to answer.

“How do we produce efficiently? How do we produce effectively? How do we drive down cost? How do we learn lessons?” asked Thompson. One way that he suggested to accomplish that was to apply models that proved efficient within other sectors to space. By embracing these systems and models, the Air Force can more effectively and rapidly produce systems and deliver solutions to the warfighter. Thompson also championed the military partnering closely with the commercial sector to “provide capabilities that our warfighters need [and] do it quickly…do it agilely…and do it in the face of what is truly a contested domain.”

“This is a moment in history where we have the time, we have the resources, we have the support, and we have the directive to make a difference for national security space,” said Thompson in his closing remarks.

Click play on the video below to watch Lieutenant General David. D. Thompson’s remarks.

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Partnerships between agencies, allies and, importantly, with the industry are a key element of the emerging U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) strategy to preserve access to critical space capabilities in the face of growing threats posed by potential U.S. adversaries, senior national security leaders said.

“In a contested space environment, partnerships strengthen our advantage and complicate potential adversary decision-making,” said Gen. Jay Raymond, commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, which delivers space capabilities to the warfighters. He noted, for example, the Air Force’s strong relationship with the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which buys and operates the nation’s reconnaissance satellites.

“We’ve also got several partnership opportunities we’re working with the commercial world,” Raymond said. “Those range from launch to re-entry and everything in between.”

Bookended by launch and re-entry are commercial satellite-delivered services including imagery and communications, upon which the military and intelligence community have come to depend.

DoD Looks to Determine Next-Generation Architecture
“In the old days, the processing power of the [communications] throughput that was available out there in industry was not what we needed—we had to develop our own,” NRO Director Betty Sapp said in a Space Symposium keynote address. “Those days are long gone—commercial has more than what we need.”

The Defense Department in recent years has spent $1 billion or more on commercial satellite capacity, according to space industry officials. Commercial satellites continue to carry a significant portion of U.S. military communications traffic, and demand is expected to increase in the coming years.

The Air Force, an operator of the Wideband Global Satcom system that the service characterizes as the backbone of its satellite communications fleet, is in the midst of an Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) to determine the content of its next-generation architecture. A key question is what is the best mix of mix of government and commercially owned assets to help the DoD do its job in the years ahead.

DoD Underserved by Terrestrial Links
The DoD could realize an exponential leap in communications capability by pulling together multiple commercial and military constellations into a single network where users are able to move seamlessly between constellations.  Gen John Hyten, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has stated that, “SATCOM systems are key to our continued strategic posture in space…”

Among those systems, SES’ O3b MEO fleet is unique in that it operates in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at about 8,000 kilometers in altitude, whereas the others are geostationary systems located 36,000 kilometers above the equator. The lower altitude of the O3b’s MEO satellites allow them to relay signals with significantly less lag time, or latency, than geostationary systems. U.S. military officials have touted the benefits of low-latency systems as forces increasingly rely on satellites to support so-called enterprise applications that often are intolerant of signal delays.

SES’ O3b MEO constellation currently consists of 16 satellites, with four more slated to launch next year and seven next-generation O3b mPower spacecraft slated to begin launching in 2021.

“SES continues to enhance our O3b MEO constellation to provide fiber-like services to multiple U.S. government customers at its 17 sites worldwide,” said Peter Hoene, President and Chief Executive Officer of Reston, Va.-based SES Space and Defense, that exclusively serves US government customers. “In combination with SES’ geostationary satellites, O3b MEO provides connectivity that is flexible, reliable and resilient.”

Air Force Devoted to Industry Partnerships
Air Force Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, commander of the service’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), which oversees the acquisition of most U.S. military space systems, said a just-announced SMC reorganization will help ensure that commercial capabilities are appropriately integrated into the overall military space architecture. As part of the reorganization, unveiled by Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson in a keynote speech here April 17, the service is creating a “chief architect” position to consider the space enterprise as a whole, rather than its individual component parts.

“Our portfolio architect that Secretary Wilson also mentioned will have an office completely devoted to partnerships to ensure that we keep those connections and put together the best space systems that we possibly can,” Thompson told reporters at a Symposium press conference April 19.

The SMC reorganization comes amid continued debate over whether the Air Force is properly structured to address its current and future challenges in space.

In a speech to a government affairs breakfast at the Symposium co-sponsored by the Space Foundation and SES Space and Defense, Doug Loverro, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, said that during the 1960s and 1970s, the service did a great job of cultivating internal expertise on the subject. This was accomplished not through a formal structure but by allowing Air Force officers to build on their space knowledge as they moved to different and progressively higher positions, both within the service and at other agencies like the NRO and NASA.

That wholistic space cadre development was lost via what Loverro called “a long and disconnected series of unfortunate events,” in which the Air Force unwittingly created bureaucratic barriers between space operations and acquisition personnel and hindered the career advancement of space professionals. While he stopped short of advocating a quasi-independent Space Corps, as some stakeholders have advocated, he said the space enterprise might benefit through formal structures designed to enhance the development of career space professionals.

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Here are some of the top articles and news stories that we read this week:

High-Res Satellites Want to Track Human Activity From Space
If you’re the paranoid type that already thinks people are watching you…well…you may not want to read the rest of this. You’ll certainly not want to read the Wired article at the other end of the link above.

Why? Because, it’s most likely going to confirm your suspicions and result in you crafting some fine tin foil headwear.

According to the article, a company called DigitalGlobe is going to be launching a fleet of satellite that they’ve ominously coined, “WorldView Legion,” which will give them the ability to take extremely high resolution images of much of the globe every 20 minutes. These photographs from space will be so clear that the article authors suggest that they will enable the people viewing them to make out what book is sitting on a coffee table.

Well…I’ll save them the time and effort. This is the book sitting on MY coffee table.

All joking aside, this level of clarity in satellite imagery is a huge step up from what’s already available in the marketplace, and could have multiple practical applications by giving companies, government and other entities unprecedented intelligence about human activities and behaviors.

Air Force stands up new Space Operations Directorate
Understanding the increasingly contested nature of space and the fact that space is now a war-fighting domain, the U.S. Air Force has established a new Space Operations Directorate that was slated to become operational this week.

In an attempt to get the Space Operations Directorate off the ground, the Air Force has been naming people to the 43-person staff, including two new personnel – Shawn Barnes, who was named assistant deputy chief of staff for the Space Operations Directorate, and Maj. Gen. Pamela Lincoln, who was named assistant to the deputy chief of staff for space operations.

According to Secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson, “Mr. Barnes and Maj. Gen. Lincoln are experienced leaders who will provide the vision and direction for our new Space Operations Directorate. This is one more element of the plan to ensure our space forces are organized, trained, and equipped to prevail in any conflict.”

All-electric satellites halfway to becoming half of all satellites

The future of satellite propulsion? It’s electric!

According to Northern Sky Research (NSR), electric spacecraft are the future of the satellite industry. In this article from Space News, they quote numbers from Senior NSR Analyst Carolyn Belle showing that operators ordered 26 electrically propelled satellites from 2012 to 2016 — 20 all-electric spacecraft, and six “hybrids” that will rely on chemical propellant for orbit raising.

That means that 25 percent of satellites ordered during that four year period utilize electric propulsion or a hybrid electric/chemical propulsion system.

The allure of electric propulsion for spacecraft is easy to see and understand. By utilizing electric propulsion systems, satellites weigh less. They can then either be loaded up with more payloads, or shrunk down to decrease the cost of launch.

Either way, it looks like the benefits of electric propulsion have it poised to be the propulsion choice of the future for satellite operators.

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