ARTICLE

June 2004

Space Programs Reflect War-Fighting Priorities

by Peter Teets

Space systems increasingly have become integrated into national intelligence and war-fighting operations. The space technology that enabled the success the military services achieved during combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq will continue to be a cornerstone for success in future conflicts.

Space assets provide global perspective and access unhindered by geographic or political boundaries. Whether integrated with airborne and surface sensors, or acting alone over areas of high risk or denied access, space systems provide critical surveillance and reconnaissance information to national decision makers and combatant commanders.

To maintain the U.S. advantage in space, the nation must continue to provide capable and reliable systems. This requires achieving mission success in operations and acquisition, developing and maintaining a team of space professionals, integrating space capabilities for national intelligence and war fighting, producing innovative solutions for the most challenging national security problems, and ensuring freedom of action in space.

Six national security space launches are planned for 2004, which focus on sustaining and improving existing military and intelligence satellite constellations. On February 14, the Air Force and industry team successfully launched a defense support program satellite to augment the nation’s strategic missile warning capabilities.

This effort, along with two National Reconnaissance Office projects planned for next year, mark the last Titan launches after 45 years of successful operations. Now, the focus is shifting to the evolved expendable launch vehicle system for future missions. The EELV will be able to launch the military’s heaviest communications and national security payloads.

Mission successes in operations must be accompanied by success in acquisitions. Mission success should be the primary driver of a program, not cost and schedule. The new National Security Space Acquisition Policy 03-01—signed on October 6, 2003—is an effort to institutionalize this thinking. Using this process, defense space acquisition boards have approved the Space-Based Radar entry into the study phase, and transformational satellites entry into the design phase.

In each case, an independent program assessment team and an independent cost assessment team identified key risk areas and recommended ways to best manage the risks inherent in these complex programs.

To preserve the U.S. advantage as the leading space faring nation, decision-makers must have a strategy to guarantee availability of the most crucial element of space power—space professionals. Meeting the serious challenges of today, and the future, requires a total force approach.

The United States will continue to develop educated, motivated and competent people who are skilled in the demands of the space environment.

To help develop and maintain space professionals, officials are implementing the space professional strategy, and the Defense Department space human capital resources strategy. Officers, enlisted personnel and government employees play unique roles in national security space activities. As these strategies are implemented, the objective is to ensure the space cadres of all the services possess the necessary education, skills, and experience.

Dramatic improvements can be seen in the integration of manned and unmanned terrestrial, maritime, air, and space systems for joint war fighting and intelligence collection.

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, the difference was not so much the introduction of new capabilities, but rather the integration of existing space capabilities to produce desired effects. Using existing systems in new ways, applying innovative ideas, and making connections between information providers and information users is at the heart of ongoing transformation efforts.

True integration, however, requires more than the use of existing capabilities in novel ways. Integration must be a priority throughout the enterprise.

As the Defense Department attempts to increase worldwide persistent situational awareness, it needs to bring a system-of-systems approach to the fielding of new capabilities. The space-based radar, for example, is not being developed in a vacuum. Through the early development of this system, officials are ensuring that other systems in development, such as transformational satellites and the NRO optical relay communications architecture, are not just interoperable with the space based radar, but are wholly integrated from operational concept to employment.

The goal is transparency—the ability to know something about everything, while simultaneously denying adversaries both the ability to do the same, and the knowledge that such capabilities are being used against them. The U.S. military wants to be first to know, first to understand and first to act. Doing so requires the development of breakthrough technologies that will produce new sources and methods for collecting intelligence.

Thus, other activities this year support the development of new national security satellite systems, with technology maturation and development activities in transformational satellites and space based radar, and the modernization of current systems, including new jam-resistant capabilities for the global positioning system constellation.

The last of the current generation of GPS satellites will be launched in fiscal year 2004. In 2005, the military will begin launching the next generation of GPS, with military-code, flexible power and new civilian capabilities. The generation after next will be composed of GPS III satellites, which will add a high-powered, anti-jam military-code, along with other accuracy, reliability and data integrity improvements.

Space-based communications play a fundamental role in military operations. The Defense Department is modernizing systems and preparing for the next leap forward. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council, last October, approved the Transformational Communications Architecture. Part of this architecture is the Wideband Gapfiller system, which will augment the current defense satellite communications system capability.

Another vital program, which will provide a smooth transition to the transformational satellite, is the advanced extremely high frequency system that replaces the MILSTAR communications constellation. It represents a significant step forward over current systems, providing up to 12 times greater capacity than MILSTAR with up to 4,000 simultaneous networks while hosting up to 6,000 users per satellite.

Transformational Satellites will be a revolutionary change in satellite communications for the war fighter and national intelligence. The goal is to create an Internet in the sky. It is an enabler of horizontal integration—allowing fighting forces to have near-real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance at their fingertips. This new system will provide unprecedented connectivity with Internet-like capability that will extend the global information grid to deployed and mobile users worldwide, and will deliver an order of magnitude increase in capacity.

The Space-Based Radar is an important contributor to horizontal integration. It will provide a start toward persistent, global situational awareness and target tracking capability as part of a horizontally integrated system of systems. Radar from space will enable global persistence, providing day/night, all weather, worldwide, multi-theater surveillance on demand.

Recent conflicts have proven, once again, how vital meteorological forecasting is for military operations. Knowing what the weather is in any given location allows operators to choose the right weapon for the right target, and is an invaluable asset for navigation. The national polar-orbiting operational environmental satellite system will satisfy both civil and military national security requirements for space-based, remotely sensed environmental data that will significantly improve weather forecasting and climate prediction.

The Defense Department cannot stay on the cutting edge of development without investing in science and technology efforts. Collaborative efforts are under way among the director of defense research and engineering, and organizations such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Naval Research Laboratory, along with civil agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. And while there currently is not an operational role in NASA’s new space exploration program, the Defense Department will work closely with the agency to find areas of possible collaboration.

Americans have come to rely on the unhindered use of space and will demand no less in the future. This includes robust capabilities for assured launch and space control. While the this nation supports the peaceful use of space by all, prudence demands that the United States, its allies, and coalition partners will be able to make use of space, while denying that use of space to adversaries.

The Defense Department is proud of the success of both families of evolved expendable launch vehicles. With six successful launches in a row, three from each provider, these are the best launch vehicles ever produced. Over the long term, the Defense Department is pursuing vehicle concepts that can be launched on demand—in hours and days, rather than weeks and months—with the vision of fulfilling time-critical warfighter requirements.

The intent of operationally responsive space is to create a more responsive, reliable, and affordable family of systems capable of fulfilling both current and future launch requirements, and the corresponding responsive and affordable satellites. In the near term, the department plans to demonstrate a more responsive and less expensive launch system with capabilities of 1,000 pounds to low earth orbit. Concurrently, Air Force Space Command, AFRL, the NRO, DARPA, the Pentagon’s office of force transformation, and our national and service laboratories are sponsoring tactical satellite initiatives focused on responsive satellites, and decreasing the size, cost, and timelines of development.

The combined efforts of these initiatives—operationally responsive launch and satellite development—will transform the delivery of space-based capabilities.

Even as the U.S. military becomes more operationally responsive, future adversaries will try to deny it the asymmetric advantage that space provides. The Defense Department must look now to overcome future threats. Today’s space surveillance capability must evolve into integrated space situational awareness. Space control activities, while taking advantage of space situational awareness, emphasize first the protection of national security interests against known vulnerabilities and credible threats.

The Pentagon will also pursue a mix of capabilities to limit any adversary’s ability to deny free access to space and deny an adversary’s use of space against the U.S. for hostile purposes.

Thanks to space systems, U.S. leaders have more accurate and current information on developments, issues, and crises in virtually all parts of the world. Due in large part to space systems, U.S. military forces know more about their adversaries, see the battlefield more clearly, and can strike more quickly and precisely than any other military force in history. Space systems are inextricably woven into the fabric of America’s national security.

Peter B. Teets is undersecretary of the Air Force and the Defense Department executive agent for space. He also is the director of the National Reconnaissance Office, responsible for the acquisition and operation of all U.S. space-based reconnaissance and intelligence systems.

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