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The ‘Dream Team’ and the future for space resilience

By Chris Forrester

Prof. Andy Kwas, NG Fellow at Northrop Grumman, lead and moderated a distinguished – and sparkling – and most distinguished panel (he described them as the ‘Dream Team’ of experts) which examined the future of sustained space resilience at the MilSat Symposium, part of the Silicon Valley Space Week. 

Dr Andrew ‘Andy’ Williams, deputy Technology Executive Office (TEO) for Space S&T at the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) admitted that it was sometimes difficult to accurately describe ‘resilience’. “It comes down to one thing: How do I make sure the service that the warfighter depends upon is there when it is needed. It is a resilient architecture and capability. Protect & Defend is part of the solution but is not the entire solution. Once, it was all about orbital diversity, and then platform diversity, now it is bringing in LEO and international, and creating a situation where [we have the advantage].”

Lt Gen (Rtd) Thomas J Sharpy, VP/Customer Development, Portal Space Systems and very much a former military official (his career culminated as the lead Allied Command Transformation senior exec, where he was responsible for developing strategic capabilities for NATO’s 30 member nations. He also championed NATO’s Command and Control, Cyber Security, and Joint Air Power Competence Centers of Excellence), but he admitted to delegates that which he said everyone understood that all too often the budgets would not allow all project requests to be granted.  

“The demands are insatiable,” said Sharpy, “but the dilemma for us all is that everything on orbit is a threat today.”

Richard Palmer (Deputy Director (J8) US Space Command) wholly agreed, telling delegates that the harsh reality was that military assets needed to survive “the first punch” and said that the audience would not hear a 4-star general confirm that strategy, “but this is what the very first key to victory is in this domain – which supports and interacts with the other domains.”

Lt. Col. Moses George, 53rd Space Operations Squadron Commander in the US Space Force confirmed the strategy for when it came to the tactical level. “In the transition from rhetoric to reality there are certain gaps, and we are seeing these on the operator end of the house and the devil is in the detail. Absorbing the first punch means the entirety of the architecture and in my view that’s what resilience is. It isn’t just what’s on orbit but means the entire spectrum of that architecture must be robust enough and to be capable of absorbing that [punch] and whether it might be a cyber attack or anything.”

Dr Kelly Hammett, Director and Program Executive Officer, Space Rapid Capabilities Office, US Space Force expanded the position saying that everyone had to face the challenges and get things “just right”, adding that the “enemy of better, better, better is that it must be costed and this usually means mature technology which translates as being you have to be a smart buyer. The proposal has to be real and an executable program. We have to be shoulder to shoulder with industry all of the time. We don’t build anything, although we spend years in training in the full life-cycle of the program if you are going to get feedback and field an operational capability. Our job is to get kit to the field. Our job is also to move faster – although we probably aren’t because that requires us to punch through the bureaucracy.”

Lt. Col. George told delegates that there was one huge change over the past few months: “I am wearing the Space Force badge.” This meant a combined approach and the bringing together of so many different elements. “It is fair to say that anyone who has been out of this activity for much more than 4 months is having an antiquated view of our role. The best thing about the Space Force is that we are brand new. But the worst thing about the Space Force is that we are brand new! But it is an opportunity to have our fingerprints on it and the organisational make-up as to how we should fight and make ourselves more efficient and affective. We are also integrating at a much faster pace than before. The imperative of the threat is forcing us to integrate across space mission areas in a manner that we have not done in the past. We are also transforming our systems but the most important part of the architecture is our people. Are they ready to operate the systems in this contested environment and with the speed and level of knowledge and flexibility that they need?”

Todd Gossett, VP/Space & National Security Initiatives, SES Space & Defense was asked – with the knowledge of the Russian cyber attack at the start of the Ukraine war – how robust was the satellite industry in resisting these actions? What was new, he said, in the Ukraine action against the commercial sector was that the commercial sector was very aware of requirements for various layers of controls now in place including the National Security Crypto Policy and the encryption requirements. “Is all this necessary, absolutely. Is it sufficient, no. The challenge for us is that we have to be perfect ever single day. But [our adversary] needs only to be lucky once and they test us every single day, every day, every hour, every minute. The dilemma for us all is that it could be a State actor, but it could also be a kid holed up in a basement somewhere. We face these challenges day in and day out.” 

LeoLabs: using AI to keep track of friends and enemies

By Chris Forrester

Dr Dan Ceperley, founder and COO at LeoLabs, delivered a superb Tech Brief at the MilSat Symposium, part of the Silicon Valley Space Week, and admitted that AI seemed to be the hottest of hot topics. He said that while there seemed to be no shortage of investment cash it was worth looking at where AI was operationally extremely useful. 

He looked at a couple of very useful examples. LeoLabs operates a series of radars around the world to monitor satellites and debris around the clock.  “This gives us a huge data set to mine and we put a lot of effort into generating automated analysis of this data. AI enables us to take this up to another level and to augment what all the human analysts are doing.”

“But the threat landscape is changing dramatically. Satellite launches have grown every year and the situation is getting more an more congested. LEOs are getting more nimble. We are seeing proximity operations, highly manoeuvrable satellites and all this makes keeping track of what’s happening that much harder.”

He explained that three threat events and in particular the notorious Russian ‘Zombie’ satellite that woke up in 2022 after years of inactivity. Another was the Russian ‘nesting doll’ satellite which spawned multiple sub-satellites in late 2023. The third example was a set of three Chinese satellites which has been practicing various proximity operations this year. Moreover, they are not doing this work in some isolated part of space but in a highly-trafficked region.

“The fact is that it is very easy for satellites to blend in, to hide. In 2019 there were 900 satellites operating in LEO. Today it is more than 9000, a ten-fold increase in just 5 years. We have to keep track of a very large, and growing, number of satellites and to identify what is a strange activity.”

Keeping track of 50 or 100 craft is relatively easy. Today’s numbers make human observation near-impossible and LeoLabs uses a variety of deep-learning and other algorithms to handle these tasks. 

He showed delegates a fascinating chart of unusual satellite activity from two days previous which had helped identify patterns of activity and which could then be examined by human eyes for more investigation.

He added that AI was useful in identifying differences between what is routine and what is deliberately different. Is the satellite friendly, or an adversary? Is it manoeuvrable, or static? Is it raising orbit or lowering? 

The other role of investigation was identifying unknown satellites or objects. From 2019 to 2023 the number of unknowns grew from 400 to 1400, and these require investigation. It is also important to monitor new launches within a few hours and not days. LeoLabs updates every 12 hours and ingest the data into its tables and maps. AI is augmenting our human analysts. 

LEO-based GPS: “The US is falling behind”

By Chris Forrester

Brian Manning, CTO and Co-founder at Xona Space Systems delivered a fascinating overview on the state of the satellite navigation sector for delegates at the Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Symposium. He focused on the race for next-generation PNT technology, which was already part of Xona’s role given that his company’s PULSAR “direct-to-Device precision solution was designed to deliver more than 100 improvements in accuracy and resilience direct to GPS devices from a constellation of small satellites in LEO. However, he cautioned that China, Russia and even Europe could be winning the race for next-generation GPS. 

Manning explained that Xona and this PULSAR came from a world of autonomous vehicles and which needed very high accuracy and navigation possibilities. He reminded delegates that today’s GPS has been around for quite some time (First launch in 1978 and fully operational in 1993) and followed by Russia’s Glonass which was first launched in 1982. China joined a few decades later, and Europe’s Galileo (first launch in 2011).  He said that all these follow-on services were echoes of the initial GPS development.

He said that GPS has frequently been called the ‘Gold Standard’ of navigation and it wears that crown because of its reliability. “But of late it has fallen behind. China has more satellites. Galileo is more accurate. China has better high-performance services including messaging which does not feature on GPS at all.”

Manning added that these super-powers were pouring billions of dollars into their services. While the annual economic impact of GPS in the private sector in the US alone was placed as being worth more than $500 billion by 2024, and the value of GPS equipment sold annually was more than $20 billion in Xona’s estimates. 

“The way we drive is evolving, the way we farm is evolving, the way we travel, and work and fight. All are evolving and very, very quickly. The one common thread is that every device, every application needs to know where it is with ahigh degree of accuracy and reliability. This is more than the current navigation systems can provide. This has created a very large gap in the market both on the defense and commercial sides.”

Autonomous vehicles need centimetre accuracy to know which side of the road they are on, and whether they are in the middle of a lane. The service also needs to be available all over the world and to be affordable. It won’t find a market if it costs $1000 per device. But if something were to happen to GPS then the knock-on would not only be catastrophic for the commercial world but also for the military. There needs to be a back-up.

The gap can be filled with LEO-based PNT which will be stronger and more resilient and robust against interference and achieve centimetre levels of accuracy. The LEO-based solution could, if needed, be fully independent from GPS.

But it isn’t just us in the US who have identified this gap in the market. China is putting $1.3 billion into its systems, while Europe’s ESA/Galileo is committed to spending $170 million on its upgrades. The US, through us, Xairos and Trustpoint is spending just $80 million.

Manning said the technology in the US is well advanced, and the US has launched 3 satellites although more are in the works. But China has launched 35 and it is China which is now pulling away from the US and China’s influence over US industries is growing. Commercial customers in the US say they are dependent on Chinese system and are essential to remain competitive. What has happened is that the US has allowed foreign entities to ignore and bypass our laws and to broadcast their services into the US and allowing its customers to get hooked onto these services and increasing their influence over US markets. These new LEO systems are not authorised for use in the US, but China has made no secret that it is broadcasting these services. In my view we are on the wrong side of a fight.

Manning said this was now a critical national need, although he predicted that the ‘new’ GPS would see a SpaceX-type giant emerge because of the need in the market. “Will it be Chinese, or Europe? The US space industry is very good at developing world-beating products to serve its markets. I don’t believe that GPS is any different. It is a race, but the US, if it wants to win, can win. 

How to Blossom In a Multi-Domain World

By Chris Forrester

Preston Dunlap, CEO at Arkenstone Ventures moderated the Enabling Multi-Domain Space Operations session at the Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Symposium, and told delegates that “multi” had featured in almost every session at the Symposium, but that his session would drill down into what was important, and the risks and opportunities in the next decade.

Tim Sills, Lead Security Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services (AWS) that AI was the key topic and the Cloud, and making the technology available for its satellite customers and how to drive insights into usage as fast as possible, reducing latency and getting the information to where it was needed.

Dr Jun Asakawa, Co-founder/CEO at Pale Blue said it was already clear that satellite was a key infrastructure for everyone’s daily lives. But the next decade could see us wanting GPS on the Moon or Mars, and certainly beyond GEO was the next iteration.

Dr GP Sandhoo, VP and Chief Architect, Quantum Space looked at the 10-year period from the view of space and how space itself would become the biggest strategic shift and would require the support of the other crucial domains (air, maritime and Earth). 

Karan Kunjar, Co-founder/CEO at K2 Space Corp. said that, for him, the biggest shift would be in LEO and how today’s presence in LEO would develop from today’s craft which handled just 1 or 2 kilowatts of power to raising that power level because almost every application needed more power. The other change over the next decade would be additional proliferation in every orbit, including GEO and beyond. “I expect some sort of race in the ‘New Frontier’ and the fastest players in this race are going to win.”

John Rood, CEO at Momentus admitted that it was difficult to highlight just one thing that would specifically change over the next 10 years, and if you spoke to the Communications guys they would name one thing, and if you spoke to the Cloud Computing folk they would choose their sector and the same with AI and so on. His bet was that today’s multi-domain activity would grow on a scale that has not yet been achieved and in a degree of sophistication and synchronicity and in all domains. “I really believe this will be the next big thing. Just look at how stove-pipe applications in space became the foundation of ever-more sophisticated applications. I think we will see AI making material differences in simultaneous domains, and this will apply in military as well as commercial. And imagine the difference that SpaceX’s Starship will make at every level. Its massive cargo capability will open up new opportunities, including debris removal and on-orbit servicing. I think these elements will blossom in a multi-domain world.”

AI and its utilization in defense infrastructure

By Chris Forrester

Many of the MilSat Symposium sessions within the Silicon Valley Space Week have talked about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on the space industry generally. A complete panel session was devoted to AI on October 23, and moderated by Dr Eric Anderson, President, And One Technologies.

Dr Anderson asked whether ChatGPT and other large language models was making life easier. Col. Heather Bogstie, Deputy, Space Systems Integration Office (BZ), US Space Force – Space Systems Command, responded saying that the large language models needed to be wholly trusted and more could be used in mission operations, acquisitions and everyday tasks. AI was helping us understand missile warning data, and other battle space purposes so that the operators had a better picture as to what was happening. She added that not everything was perfect in using AI and the industry needed to be smart about using AI, not least how much time and money was spent on setting up the AI tasks.  “However, I am not sure that AI is ready to be used on a mission critical task, such as an incoming missile. The algorithms should be OK for a benign task, but humans must be in the loop for critical aspects,” she stated.

Dr Brian Barritt, CTO, Aalyria, gave examples and praised AI’s ability to help his company respond to government solicitations and to reply in language that the potential contract was using. He added that there was a role for AI, and talked about how multi-beam satellites and their millions of permutations on the use of spot beams. On-board satellite processing was also frequently subject to highly limited backhaul and capacity restrictions or simply bad weather. Building a feeder link to where an optical land station was unobstructed could be hugely benefited by AI. 

Evan Rogers, Co-founder/CEO, True Anomaly, said there was a key advantage of AI in reducing human operator workload and speedily interpreting changes. However, he suggested that if using AI the technology needed to be guided as to what mattered and what not mattered. 

Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Kim Crider, Founding Partner, Elara Nova, said there were many examples of AI use in space and where large volumes of data and interaction was needed. AI can help interpret complexity and it was being used in probing and sensing jamming attacks and other aspects of electronic warfare. She told delegates that the overall goal was to help the mission, and key to this was where the human was very much in the loop and where the human then made the decision.

Col. (Rtd) Todd Brost, Director of Business Development (Dept of Defense), Slingshot Aerospace, used AI on its collection of telescopes and AI helped with a DARPA contract on identification tasks, and mega-constellations and how a satellite might have a different payload or capability. He asked what had been missed before, and it was important that every mission learnt from its previous experiences and AI was part of that learning.

More cash, and better coordination between agencies needed

By Chris Forrester

Randy Segal, Partner, Hogan Lovells kicked off her session (Government Funding Channels for the Space Defense Industry) at the Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Symposium strand, with a Polling question, and asked what the government could additionally do to support delegate’s investment activity?

Jonathan Lusczakoski, Principal, AE Industrial Partners gave an example as the aircraft industry and that neither Boeing or Airbus did not make 50 or 100 aircraft and then pause and make another batch. “They have non-stop, ongoing production, and the satellite industry needs to do the same with continuous activity. Government could help with a level-loaded supply chain.”

Tom Gillespie, Managing Partner, In-Q-Tel, said that government awards were improving over the past year or so but there’s very little certainty as to when an award might be made. Improving this would make a difference but there’s more to be done. More cash should go to Tier 2 businesses. 

Dr Timur Davis, Head of Transportation Sector, Munich RE Ventures said that government had stepped in and replaced to a certain extent the lack of funding from the commercial sector but still decision-making was opaque and that made life really challenging. Early start-up businesses need cash in the bank and were relying on these contracts but there’s still a way to go and we need to make these processes faster and more transparent.

Devin Brande, Director of Commercial Operations Grp, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) said he was fortunate at the NGA that today it had the great good fortune of being able to select from multiple sources but we should not take this for granted. He explained that the NGA was very much moving in the direction of faster decision making and tapping into the market-place for greater diversity and opportunity.

Ric Mommer, Commercial Engagement & Investor Relations, Space Portfolio at the Dept. of Defense, said commercial satellite communications was an easy example of dual use, for military and commercial, and there are opportunities to improve interoperability, for example. “In general, you have a very friendly consumer technology that provides tremendous value for our military and our allies. We are working to enable commercial capabilities to work between commercial providers to help the US government and to share information across our allies architecture.”

SDA is flexible but price is important

By Chris Forrester

Dr Derek Tournear, Director, Space Development Agency, (SDA) delivered a fascinating Keynote at the Silicon Valley Space Week and its MilSat Symposium on October 23. With hundreds and hundreds of warfare satellites (tranches) potentially in orbit, and moving data in real time and handling warfare threats and activity, the SDA has a very full and demanding set of complex objectives. Dr Tournear said that his mission was very much on schedule with its first 27 craft already in orbit.

Keynote By Dr Derek Tournear

He explained that the world had moved on from the day when the key objective was to protect and supervise the first 300 miles or so and where an enemy threat was anticipated. Today, the need is much, much greater and the SDA has demonstrated that it can also handle missile threats when using LEO satellites.

Dr Tournear updated delegates on the SDA scheme’s planned schedule up to and including the Tranche 3 batch of satellites which should be in place starting in 2029. Vendors are being invited to pitch now for participation in the program. He also outlined the SDA’s ‘HALO’ element of the scheme. 

In a fast-moving presentation he told delegates about cooperation with foreign nations such as Australia, and these would continue. Overall, there were initially some 40 bidding vendors and some did not get accepted for the system.  There would be new opportunities, he stressed.  

He responded to critics who were suggesting that the SDA was moving too quickly and that Tranche 0 lessons learnt could not be incorporated into Tranche 1 because of the speed of development. He said price was incredibly important, and the schedule accepted that cost versus capability meant that with a need for hundreds of satellites the lessons learned would be incorporated, but price was ever-important! 

Lockheed Martin: Collaboration will lead to a time of growth

By Chris Forrester

Johnathon Caldwell, VP/GM Strategic & Missile Defense Systems, Lockheed Martin Space delivered a prime executive presentation at the Silicon Valley Space Week and its MilSat Symposium sessions. Mr Caldwell reminded delegates of May 7 2021 when a ransomware cyber-attack on the Colonial Pipeline brought life to a standstill in and around Houston.   It affected millions, traffic, airlines. Fast forward to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, and the attack on the Viasat system as part of a blitzkrieg action on an independent nation. The next 10 years will see AI consume huge amounts of our electricity output and an attack on GPS will be a direct attack on the Grid. 

He painted other challenges that business and consumers could inevitably face if space assets were affected.

He praised the role of Silicon Valley and its businesses and its cooperation between military and civilian activity and how it sparked innovation and which came out of defence technologies. But he said in his experience he had seen capital come into the industry, and capital vanish. Then the cash went into fiber-optic and space investment was diminished. 

Caldwell said that Lockheed Martin was embracing new standards but open architecture was the new mantra. He said the industry would be nimbler if open standards were adopted and it was not necessary for government to be involved. 

He explained that Lockheed wanted to get involved with outside ventures and form business entities to solve new problems and in particular in the design and AI spaces. He invited delegates to get involved and that Lockheed was happy to have a dialogue. He hoped that government would recognise what Lockheed was trying to create, and would ultimately reward that initiative. And this included direct investments in businesses..

He suggested that the space economy was worth some $2 trillion in the next decade, and when indirect output was included it was worth upwards of tens of trillions of dollars.

Caldwell said he looked to the day in the near future which would echo the glory days of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when in the San Francisco Bay area when defense and commercial worked collaboratively and which resulted in a time of radical technological developments. The 80s and 90s were something of a downturn, but now we’re back. I believe this is going to be a time of growth like no other. What other companies might come into being because of what we’re doing today, and together.

US Space Force: Changing its approach

By Chris Forrester

General Michael A. Guetlein, Vice Chief of Space Operations, US Space Force appeared via a video link. He addressed the industry in general, saying that in times of peace it was essential to be prepared for future threats. He said we dare not lose our access to space. The US has the leadership in space, but he said that there are daily threats and the world was in the most challenging of times since the Cold War. We have seen unprofessional actions from our adversaries in space. We have seen it in Ukraine and we are seeing more jammers including GPS than ever before, all of which is changing our roles.

He appealed to the space industry for greater cooperation and stressed that his prime objective was to guarantee access to space. 

In response to questions, he said there was no ‘status quo’ for propulsion systems in space and that he was looking beyond Geo.  

Asked whether some aspects of space were over-classified and holding back small segments of the industry, and he emphatically said “Yes! It has been over-classified and this has restrained our dialogue and the sharing of information. We are dedicated to changing that going forward. You will see there has been a significant shift over the past 12-24 months in the amount of information that we talk about and the amount of information that we’re putting out. We are also working to reduce the classification status on many of our discussions. There is also a push to de-classify all of the space portfolio so that we can have more dialogue. This extends to having greater conversations with our allies. 

He addressed launch congestion at Vandenburg and the Cape, and whether the Space Force would consider overseas launch locations. He again gave an emphatic ‘Yes. We have already launched out of New Zealand and we want to expand beyond our borders. Both major US spaceports are extremely congested and getting worse by the day. Besides, having all your eggs in just two baskets was not sensible. We are looking at greater resilience and this means more spaceports domestically and internationally.

He said his task was most excited by the space data network which would be an integrated mesh network and operating across all orbits which will give more capacity and reduce the need to bring all the data to the ground. It can be shifted from one node to another. 

As to rapid response in orbit, he admitted that he saw this as being 24 hours, but there were many needs for response that was less than this, and others that could go longer. We need credible ability to react, and we must shorten our response timelines.

Spectrum superiority in a future conflict, and he said this was a huge challenge and needed partnerships with commercial partners and our allies, and we need new novel abilities to balance that spectrum. And understand that spectrum in both a time constraint and geographical constraint. In the past we looked at spectrum as always being there. We are looking at new, novel ways to take advantage of spectrum in ways that had not been thought about and across multiple domains.

As to gaps in technology what would the Space Force like industry to tackle? There are many gaps, but one is propulsion. We plan all our manoeuvres today on conserving energy, and while that might be efficient but warfare is not always efficient and we need new ways. 

As to the future for launch, he said he wanted assured access to space. This meant multiple providers, multiple launch platforms and a guaranteed reliability. We are not betting on a single horse.

Talking about the lost Intelsat craft he said the Space Force needed the ability to inspect this problem in order to understand what happened and to prevent it happening in the future. But the Space Force was resource challenged. 

He described problems suffered by the commercial sector from outside sources as unsafe, unprofessional and antagonistic. 

He said inspection and on-orbit servicing was to be welcomed and said it was only a matter of time before safe and professional behaviour was hopefully enshrined in agreements and law.

Handling Multi-Mission, Multi-Orbit Data Traffic

By Chris Forrester

Phil Carrai, President, Space, Training & Cyber Division, Kratos, moderated the panel for Silicon Valley Space Week’s Milsat Symposium strand on October 23. It examined the topic (The Multi-Orbit, Multi-Mission, Multi-Tech Network) and a packed room heard highly-relevant advice from the panellists with expertise ranging from LEO to Lunar.

Carrai asked his panel how they were addressing the mission tasks. Matt McGuire, Principal Director, Booz Allen Hamilton, touched on AI in his response and the differences it would make and advised people not to so much worry about AI taking their jobs, but that the staffer who understood AI might be taking your job!

Rika Nakazawa, Chief Commercial Innovation, at Japan’s NTT, said that the use cases coming on line from commercial applications and now with SpaceX, as well as Amazon, but there was a convergence between commercial and military and it was now essential to be ready to achieve the risk-mitigating elements and handle the data being generated. “Data is worthless without interpretation, and multi-orbit, multi-mission ability affects national economies not just defense and intelligence.”

“Data management is already crucial. We talk about optical, and we talk about cross-links, but getting data to and from space is the challenge. We place a software layer which enables our customers, the end-user, whether government or commercial, to access many different antennas. Having that layer allows the user to expand as progress is made,” said Brad Bode, CTO, Atlas Space Operations. “Some government clients want to see the data in their long-accepted format. That’s fine, but for multi-mission payloads this means more complexity and greater risk and can pose challenges in getting the data down with enough latency, and that has to be paid for.”

Dan Adam, President, KSAT, called for greater use of standards but also called for more spectrum for control and data transfer purposes. “We are limited to L-band, and years ago the use of this protected spectrum was considered a benefit, but it also has limitations. More spectrum would aid redundancy and this in particular affects some aging government applications. We need alternatives.”

Art Loureiro, Director, Space Defence Solutions, L3 Harris said multi-domain had different meanings depending on who you were talking to. “Consolidating multi-mission into a single satellite, especially for the military, adds risk. Take out that satellite and you lose all that multiple flexibility, and redundancy.”