Nearly 
two years after its launch into orbit, the Air Force’s Space Based Space Surveillance Block 10 satellite is ready to commence initial operations, announced service space officials on Aug. 20. Air Force Space Command boss Gen. William Shelton declared on Aug. 17 that the satellite had reached the initial-operational-capability milestone, they said in a release. The spacecraft is now available to support US Strategic Command, states the release. “The SBSS satellite will provide needed capability to the national deep-space space situational awareness in terms of timely revisit of high-interest objects and increased capacity to meet current and future warfighter SSA needs,” said Robert Davidson, AFSPC’s space superiority division chief. Boeing and Ball Aerospace supplied the satellite, which the Air Force placed into space in September 2010. The taskable, dedicated sensor is the only space-based asset in the nation’s space-surveillance network, according to the release. It’s capable of monitoring man-made objects from its perch in geostationary orbit without the disruption of weather, time of day, or atmosphere that can limit ground-based systems. “It’s an agile sensor, so it can be tasked to look at high-interest objects on a more frequent basis,” said Davidson.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.