AURORA, Colo.—The Space Force is modernizing its approach to ground control software, taking a more modular, agile, and iterative approach in a drive to overcome the bugs, holdups and delays that have plagued complex ground control systems in the past, leaders said at the AFA Warfare Symposium.
More rapid, modular development for the software used to command and control missile warning and orbital warfare follows modern commercial best practice, but concerns remain over how fast USSF can change its approach and how well it can integrate disparate systems.
“Ground isn’t equally important to [space components]—I think it’s more important,” said Col. Robert Davis, program executive officer of SSC’s space sensing directorate. “I’ve been really trying to carry that message in my team: Ground’s often been an afterthought. A lot of the resources and attention has been put to the space segment, for good reason, but … we have to focus on the ground, at least as much, probably more.”
Former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition Frank Calvelli ranked focus on ground systems among his nine tenets for successful acquisition—spelling out that he wanted program managers to “Acquire ground and software intensive systems in smaller more manageable pieces that can be delivered faster.”
Delays have plagued programs like the OCX system for GPS satellites and the ATLAS program for command and control of space domain awareness assets. The Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution (FORGE) has also come under scrutiny; the program is for command and control of missile warning satellites like Next-Gen OPIR, in geosynchronous and polar orbits, and Resilient MW/MT, in medium-Earth orbit. The Government Accountability Office warned last year that FORGE must be mature by the end of fiscal 2026to meet the Next-Gen OPIR Polar launch schedule.
SSC announced March 3 it had awarded a $151 million contract to BAE Systems for prototype FORGE command and control software. It will join a framework system, which Davis described as the hardware and operating system to host the control software, and that has already been fielded at Buckley Space Force Base, Colo.
Davis told reporters at the AFA Warfare Symposium that other modules include a mission data processing application and relay ground stations. SSC’s modular approach treats FORGE as a “system of systems, program of programs,” he said, ensuring enhanced cybersecurity and resiliency for the ground ssytem.
Davis’ boss, SSC commander Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant, was confident that FORGE will be ready to support new satellites when the time comes: “We are very happy with the results and what FORGE on the floor has shown at Buckley already with the initial instantiations,” he said. SSC is “very confident that it will be running on time to support the satellite constellation.”
More milestones are still to come. Davis said a version of the data processing application will be delivered this summer, followed by an interim version of the command-and-control software called NIO that the team is pursuing as “risk mitigation,” which will eventually flow into the final version being built by BAE. But even when that comes, Davis said, there will be more to do.
“We’re going to continue to deliver, not in a big-bang software way, but in more of an agile way,” Davis said. “The capability, depending on the sequencing, could be a couple times a year or could be once a year.”
Agile software development is standard practice in the commercial world, such as with phone apps, where updates are rolled out frequently; similarly, the Space Development Agency plans to update its fleet of low-Earth-orbit satellites every two years following a comparable model. And the Space Rapid Capabilities Office is also pursuing an iterative approach to a program called Rapid Resilient Command and Control, which will provide C2 software for orbital warfare.
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Kelly Hammett, head of the Space RCO, said he intends to “go to nontraditional small business software writers, who do this for a living, instead of, I’ll say, the traditional defense primes, who have struggled in many cases to provide ground software on a previously approved baseline.”
Like Davis, Hammett said his team broke down R2C2 into chunks—first an environment on Amazon Web Services’ cloud; next, a digital infrastructure using the Air Force’s Platform One cloud solution, and finally software applications providedΩ by 20 different vendors.
Like FORGE, R2C2 will be iterative. “We’re trying to show [the Space Force] what right looks like in terms of cloud-based and agile software development that delivers on a cadence,” Hammett said. “It’s not ‘wait five years till you get working software.’ You get something in 14 months, and then you get another version. We’ve delivered five [prototype] versions of software for R2C2, and are delivering version 1.0 in April … the operational version. We’ll be flying satellites off of that software.”
Now comes the really hard part, Hammett said: Getting multiple systems to work together. “The number one challenge, I really think, for the Space Force, is integrating the capabilities that we are developing into a coherent system of systems that can operate at the timing and tempo needed to fight a fight in space if we need to do that,” Hammett said.
“We’re building a bunch of stuff,” he continued. “We need to connect it appropriately, and that’s why we took on R2C2, but that’s just a piece. We’re doing the tactical C2 for orbital warfare. We’ve got [another program called Kronos] out of SSC doing operational C2 for that. And then we’ve got all the other mission areas.”
All that suggests that, as with the other ground challenges, integration will likely take not just time and persistence—but a gradual and iterative approach.