WASHINGTON \u2014 One of the U.S. Space Force\u2019s most sensitive missions \u2014 tracking foreign satellites and predicting whether they could threaten American spacecraft \u2014 is increasingly drawing on commercial data and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
The work falls under what the military calls battle management, command and control, the systems that allow operators to see what is happening in orbit, assess potential threats and decide how to respond. Historically, that mission relied heavily on classified intelligence streams. Now, a growing share of insight comes from private companies that specialize in space situational awareness and machine learning.<\/p>\n
The pathway runs through the Space Domain Awareness Tools, Applications and Processing Lab, or SDA TAP Lab, in Colorado Springs. The lab hosts three-month accelerator cohorts that give companies access to defined government problem sets while allowing the Space Force to examine their data, software and algorithms.<\/p>\n
More than 400 companies have participated over the past two years, according to Lt. Col. Collin Greiser, system program manager for advanced space battle management at Space Systems Command.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just get so much more speed out of that, because you just get ideas that you\u2019re not normally going to consider,\u201d Greiser said during a recent SpaceNews virtual event.<\/a> While similar collaboration can occur in classified environments, he said, it does not happen \u201cat the same sense of scale that we get with the lab.\u201d<\/p>\n Greiser oversees a program known as Kronos<\/a>, which aims to deliver a modernized suite for space battle management and intelligence. The effort is designed to fuse data in real time, support planning and deconfliction, and provide shared awareness for U.S. and allied operators.<\/p>\n To facilitate the connection between experimentation and acquisition, Space Systems Command recently moved the TAP Lab under the Kronos program.<\/p>\n The goal is to \u201cencourage and build more of an intentional pathway to a program of record\u201d so technologies can be used operationally, Greiser said. \u201cAnd so by moving the lab underneath Kronos, that has really started that transition.\u201d<\/p>\n The shift is intended to speed the movement of unclassified commercial tools into some of the Space Force\u2019s most guarded intelligence workflows. \u201cIn the short term my goal is really to boost the amount of capability that we\u2019re taking from the lab and putting it in my program,\u201d Greiser said.<\/p>\n Industry executives say the lab lowers barriers that once kept smaller firms out of the defense space business.<\/p>\n Understanding what the government needs<\/p>\n Tim Bode, senior space solutions architect at Leidos, said the TAP Lab helps companies understand what the government needs before entering a formal procurement process.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you go out to the TAP lab website, there are 61 problems detailed,\u201d he said. \u201cFive years ago, it would have been a blank screen.\u201d For a small company with a niche capability, he said, that visibility is significant.<\/p>\n Leidos provides software engineering, data integration and systems support to the lab, helping ingest and visualize tracking data. Bode described the link between TAP and Kronos as a \u201chuge change\u201d in how quickly prototypes can move toward acquisition. \u201cThey\u2019re getting solutions that can be more vetted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In military planning, officials often refer to disrupting an adversary\u2019s \u201ckill chain\u201d \u2014 the sequence of steps required to carry out an attack, from finding and tracking a target to striking it and assessing the result. In the space domain, satellites often enable those steps by providing surveillance, communications and navigation.<\/p>\n By improving space domain awareness \u2014 the ability to monitor and interpret activity in orbit \u2014 the Space Force hopes to interrupt that sequence before an attack can succeed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to be able to deny, degrade, damage and destroy their kill chain so that they cannot target our warfighters,\u201d Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess, deputy chief of space operations for operations, said last week at the Air & Space Forces Association\u2019s Warfare Symposium. The service\u2019s strategy calls for avoiding \u201coperational surprise,\u201d he said. \u201cI want as much space domain awareness as there is.\u201d<\/p>\n A \u2018demand driven\u2019 environment <\/p>\n Maj. Sean Allen, chief of the SDA TAP Lab, said the lab operates as a \u201cdemand driven environment where we publicly articulate all the problem statements on our website.\u201d The assumption, he said, is that industry already has most of the code required and can adapt it quickly.<\/p>\n One focus is distinguishing normal satellite maneuvers from hostile intent. \u201cThen my ability to make predictions about intent is sped up 10x or 100x,\u201d Allen said. If potentially threatening behavior is identified and incorporated into automated systems, those tools can begin recommending courses of action, compressing decision timelines.<\/p>\n Over successive cohorts, Allen said, the lab has built a catalog of commercial capabilities that operators can draw upon when specific needs arise.<\/p>\n Siamak Hesar, chief executive of Kayhan Space, which has participated in the lab, said it gives the government access to \u201ca large pool of applications and capabilities\u201d that are tested and validated on the unclassified side. Many of the newest tools rely on large language models and other AI techniques. \u201cWe are building capabilities that are AI first,\u201d Hesar said. \u201cAnd we are still learning what this technology is capable of.\u201d<\/p>\n The TAP Lab is also expanding geographically. In addition to its Colorado base and activity in Maui, Hawaii, a new node is being established at the University of Texas<\/a> at Austin. The Texas Space Commission<\/a> approved about $9.3 million to support the buildout, including secure infrastructure, operator training and six cohort cycles.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 One of the U.S. Space Force\u2019s most sensitive missions \u2014 tracking foreign satellites and predicting whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[227594,227595,79,722,193,99544,11716,14931],"class_list":{"0":"post-498362","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-kayhan-space","9":"tag-leidos","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-sn","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-space-domain-awareness","14":"tag-space-force","15":"tag-space-systems-command"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}