In Pursuit of ‘Space Control,’ USSF Gets First Upgraded Jammer

April 16, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—As Space Force leaders grow more vocal and direct in calling for space weapons to control the domain, one official revealed last week that the Space Force has received a major upgrade to one of its few acknowledged space weapons.

The Space Force formally accepted its first “Meadowlands” system, said Col. Bryon McClain, program executive officer for combat power and space domain awareness, during last week’s Space Symposium. Meadowlands updates the Counter Communications System, a ground-based offensive platform designed to jam and disrupt adversaries’ satellite communications.

“It is now ours to really move forward into the formal … developmental testing and operational testing,” McClain said. “We’ve had good success with the contractor testing, and [now government testing] is moving forward.”

L3Harris won the contest to upgrade CCS in 2021, and the company announced in April 8 that its system passed a system verification review.

Both McClain and L3Harris have described Meadowlands as including hardware and software improvements to provide the Space Force with increased capability and flexibility.

In a statement, L3Harris vice president of surveillance systems Andy Builta said Meadowlands was “designed to be small, transportable, and cost-effective.” McClain noted that it will have the ability to be operated remotely, so “we can reduce the number of people that are physically sitting by the antenna, turning knobs and pushing buttons. The farther we can separate that, that gives us a lot of flexibility for the warfighter.”

Both officials also noted that this Meadowlands upgrade will allow future updates to CCS to be deployed more quickly. McClain called it a “fundamental upgrade of computer systems;” L3Harris said the open architecture software system will make it “easier to make software updates” in the future.

Meadowlands is just a small part of McClain’s weapons portfolio, most of which is classified. Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman’s increasing emphasis on space superiority points to future investments in space and counter-space weapons.

U.S. Space Command boss Gen. Stephen N. Whiting echoed that call at the symposium. “It’s time that we can clearly say that we need space fires and we need weapon systems,” Whiting said. “We need orbital interceptors. And what do we call these? We call these weapons, and we need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight.”

McClain stands to see growth in his budget areas as the Space Force forges that future. “I would not be surprised if there’s continued growth there,” he said. Talking about it, however, may take longer still. “The challenge is Gen. Saltzman is able to talk very broadly about the concepts,” McClain explained. “Where it comes down to me, is doing the specifics. And that’s where the wall [goes up on] what I can and can’t say.”

In an on-stage interview, Space Forces-Space commander Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess hinted that Saltzman and Whiting’s calls for space weapons is already translating into market research and early acquisition work.

“To get after protecting the joint force from space enabled attack, I need the capability to deny, disrupt, and degrade those red kill chains,” Schiess said. “I need that from our commercial partners, and I’ve talked to many of you this week, and we need to continue to build up to that.”

Air Force Piloting Hydrogen Energy Tech for Agile Combat Logistics

April 15, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman

Hickham Air Force Base in Hawaii is testing novel energy technology to provide electrical power and hydrogen fuel in the kind of isolated and austere outposts the Air Force will need in the Pacific theater for its new Agile Combat Employment way of warfare.

The technology, developed by a majority veteran-founded startup based in Houston, employs wind and solar power to use electrolysis to make hydrogen from water in the atmosphere. The compressed hydrogen can then be converted into electric power via a hydrogen fuel cell, or used to fuel drones powered by the same kind of high-tech fuel cell. Any of the water extracted that remains can be used for drinking.

But what really caught the eye of the military, explained Rick Harlow, CEO of NovaSpark Energy Corp., was the form factor. He recently returned from Hawaii, where Novaspark demonstrated their Hydrogen at the Tactical Edge of Contested logistics (HyTEC) unit for INDOPACOM and at the 2025 Pacific Operational Science & Technology conference Field Experimentation event, called POST FX.

HyTEC is a portable unit, smaller than two porta-potties, which can be airdropped on a parachute, towed by a Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), and takes less than 30 minutes to set up. “The Marines told us, ‘we need to be able to move up to five times a day, because we don’t want to be a sitting target,’” Harlow told Air & Space Forces Magazine. For the Air Force, being able to airdrop the units means rapid deployment to isolated environments—as envisaged by Agile Combat Employment.

Above all, by providing a source of power almost literally out of thin air, said Harlow, HyTEC can help eliminate dependance on a long logistics tail for fuel resupply in the vast, ocean-spanning, Pacific theatre.

The HyTEC hydrogen fuel generator was demonstrated in April 2025 at POST FX at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Courtesy Novaspark Energy Corp.

When it comes to air transportation, space is always at a premium. And the biggest consumers of space are often fuel and water, Air Force officials say, both of which can be provided by the HyTEC unit, which generates about 4.5 pounds of compressed hydrogen every 24 hours.

“You don’t have to fly diesel [or other fuels] around where it could cost as much as $400 to $500 a gallon by the time it’s delivered,” Harlow said.

HyTEC is also equipped with a series of briefcase-sized hydrogen fuel cells that can output 4 kilowatts of electricity to power satellite terminals or other communications and IT equipment.

As an alternative to diesel or gasoline generators, these fuel cells have heat and noise signatures that are both much lower, said Novaspark Chief Innovation Officer Lanson Jones.

“The sound from a fuel cell is a slight hum. Less than 30 decibels. More quiet than a dishwasher, and there’s really no heat signature,” he said. More importantly, unlike a diesel generator, it can run 24/7 for long periods of time.

“I call it the Swiss Army knife,” Jones said of the HyTEC, “because not only can you create hydrogen to fuel drones, or make electricity, but you can also use the compression equipment to refill tires, and, if the hydrogen tank is full and you want to keep it, you can tap directly into the power from the wind turbine and from the solar panels without using that hydrogen. And you can do other really cool stuff, like make water for the troops.”

The hydrogen HyTEC produces can be used to fuel a new generation of drones like Lockheed Martin’s Stalker, and ground vehicles being developed by the U.S. Army, added Harlow.

“With hydrogen, you can not only go further than batteries, but you can actually go further than with diesel” or other fuels, said Harlow.

“So in practical terms with the drones, you’re looking at going two to three times as far and carrying two to three times the payload compared to batteries. There’s a huge strategic advantage,” he said.

The HyTEC system was first developed with funding from the Defense Innovation Unit, Harlow explained.

“We won a contract with the DIU, and they funded us to build the unit and to prove out that it works. So we were able to use non-dilutive funding without having to give away a bunch of the company in the process of getting investment.”

They then won an AFWERX Commercial Solutions Offering contract, which was recently extended, Harlow said, as well as an Other Transaction Authority contract from the Army Contracting Command in Picatinny, N.J.

“Any military agency or element can buy off that contract, and so can the different National Guards in the various states.”

The National Guard’s ability to buy off that contract is significant, Harlow said, because the company is looking to expand into the disaster relief sector, where the Guard is very active.

B-1 Bombers Jet to South Korea for Training, Flyover

April 15, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

B-1Bs from Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, flew over South Korea alongside U.S. and Korean fighters on April 15, adding to the already robust USAF bomber presence in the Indo-Pacific.

The BONEs flew over the western part of the Korean peninsula, overflying Osan Air Base, according to a release from the 7th Air Force, escorted by U.S. Air Force F-16s and Republic of Korea Air Force F-35s and F-16s.

“The fighters and bombers engaged in offensive and defensive counter air training together, refining combined tactics, techniques, and procedures,” the 7th Air Force release stated.

The B-1s then departed Korean airspace.

The release did not specify where the B-1s came from, but released photos and public flight tracking data identified them as being from Dyess.

The flight was the third U.S. bomber mission with South Korea this calendar year, and the second since President Donald Trump took office. It came as North Korea celebrated the anniversary of state founder Kim Il Sung, great grandfather of North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, and it followed a CNN report showing satellite images revealing construction of a massive new North Korean warship.

North Korea often engages in heated rhetoric in the wake of U.S. bomber missions in the region, and has occasionally conducted missile tests in response. The U.S. and South Korea have sometimes responded to such provocations with additional patrols.

The two B-1s in eastern Asia flew as multiple B-2 Spirits are stationed at Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The B-2s, which have been at the remote island for several weeks, have reportedly been taking part in the U.S. air offensive against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. Yet Diego Garcia is roughly equidistant from southeast Asia and the South China Sea and the Middle East, making it a valuable location for operations in both theaters.

Pentagon Looks to Ground Radars to ‘Fill Gaps’ in Space Domain Awareness

April 15, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—As the Space Force looks to expand its ability to track objects in orbit, a series of ground-based radars coming in the next few years could help fill gaps in coverage.

Better space domain awareness—essentially intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance on satellites—is one of the top priorities of USSF leadership, who want to be able to track more threats and have a deeper understanding of what they’re doing, especially as competitors like China maneuver their satellites more and more. To do so, the service can use its own spacecraft or sensors on the ground.

Col. Bryon McClain, program executive officer for space domain awareness (SDA) and combat power, told reporters at the Space Symposium that he is taking a “both/and” approach.

“The answer is always ‘I want more,’ and space-based fills in gaps that ground-based systems can’t always grab. Ground-based systems fill in gaps that space-based systems can’t grab. To me, it’s a mix,” he said.

Yet ground-based radars in particular seem to be how the Space Force is trying to boost coverage in the near term, especially over the Indo-Pacific region, while it plans other long-term upgrades.

Low-Earth Orbit

To keep an eye on the increasingly congested low-Earth orbit, the Space Force innovation arm SpaceWERX announced a $60 million Strategic Funding Increase for startup LeoLabs last month to build a new radar at a to-be-determined site in the Indo-Pacific.

At the Space Symposium, LeoLabs CEO Tony Frazier told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the radar will be an ultra-high frequency system from the company’s line of “next-generation radar technology.”

“It’s a direct radiating array, meaning that it emits a cone of energy that allows us to be able to detect new things in space,” Frazier said. “So new foreign launches, keeping track of highly maneuverable spacecraft … the intent is to be able to detect new foreign launches within minutes, and then be able to provide early warning, you know, to a variety of customers.”

LeoLabs has already built one such radar in Arizona thanks in part to a previous Small Business Innovation Research contract from AFWERX, the Air Force innovation arm. The firm built that radar in just five months and has been able to track thousands of satellites, Frazier said, providing a larger field of regard than previous radars.

The goal is to select a site for the new radar soon, in consultation with the Space Force, and start building fast so the system can be up and running by January 2027.

The $60 million for the effort is coming from multiple sources, including the Air Force Research Laboratory, private funding, and U.S. Space Command, which wants to “field better SDA capability more quickly,” USSPACECOM Commander Gen. Stephen N. Whiting said in a keynote address.

The new LeoLabs radar, called Seeker, “will improve DOD’s ability to minimize gaps in SDA coverage and provide early detection and tracking for space and missile launches in China,” he added.

LeoLabs also unveiled another new radar at the Space Symposium, a mobile S-band radar it calls Scout. The system can be transported by truck or cargo ship and even used at sea, Frazier said—making it ideal for tracking China in the Indo-Pacific.

LeoLabs’ new mobile “Scout” radar. Photo courtesy of LeoLabs

“Our intent is with dozens of these systems deployed, we would be able to provide full coverage, where today, because of some of the limitations of networks like the Space Surveillance Network, those systems are really powerful radars … but most of them are clustered in the Northern Hemisphere,” Frazier said. “There’s big gaps in in the Southern Hemisphere and equatorial regions, over open oceans, where having this distributed network you would be able to fill those gaps and give the adversary less opportunities to maneuver.”

While the Space Force and Space Command have not procured any Scout radars yet, Frazier said the company is seeing strong interest and working with the Pentagon.

“We’re going to build the first four to five systems this year, we’re already planning to do testing in INDOPACOM, so we have a commitment around that,” he said.

LeoLabs is one of several startups focused on space domain awareness getting attention from the Pentagon. Within the past few weeks, AFWERX funded the development of an AI-powered tool for identifying and tracking objects in low-Earth orbit, even as they maneuver and try to cloak themselves, from Slingshot Aerospace. The Defense Innovation Unit has also contracted with startup ExoAnalytic Solutions.

Geosynchronous Orbit

While LeoLabs is focused on tracking objects closer to Earth, the Space Force is also working on systems for SDA all the way out to geosynchronous orbit, some 22,000 miles up.

McClain told reporters that GBOSS (Ground-Based Operational Surveillance System), a planned upgrade for the existing Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance radars, is currently being tested at a GEODSS facility in White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Budget documents indicate the service hopes to operationally accept the system this year, followed by testing and acceptance at the GEODSS facility in Maui, Hawaii, in 2026.

Meanwhile, the Space Force continues to work on its new Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability. Construction on the first of three sites concluded in Australia in February, and a second site has already been picked in the United Kingdom. A third site is planned in the U.S.—McClain mentioned Texas as a possibility—but no final decisions have been made, a Space Systems Command spokesperson said.

“That’s going to get amazing capability … out to GEO,” McClain said.

The Australia site is still slated to go live in 2027.

At the same time, McClain’s team is also following a directive from acting acquisition czar Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy to review the program’s requirements and determine if they could be met using only commercial products.

A reflector being assembled in the Antenna Integration Structure (AIS) at Site 1 in Australia. DARC, a trilateral partnership between the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, will provide three radar sites and 360-degree coverage of the GEO belt. Photo Credit: Mike Kortum, Four Sea Group Inc.

“We are looking at all options to make sure that we don’t stay locked into something, even if it’s extremely expensive, because we signed a trilateral [memorandum of agreement],” McClain said. “DARC brings such a phenomenal capability. There is not a simple, out-of-the-box, commercial solution. But this is where I fall back on an ecosystem. Do we have the right mix of DARC systems in the right locations? Maybe there are areas where I can augment a little more commercial and adjust the cost curve. So perhaps we still end up with three DARCs. Perhaps we end up with two DARCs … but new commercial aspects in Australia, U.K., or in the United States that help broaden that scope. I don’t have a solid answer because the team is analyzing what Gen. Purdy asked us to analyze.”

Space-Based

With the new and updated radars set to come online in the next few years, the Space Force’s planned spending on ground-based space domain awareness is projected to be a healthy $1.7 billion from 2025 to 2029, according to budget documents.

Space-based SDA, by comparison, is a much smaller $784 million. Budget documents indicate much of that is going to support and expand the Silent Barker program the Space Force worked with the NRO to launch, as well as upgrades, research, and development.

Yet McClain said that new systems may be coming. In March 2024, his office released a request for information from industry on a new generation of satellites that can do space domain awareness, like the Space Force’s current Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program.

Since then, market research has been ongoing, McClain said. And while there may not yet be a program in budget documents, “I don’t think it’s very far off,” he suggested.

F-35 Cues Ground Artillery in ‘Minutes’ with New Data Gateway at Major NATO Exercise

April 15, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

Dutch F-35s, using a Lockheed Martin-developed communications gateway, shared classified data with a Dutch command-and-control system to achieve a kill on a ground target during the NATO exercise Ramstein Flag earlier this month, the company announced this week. It was the first time the system was operated outside the U.S.

Ramstein Flag, now in its second year, has quickly become one of NATO’s biggest air exercises. This edition featured 90 aircraft from 15 countries operating from 12 allied air bases, coordinated from The Netherlands’ Leeuwarden Air Base. Officials said they focused on counter-anti access/area denial missions, integrated air and missile defense, and Agile Combat Employment.

For the real-time, live-fly communications gateway demonstration, Royal Netherlands Air Force F-35s flew in an Anti-Access Area Denial environment and detected, identified, and passed targeting data on “multiple simulated ground effectors via Multifunction Advanced Datalink through a Skunk Works’ Open Systems Gateway (OSG) into Keystone,” a Dutch command and control system.

Skunk Works is Lockheed’s advanced development unit, based in Palmdale, Calif. The MADL is the secure datalink system that allows F-35s to communicate with each other while preserving their stealth.

Keystone fed the data to a ground-based rocket artillery platform, “which engaged a ground target and confirmed successful takedown, effectively closing the loop. This entire process was executed from start to finish in a matter of minutes,” the company said in a press release. The ground target was a grouping of Surface-to-Air Missile systems.

“This is a first, and a significant step forward in multi-domain integration, proving F-35 interoperability between several allied nations in real-time,” Lockheed said.

Through a spokesperson, the company said the gateway was “an evolution from Project Missouri,” a gateway experiment dating back to 2013 meant to connect the F-35 and F-22.

“We have continued to refine and build upon our experimentation over the last 12 years, and with the support of the Missile Defense Agency, were able to prove this capability alongside our F-35 partners last week,” the spokesperson said. “This is the same architecture and technology that was used by Lockheed Martin to integrate F-35 and F-22 in the past.”

The company further said that the gateway “can be leveraged with any platform/sensor/shooter” and is “aircraft agnostic, but we’re currently [focused on] the F-35.” It can also be leveraged with other countries’ C2 systems.

This latest demonstration also builds on work done by the U.S. and United Kingdom for Project Deimos this past December, when an F-35 flying from Lockheed’s facility in Fort Worth, Texas, shared live classified data through the gateway with a British command-and-control system—the first time an F-35 had shared such data with a non-American C2 system.

Ramstein Flag, which Lockheed described as a “collaboration” between U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Skunk Works, went a step further by operating the gateway in Europe for the first time. “We leveraged the USAFE-owned Deployable All-Domain Ground Gateway Rig which contains the gateway within the system,” the company said.

Use of the gateway helps F-35 users with “unlocking the vast amount of data” collected by an F-35, the company said, enabling allied air and missile defense systems to receive precise targeting information that then allowed them to “detect, track and defeat threats more effectively.”

The system helps strengthen collective defense by enhancing the situational awareness of joint forces, allowing them to “respond more quickly and decisively” to threats, Lockheed said.

“Our goal is to make interoperability a reality for our allied partners by maximizing the information available on the F-35,” the company said.

Ramstein Flag, which concluded April 11, is modeled after the U.S. Air Force’s Red Flag exercises that test Airmen to “train like they fight” in realistic combat scenarios. The NATO exercise also has a heavy emphasis on information sharing, interoperability, and support of special forces and naval units.

The exercise also bolstered F-35 interoperability through cross-servicing: having maintainers from different countries work on each others’ jets. Crew chiefs from the U.S. and the Netherlands launched two F-35s each from the others’ country.

Air Force Tells Congress: Better to Demolish Vacant Buildings than Maintain Them

April 14, 2025 | By Matthew Cox

The Air Force’s top enlisted member told lawmakers last week that the service must demolish hundreds of unneeded buildings, a move that would pay a “10-to-1 return on investment,” particularly for improving quality of life for service members, rather than spending money on their upkeep.

In the past 30 years, the Air Force has eliminated 60 percent of its fighter squadrons and 40 percent of its end-strength, but only 15 percent of its installations, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Flosi told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee at an April 8 hearing on military quality of life.

“Today, 30 percent of our infrastructure is in excess to need,” Flosi said. “I’ve learned no matter how much we work to improve quality of life, we will not get the desired effect as an Air Force If we don’t focus on excess infrastructure.

“It all requires funding and manpower to maintain but provides no benefit to the mission, our airmen, or our nation. Divesting, consolidating, and/or reallocating this infrastructure will free up funding to improve quality of life and the quality of our service.”

Flosi’s remarks further Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin’s argument from last month’s AFA Warfare Symposium: the Air Force has “too much infrastructure” and needs to consolidate to free up funds for more important things.

Notably, neither Allvin or Flosi mentioned Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, which has traditionally been an unpopular subject among lawmakers reluctant to lose jobs in their districts.. Instead Flosi’s recommendation to dismantle old infrastructure seemed to gain some traction among subcommittee members, who also tied it to quality of life concerns.

Chairman Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said he liked the idea of “looking at things that we can demolish, so we don’t have to take care of them.”

Carter asked the enlisted chiefs from each service at the hearing if there are any policy changes that would help them “alleviate capacity shortages” outlined in a 2023 Government Accountability Office report that detailed barracks with unacceptable health, safety, and privacy concerns.

Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz told Carter the recommendations in the GAO report prompted Commandant Gen. Eric Smith to launch a “very focused approach to human beings and getting after the infrastructure.

“We do need help with, as Chief Flosi stated, the amount of buildings that I need to knock down. It’s an expensive [thing] there to do, sometimes more expensive than building anew.”

The Air Force plans to invest more than $1 billion over the next five years to cover sustainment, restoration, and modernization of the service’s dormitories, Flosi said, adding that “we do not have any of our dorms in failing condition today across the Air Force.”

Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force David Flosi testifies during the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Oversight hearing – Quality of Life in the Military on Capital Hill, Washington D.C., April 8, 2025. U.S. Navy photo by Senior Chief Mass Communication Specialist Anastasia McCarroll

“What we’re trying to do, much like my Marine counterpart here, is we’re trying to balance excess infrastructure and locations where we have excess infrastructure that we need to get rid of,” Flosi added.

“We’ve done the analysis and, while it is expensive to demolish, we know it’s about a 10-to-1 return on investment. So over time, it’s a really good use of taxpayer dollars to get rid of excess infrastructure and consolidate and focus our resources on the infrastructure we really need to take care of our Airmen.”

Speaking in support of the plan, Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) highlighted that the Air Force alone has about 1,200 buildings that are currently vacant, and that the entire demolition budget for all the services combined is just $75 million.

Bice added that continuing to maintain these unneeded buildings is taking resources away from military branches that could be better spent on other priorities.

“And so I want to encourage our folks that, when we’re looking at our appropriations package, to potentially increase that so that we can raze some of these buildings, take the workload off of your plates and allow us to continue to really focus on the mission at hand,” Bice said.

Paparo: Airlift and Tanker Fleets ‘Below What We Need’ in Pacific

April 14, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force and Navy’s logistics capabilities—including airlift and aerial tanking—are insufficient for the needs of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, its commander told lawmakers last week, and the requirement needs to be addressed by more than just commercial stopgaps. He also endorsed the idea of small, uncrewed sustainment craft, as they could permit support to smaller and more dispersed units.

“We have … significant gaps in sealift,” Adm. Samuel J. Paparo told the Senate Armed Services Committee in an April 10 hearing, adding that the Combat Logistics Force—which includes both sealift and airlift—“in total is about 60 percent of the actual requirement.”

INDOPACOM makes up for that in part by hiring commercial tankers and “contracting other capabilities,” he said, but “when the unforgiving hour comes” and battle is engaged, only military ships and aircraft will be able to go forward into combat zones, he noted.

Moreover, “as I utter these words, 17 of those Combat Logistics Force ships are laid up for lack of manpower,” Paparo noted.

In addition, Paparo said, “we have to have many millions of pounds of jet fuel in the air for every capability. And so our tanker fleet is below what we need. We account for that with some contract air services as well.” U.S. fighter jets refueled off a commercial tanker in late 2023 over the Indo-Pacific, and Air Mobility Command has said it is working on an analysis into expanding the concept.

Still, Paparo noted the same issue: should conflict arise, the U.S. military will need its own aircraft to send into war zones.

To highlight the massive burden on airlift, Paparo said that moving a single Patriot air defense battalion from INDOPACOM to the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility “took 73 C-17 loads” to accomplish.

“That’s [just] one battalion of a force element,” he emphasized. “So our lift requirements must be paid attention to.”

On social media, former AMC commander Gen. Mike Minihan echoed Paparo’s point: “If [73] tails are required for a limited move like that, we are woefully unprepared for what large-scale operations against a peer adversary will demand,” he wrote.

To get after these shortages, Paparo said that “diversifying the tanker fleet is key,” as are “alternatives of lift capability that we can order into harm’s way.”

Asked by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) if he sees a role for uncrewed commercial airlift “in a contested logistics environment,” Paparo said it would open the door to new tactics.

“One of the precepts of unmanned is, never send a human being to do something that a machine can do,” Paparo said. “So … inherently, we’re moving in that direction, and I’d welcome the ability to execute that lift.”

He also said such a capability would “give me the ability to diversify the places” that sustainment can go directly, “bringing smaller payloads into simultaneously smaller maneuvering units, and would enhance our ability to sustain by the speed it would confer.”

Paparo also said the command is doing everything it can to smartly manage the logistics support, materiel, and pre-positioning of items it has.

“Over the top of all of this, we’re incorporating artificial intelligence tools with command and control tools, so that it’s not an on-demand system, but so that we are executing that absolutely indispensable joint function as effectively as we possibly can,” Paparo said.

“We are an AI-enabled headquarters, and that’s important too, but you can’t AI your way out of a materiel shortage.”

Tournear Reinstated as SDA Director After Investigation

April 14, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

Derek M. Tournear, the director of the trailblazing Space Development Agency, who was put on administrative leave in January amid an investigation into a disputed contract, will return to his duties April 17, the Department of the Air Force announced.

Tournear’s return is seen as a major boost for SDA, the future of which has been in question in recent months.

A Department of the Air Force spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that investigation into Tournear has been completed, and “the matter was addressed through established civilian personnel processes.”

Breaking Defense first reported Tournear’s reinstatement.

Tournear was named the first permanent director of the agency in 2019, and pioneered its ground-breaking approach to military space acquisition, awarding contracts for hundreds of small satellites to go in low Earth orbit in two-year cycles. SDA has earned plaudits for the work, and Tournear is seen by many as a transformational visionary.

Yet the small agency—which originally began as an independent organization reporting directly to the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, and eventually transferred into the Space Force—has also clashed at times with traditional acquisition insiders and some prime contractors.

In October 2023, for example, Tournear took to social media to claim he had faced internal resistance to SDA and pledged to be the “bad cop” as he pushed for change in Pentagon acquisition processes.

That tension peaked in January, when Tournear was abruptly put on leave with little explanation. Subsequent court filings revealed the suspension was tied to a contract protest by Viasat, which alleged Tournear had violated federal acquisition regulations by providing a competitor, Tyvak, additional information on the bidding process.

While Tournear was suspended, SDA was temporarily led by Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant, head of Space Systems Command, then by William Blauser, deputy director of the Department of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office.

By February, SDA agreed to a corrective action plan, including canceling Tyvak’s contract and reopening the competition for 10 satellites with a new source selection official, according to court documents. In March, the agency reissued its solicitation.

Tournear is now set to return as SDA moves forward. While he was on leave, the agency issued multiple solicitations and requests for information, including a call for studies on President Donald Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense initiative, and a request for proposals for Tranche 3 for the missile tracking layer of its constellation. SDA is likely to be a major player in Golden Dome, thanks to its previous work on missile warning and tracking.

At the same time, a recent Pentagon memo called for an “independent review” to determine the “health” of SDA and consider whether it should remain a semi-independent acquisition arm or be absorbed into other Space Force offices. In late February, the Government Accountability Office reported its view that SDA could be investing too heavily in satellite-to-satellite laser communications before proving the technology works. SDA officials have disputed some of the GAO findings, but say they’ll address the watchdog’s concerns and prove that their laser communication concept is viable.

The agency is also targeting launches for its Tranche 1 satellites in late summer, after months of delays. Getting those spacecraft to orbit will be key for SDA to counter critics and start operationalizing its satellite constellation.

Space Force, Intelligence Community Say They’re Breaking Through on Data Sharing

April 11, 2025 | By Greg Hadley

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—After months of debate and sometimes public tension, the Space Force and Intelligence Community are making progress on establishing ways to work together, officials said this week—with one predicting there will soon be “a sharing of data like we’ve never seen before.”

At the Space Symposium on April 8, Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Director Vice Adm. Frank D. Whitworth appeared on panel together touting their successes and addressing common concerns.

Since the stand-up of the Space Force and its inclusion in the Intelligence Community, there have been questions about its relationship with the likes of the National Reconnaissance Office and NGA.

For years, the NRO has used satellites to collect imagery and signals intelligence, and the NGA has analyzed that data to produce intelligence products. Now the Space Force is doing more and more intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance from orbit, with the goal of delivering tactical and operational intel to warfighters.

Space Force proponents have argued the NRO and NGA are focused on high-level strategic missions and can’t provide intelligence data quick enough to the battlefield. IC proponents say the agencies have decades of experience performing their missions and serve a critical function by making sense of the vast amounts of data coming from space.

During the panel, Guetlein emphasized that the Space Force doesn’t want to duplicate existing NGA efforts, whether that’s buying commercial analytics or organic analysis.

“I would much rather go copy what they’ve already done and build upon that in a collaborative manner than have to go recreate all that technical capability from scratch,” he said.

For his part, Whitworth said the NGA is working on accreditation for models to alert combatant commanders and provide them with verified, reliable intel on faster timelines, and he asked for patience as they do so.

“The reason that we do this is not to centralize. It is actually to decentralize,” he said. “And so when I ask for this patience, please remember that we’re trying to establish that standard so that you can move quickly, ensuring that prerogative of the Commander-in-Chief and of the SecDef and of those combatant commands is preserved all the while. It will help speed.”

One of the biggest sticking points in the Space Force’s relationship with the NRO and NGA has been who should be the one buying ISR imagery and services from commercial space companies.

While the NRO has bought commercial imagery and the NGA has bought commercial analytics for years, the Space Force is getting in on the game too, largely through the Commercial Space Office and its Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking program, or TacSRT.

Guardian leaders have praised the TacSRT program as a major success. It acts as a marketplace for operators to essentially buy surveillance-as-a-service from commercial companies for specific missions on rapid timelines. And Congress likes it too, dedicating $40 million for the program in its latest appropriations bill.

With so many different government organizations buying commercial products and data, however, there is the inevitable risk of some buying the same thing.

“We work really closely with the NRO on the access to commercial data, to make sure that we’re not buying the data twice,” Guetlein said. “We work really closely with … NGA to make sure on the analytics side, I’m not duplicating that effort, that if I’ve already got the data coming down from [government satellites], I’m not going off and rebuying it.”

Not duplicating efforts is one thing. Coordinating them to maximize time and money spent is another. Col. Rich Kniseley, head of the Commercial Space Office, said his team is working on an agreement with the NRO to improve their teamwork.

“The agreement is in the final stages of approval,” Kniseley said in a statement. “The agreement provides a mechanism for the NRO and COMSO to utilize each other’s contracts as well as transfer funds between organizations.”

Breaking Defense first reported on the agreement.

Still more agreements may be coming—Guetlein said the Space Force, NRO, and NGA are “putting in place the programmatic structures to jointly go buy these capabilities together, to govern these capabilities together, then looking at legally, how can I distribute the data?”

Whitworth said NGA is helping the cause with its Joint Mission Management Center, which brings together services, combatant commands, and other intelligence agencies to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

“No matter what you have in the way of memoranda of agreement, or any sort of interagency agreement that might be where we’re going to go … you’ve got to have a place where everybody works together,” Whitworth said.

The JMMC, which has reached initial operational capability, is that place, agreed Whitworth and Guetlein. In the long term, Whitworth said he actually hopes the center gets smaller due to automation and established lines of cooperation. More immediately, however, he said his priority is to get more Space Forces members into the center and working with the NGA more broadly.

“More Guardians at NGA—this is something we’ve talked about, and it’s already happening,” Whitworth said. “So this has already been realized. The JMMC is for real. It is now in its initial operating capability status, and there are plans for even more Guardians to be there.”

Guetlein, for his part, said the center and the other agreements in the works are setting up a massive change in the relationship between the military and intelligence community.

“I think what you’re going to see is—not five to 10 years from now, I think it’s two to three years from now—a seamless integration of Title 10, Title 50, a sharing of data like we’ve never seen before, a common operating picture that we’ve been trying to chase my entire career.”