U.S. Space Force Aims for Real-Time Satellite Image Delivery

The U.S. Space Force and Intelligence Community are joining forces to provide faster access to images from commercial satellites and real-time tracking of moving targets from space.

New Space Mission Centre In Springfield

A ‘Joint Mission Control Centre’ has been established to coordinate defence and intelligence agencies and will operate out of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) campus in Springfield, Virginia.

General Michael Getlein, deputy commander of Space Force, and NGA Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth met last week to discuss the challenges of collaboration and division of labour between the two agencies.

The new structure’s main tasks include coordinating the functions of satellite constellation operators and collecting and disseminating space-based intelligence to military users worldwide.

The first constellation to be jointly managed from the centre is a classified network of moving target-tracking satellites known as the Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI). This is a joint development between the Air Force, Space Force, and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

Although the NRO plays a central role in the design and development of the GMTI constellation, the Space Force will be the lead operator of the system. Based on requests from regional combat commanders, the Space Force will directly task and control where the satellites send their sensors.

This is expected to ensure a seamless and timely data flow from these satellites to military commanders and intelligence analysts. Many details of the programme are classified, such as the size of the GMTI constellation or the sensors the satellites will carry.

Military-intelligence Differences On Space Issues

The development is the first significant step in resolving a longstanding tension between the military’s desire for direct access to data and the intelligence community’s role, which analyses that information before sharing its analytical findings.

The military also wants more timely access to commercial satellite imagery for the battlefield rather than turning to the intelligence agencies responsible for procuring it.

Under the current procedure, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and NGA have near-monopoly access to satellite imagery, analytical services to process that imagery, and primary control over the associated budget funding.

The lack of support for military combatant commands’ requests for tactical intelligence and the speed at which such data is provided has drawn the most complaints from the military and criticism from the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee.

Before his resignation, John Plumb, US assistant secretary of defence for space policy, said disagreements should be resolved between the secretary of defence and the director of national intelligence rather than being escalated to the president. 

He said the defence and intelligence cultures are often at odds over processes. The leaders should resolve the ongoing tug-of-war between the military’s demands for quick access to raw data from space sensors and the intelligence agencies’ processes for vetting and analysing that information before dissemination.

Tracking Targets From Space Is A Top Priority

Recently, GPS, satellite communications, and space-based intelligence collection capabilities have played a critical role in most U.S. military operations.

At the same time, threats from unfriendly totalitarian countries such as China and Russia have put these capabilities at risk. These circumstances call for urgent action to ensure U.S. space resilience.

Two years ago, US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall unveiled seven operational imperatives – failsafe priorities for the defence mission. At the top of that list was building a resilient space architecture – ensuring the structure of space services that provide communications, intelligence, targeting, navigation, and missile warning is ‘resilient enough to withstand attacks.’

‘Our terrestrial forces, joint and combined, cannot survive and perform their missions if our adversary’s space-based operational support systems, especially targeting systems, can operate with impunity,’ Kendall noted.

Co-operation With The Private Sector On Space Monitoring Issues

The creation of the Space Force in 2019 was another step towards strengthening the resource and organisational weight of the military space enterprise.

As the youngest and smallest military branch, the Space Service has the most responsibility. The service’s budget has nearly doubled in the five years since its inception. Still, the increase reflects mission consolidation rather than new investments, as many space personnel and programmes of the Army, Navy, and Space Development Agency have come under the jurisdiction of the new service.

In FY 2025, the Space Force’s requested budget is scheduled to drop slightly to about $30 billion, mainly due to legislative constraints on defence spending.

However, according to the U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, that budget should double or triple over time to fund the implementation of a sustainable space architecture by deploying a constellation of smaller satellites in a more diverse range of orbits.

US Commercial Space Integration Strategy

The response to this challenge was the Commercial Space Strategy, published earlier this year. This strategy envisages cooperation with the private sector.

To track moving targets using satellites, the US is moving from traditional airborne platforms to space-based systems.

For decades, the US military has relied on radar-equipped aircraft known as JSTARS (Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System) to distinguish targets against the ground.

However, the Air Force stopped flying JSTARS last autumn because of their vulnerability in modern warfare scenarios. These aircraft require large crews and are vulnerable to enemy air defence missiles when flying over combat zones.

Instead, the Pentagon invests in a network of satellites, other aircraft sensors and ground-based radars that contribute to a broader picture of the battlefield.

The Air Force wants to be able to gather intelligence without risking manned aircraft in hostile airspace or active combat zones.

Air Force and Space Force leaders revealed plans in 2021 to work with the U.S. intelligence community to develop a space-based ground target tracking capability to replace JSTARS.

The military is increasingly turning to commercial satellite imagery and analytics to monitor conditions on the ground. To do this, the Pentagon is buying commercial space services to ensure that data for military units arrives at an operationally meaningful rate.

Under the Army’s Project Convergence in 2020, operators could take satellite imagery, automatically process it to find targets, and send it to the battlefield via space networks. The military says it reduced the time from sensor to shooter from 20 minutes to 20 seconds by linking commercial satellites to an Army ground station and delivering the data over one of those networks.

Commercial Space For National Defence

In 2021, Capella Space became the first commercial SAR company to demonstrate compatibility with the National Defence Space Architecture architecture and standards.

The US Air Force awarded Umbra a $1.25 million contract a year ago. Umbra is a Santa Barbara, California-based company that operates a constellation of six high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites.

According to the contract, the Air Force will work with Umbra on ‘space-based moving target indication.’

In early 2024, another US company, BlackSky, an Earth imaging and analysis company, won a $3.5 million contract from the US Air Force Research Laboratory to provide satellite imagery and analysis to support the ‘global defeat of moving targets’.

The contract followed a research contract last year, and a $2 million grant award announced on 4 March to supply Air Force satellite imagery data and access to the BlackSky analytics platform. Under the $2 million contract, AFRL will use the data to research and help train Artificial intelligence models that detect and track moving objects and targets from space.

The $3.5 million contract is the first task under a four-year contract worth up to $23 million.

The Pentagon is also a major SpaceX customer, using Falcon 9 rockets to launch military payloads into space.

SpaceX is also building a network of hundreds of spy satellites under a secret contract with the US intelligence agency. The network is being built by SpaceX’s Starshield business unit as part of a $1.8 billion contract signed in 2021 with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

A source said the first Starshield satellite prototype, launched in 2020, was part of a separate contract worth about $200 million that helped SpaceX win a follow-on contract.

A U.S. government database of objects in orbit shows that several SpaceX missions have deployed satellites that neither the company nor the government has ever acknowledged. Two sources confirmed that these were prototypes for the Starshield network.

According to SpaceX’s Starshield page, Starshield will offer a higher level of cybersecurity than typical Starlink satellites, with ‘additional high-security cryptographic capabilities to accommodate classified payloads and secure data processing, meeting the most stringent government requirements.’

The satellites can communicate with existing Starlink satellites via laser communications systems already aboard SpaceX’s massive broadband constellation, potentially increasing Starshield’s range and capabilities.

For the U.S. military, officials believe that creating a commercial reserve will ensure U.S. access to space services while encouraging more private investment.

However, they also recognise that for commercial firms, signing such agreements with the US government could complicate satellite operators’ ability to sell capacity around the world if the Pentagon prioritises their fleets.