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The U.S. Space Force is still assessing what options may even be feasible when it comes to fielding future satellites to persistently and reliably track aerial threats from orbit. To help with this, the service is leveraging work being done now on a distributed network of space-based sensors to keep tabs on targets on land and at sea. This all comes as the Pentagon is looking to axe purchases of new E-7 Wedgetail radar planes, and buy more of the Navy’s E-2D Hawkeyes instead, a plan facing growing Congressional opposition, as it pushes a significant portion of the airborne target warning mission into space.
Space Force Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Operations, Cyber, and Nuclear, talked at length about current plans for space-based air and ground moving-target indicator (AMTI/GMTI) capabilities during an online talk the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies hosted today. Burt said a formal “analysis of alternatives,” or AoA, to help inform the Space Force’s path forward on space-based AMTI capabilities is due to be wrapped up this fall.
AMTI coverage in the U.S. military today is primarily provided by an increasingly geriatric fleet of U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft, as well as various ground-based radars. The latter of these assets are largely tasked to support the strategic homeland defense mission rather than tactical operations. GMTI capacity has also been steadily migrating off aircraft and toward space, notably with the retirement of the Air Force’s E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTAR) aircraft.
A US Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS jet. USMC
“I think the important part here is the [space-based AMTI] alternative analysis of alternatives that will be delivered this fall… are [sic] going to be very telling. As I said earlier, we believe it’s multiple phenomenologies,” Burt explained. “There’s no one silver bullet of a phenomenology that’s going to do this. It’s going to require a variety of phenomenology.”
Burt was responding to a question about how some $2.2 billion in additional money for AMTI capabilities in orbit that Congress included in a recent reconciliation funding bill, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, could help accelerate those developments.
“So we’re testing out those. Some of that additional funding was really about how to do the RDT&E [research, development, test, and evaluation] of these various capabilities and how to flesh them out and see how they would operate,” she continued. “And then how would [we] put them together as a constellation, and supporting [them], and the data being provided machine-to-machine to compare different phenomenologies, to be able to say, ‘okay, that is an air moving target.’ And how would I then pass it to a combat controller working with aircraft or directly to the cockpit as needed.”
Burt declined to say whether or not she believed it would be possible to field an operational space-based AMTI capability, even on a limited level, within two years. Space Force officials have said in the past that they see new satellite constellations capable of persistently providing AMTI and GMTI coverage as coming online in the 2030s.
DARPA
“We’re really focused, right now, from an operator perspective, … on the ground moving target indicators,” Burt stressed. “So, GMTI, working very closely with the NRO [the National Reconnaissance Office] and NGA [the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency]. We are working together in the Joint Mission Management Center, the JMMC out at Springfield[, Virginia], working with NGA, and really building off their expertise in looking at moving targets and how do you pull multiple intelligence capabilities together to execute that.”
NRO is America’s top satellite intelligence arm, and a formally situated within the Department of Defense, but has a very close relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). NGA is the U.S. military’s main hub for geospatial intelligence, which includes satellite imagery analysis and exploitation.
“We have designated Delta 7 as the lead Delta to help us deliver ground moving target indicator [capabilities],” she continued. “We have a small detachment of Delta 7 operators that are sitting today at Springfield, working side by side with NGA on how do we get after the tactics, techniques, and procedures, how would we do this.”
An aerial view of NGA’s main campus in Springfield, Virginia, where the Joint Mission Management Center is located. NGA
Space Delta 7, headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado, is the Space Force’s main intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) unit.
Space Force is also working with regional combatant commanders to lay the groundwork for how space-based GMTI data would get to where it needs to go, and do so in near real-time. Burt also said Space Force views artificial intelligence and machine learning as critical to helping process the huge amount of data the new GMTI sensors in orbit are expected to collect.
“How do I quickly machine-to-machine go from sensing a moving target to getting it to a shooter on the other end, and the timelines they need to be able to action it before it’s a fleeting target and gone,” she said. “Those are all going to have to be machine-driven. They’re going to have to be automated. That’s going to have to be – we’re talking, in a matter of sub minutes, to make that happen.”
Burt noted that work on space-based GMTI capabilities is itself drawing on technology developed for monitoring satellites in space when it comes to automation.
“With space domain awareness, we have both our own dedicated sensors that do space domain awareness, you have contributing sensors, you have commercial now, a very robust commercial sensing capability for space domain awareness – how do you harness and put all of that together?” she explained. “The machine will, much faster with artificial intelligence, tell me a pattern of life of a satellite, and then very quickly notice, based on the data coming in, ‘hey, it’s doing something different,’ and highlight that to an operator to very quickly address is that nefarious, or is there an anomaly, or what’s going on.”
The physical architecture to support the space-based GMTI plans is also already taking shape.
“So GMTI is part of a larger family of satellites that we’ve been working with the intelligence community, and GMTI is the final to launch. The initial satellites that are launching are capabilities that will help enable the GMTI, so think electro-optical, as well as a low-end radar capability. So those satellites have been launching,” Burt said. “We’ve also launched quite a few of the com[munications] mesh net that will allow those satellites to transfer data.”
A SpaceX Falcon 9 space launch rocket carrying a payload for NRO blasts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on March 24, 2025. US Space Force Senior Airman Spencer Contreras
She said that more specific details about how many satellites tied to the GMTI constellation already in orbit are classified. What other relevant work may be going on in the classified realm is unknown. You can read more about what is known publicly about the groundwork that has been laid for future space-based GMTI capabilities in TWZ‘s past reporting here.
“I think there’s a lot to be learned from GMTI, how do we apply [it] to AMTI, and then really just fleshing out all the different phenomenologies, and what’s the best in the AOA combination,” Burt added. “Some targets will be bigger, some smaller, faster movers. What’s the best phenomenologies of how you would detect those from space, which is very different than doing it on a very close airborne or ground-based platform?”
“I think the lessons we are learning in GMTI are building the framework for how we will task and execute as we move into AMTI,” she continued. “So we’re buying down a lot of the operational risk and normalizing the way we will do it with GMTI to then later be able to apply to AMTI.”
As TWZ has noted in the past, functional space-based GMTI and/or AMTI sensor networks have the potential to provide game-changing capabilities. Satellites offer advantages in terms of persistence and global reach compared to traditional air and ground-based platforms tasked with these missions. Historically, space-based assets have also been more survivable, though threats to assets in orbit are only growing by the day. The U.S. military is now investigating heavily in distributed constellations made up of larger numbers of smaller satellites to make them more resilient in the face of losses of individual nodes. These constellations are also expected to offer even greater persistence compared to traditional satellites in low Earth orbit, with the potential to monitor huge parts of the planet continuously.
Another graphic giving a general overview of different kinds of terrestrial anti-satellite electronic warfare jamming. DIA A graphic giving a general overview of different kinds of anti-satellite electronic warfare jamming, which fall in the category of “reversible attacks.” DIA
At the same time, Burt’s comments today highlight significant technical challenges still to be surmounted, especially when it comes to fielding useful space-based AMTI capabilities. Space Force officials have previously indicated that they continue to see a role for traditional aerial and ground-based assets, at least for some amount of time, even as capabilities in orbit start to become operational.
“The closer I can come to the target, the more resolution I get on the target,” Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, then Vice Chief of Space Operations, said last year. “As I move to space, it becomes harder and harder to get that same level of resolution on a target that may be required.”
Guetlein was recently made head of the top office at the Pentagon in charge of the Golden Dome air and missile defense initiative. Golden Dome would benefit heavily from any future AMTI satellite constellation.
All of this continues to raise questions about plans to modernize the Air Force’s current airborne early warning and control capabilities. In 2022, the service decided to replace a portion of the aging and increasingly unsupportable E-3s with E-7A Wedgetail aircraft. This June, the Pentagon revealed its intention to cancel the E-7 program and acquire a number of additional E-2D Hawkeyes to help fill the gap in the interim. However, the ultimate plan has been and remains to push more and more of the airborne early warning sensor layer into orbit.
A rendering of an E-7A Wedgetail in US Air Force service. USAF
“I have been concerned. We have E-3 capability up north, of course, but we were all counting on the E-7 Wedgetail coming our way. We’re kind of limping along up north right now, which is unfortunate. And the budget proposes terminating the program,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, had warned at a hearing in June where the E-7 cancellation plan was first confirmed. “The E-3 fleet [is] barely operational now, and I understand the intent to shift towards the space-based – you call it the ‘air moving target indicators’ – but my concern is that you’ve got a situation where you’re not going to be able to use more duct tape to hold things together until you put this system in place. And, so, how we maintain that level of operational readiness and coverage, I’m not sure how you make it.”
Since then, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives have made moves to block the cancellation of the E-7 program. Burt’s comments today, which have provided new and important clarity on plans to push AMTI capability into orbit, indicate that moving beyond traditional airborne early warning and control aircraft, in general, or even significantly reducing that capability, remains a high-risk proposition at present.
If Space Force can make good on even a portion of its space-based AMTI (and GMTI) ambitions, it could fundamentally change how the U.S. military conducts that kind of surveillance and open up a host of new operational possibilities. At the same time, AMTI and GMTI, in general, are capabilities that are already in high demand now, and gaps will need to be plugged until the planned new satellite constellations prove their worth.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
Joseph has been a member of The War Zone team since early 2017. Prior to that, he was an Associate Editor at War Is Boring, and his byline has appeared in other publications, including Small Arms Review, Small Arms Defense Journal, Reuters, We Are the Mighty, and Task & Purpose.