The Air Force has awarded ATK Mission Research of Santa Barbara, Calif., a $26.1 million contract to establish a space threat assessment testbed at the Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee. This ground test capability is slated to be completed and functional in early 2013. “STAT will create a realistic space environment to perform developmental and early operational testing of space hardware for the Department of Defense, the National Reconnaissance Office, and other agencies against man-made threats and naturally occurring environmental phenomena,” said Col. Art Huber, AEDC commander. STAT will also lay the foundation for near real-time connectivity to a satellite operations center, enabling integrated system testing, training, tactics, techniques, and procedures development, said Lance Baxter, the project’s technical director. “It is a significant step towards the development of an important new national capability,” he said. The contract was awarded Oct. 22. (Includes AEDC report by Philip Lorenz III)
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.