AURORA, Colo.—When Soldiers and Sailors went to work constructing a floating pier in Gaza last year, the U.S. Space Force monitored their security using civilian satellite intelligence. The Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking, or TacSRT program—first discussed at last year’s AFA Warfare Symposium—is a marketplace designed to let commercial suppliers identify data they can offer and military users search for answers to things they need.
One year later, Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman proclaimed the program a success.
“I don’t have to test it anymore—it works,” Saltzman told reporters. “Now they’re just making the demand signal in and we’re going to the marketplace, finding the products and delivering it. … So we’re kind of out of the test phase. It works. And now it’s about making sure if everybody’s educated how to use it, and then getting money to continue to expand the program.”
One real-world test that helped prove the program: imagery used to monitor security when the U.S. sent in the military to set up a Joint-Logistics-Over-the-Shore pier in the Mediterranean Sea in Gaza.
Space Forces Central commander Col. Christopher S. Putman said TacSRT was the best available solution.
“When we built the humanitarian relief pier in Gaza, TacSRT was where we went,” Putman revealed during a panel discussion. “We had daily products and were able to provide those on a not-classified basis to everyone that had a concern there. And they were able to see what they needed to see in an easily disseminated product.”
TacSRT played a similar role in the withdrawal of U.S. forces from air bases in Niger last year, Saltzman said in September at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
Combatant commands’ insatiable demand for information and the limited capacity of “National Technical Means,” the term for Intelligence Community assets, to deliver on every need drove the TacSRT requirement.
Space Forces Indo-Pacific boss Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Mastalir said TacSRT is helping to fill in gaps in coverage when other means aren’t available or appropriate.
“Commercial opens up that envelope quite a bit, and brings a lot of capability that perhaps now some task force that’s planning a low-level op that wouldn’t think they could get that kind of imagery, even though it’s commercial, it may absolutely 100 percent satisfy their needs,” he said during the panel.
Matt Brown, a principal engineering fellow at Raytheon Air & Space Defense Systems, said during a different panel that commercial services are growing in quality and capability.
“We did deliver a scalable telescope to Maxar for the Worldview Legion set of vehicles, and that’s six vehicles that allows 15 revisits to the same location every day, 30-centimeter quality imagery,” he said. “That is a capability that the government can leverage as a service today. So instead of having to build up their own constellation of capabilities, you can leverage that and that provides 90 percent of what you need as a service.”
While it seems unlikely the Pentagon will ever utilize commercial intel to that extent, Saltzman did say INDOPACOM has already tapped into the TacSRT program to support its exercises and is planning to expand its use.
TacSRT isn’t limited to U.S. users either—it can also benefit allies. Saltzman described a visit to Southern Command where the Space Force is forming a future Space Forces South. “They are using those capabilities to really great effect supporting South American partners,” he said.
U.S. Space Forces Europe and Africa commander Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton told reporters he has used TacSRT to support allies responding to everything from floods to illegal fishing. And because it draws upon commercial services, it sidesteps many of the classification and intelligence-sharing problems Space Force leaders frequently bemoan.
“Intel is important, but as soon as you say intel, that means there’s a reason for me to protect that information for whatever reason,” Middleton said. “I just need information, and I need to get it out to the folks who actually need it. TacSRT is great. It’s doing great. I would like to see more competition in that area.”
Indeed, Middleton said demand for the program has surged to the point where he has had to establish requirements for its use, given that its funding is limited to a few million dollars. That is likely to change in the coming years, Saltzman said.
“The demand signal is now out there, and people are seeing the positive effects,” Saltzman added. “We’re going to go, ‘OK, we’ve got to go get some money for this, because we can expand this program.'”
