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Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org<\/p>\n
The Space Force plans to award initial contracts as soon as next month for a fleet of small, maneuverable satellites designed to monitor activity in geosynchronous orbit that could be online as soon as 2030, service officials said Jan. 23.<\/p>\n
The program, RG-XX, aims to augment and potentially replace the Space Force\u2019s Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program<\/a> constellation, which observes and tracks objects and behavior in GEO, about 22,000 miles above Earth. The new proliferated constellation would consist of lower-cost satellites with off-the-shelf technology the service could replace or refresh as threats evolve.\t\t<\/p>\n The service released a draft solicitation for RG-XX in October, followed by a formal request for proposals<\/a> Jan. 13. Speaking at the annual Space Systems Command Industry Days event in Los Angeles, Materiel Leader for Space Surveillance and Reconnaissance Lt. Col. Darren Ng said a first round of awards establishing a pool of vendors could come by February or March with initial task orders to follow soon after. That\u2019s a rapid turnaround time for the service that comes as the Pentagon is pushing for faster capability delivery and commercial-first approaches to acquisition.<\/p>\n Following those initial awards\u2014which Ng said will go to multiple companies\u2014the Space Force intends to on-ramp new firms and technology each year. The goal, according to Program Executive Officer for Space Combat Power Col. Bryon McClain, is to update technology and incorporate new requirements on a regular cadence.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis will allow us, every year, to procure what the service needs based on available funding,\u201d he told reporters in a Jan. 23 briefing. \u201cIf there\u2019s new capability out there, we want to pull that in.\u201d<\/p>\n The first round of contracts will inform the Space Force\u2019s longer term plan for RG-XX, McClain said, including how many satellites it will ultimately need and whether it will require them to be refuelable. He noted that while the mission would likely benefit from refueling, the service hasn\u2019t determined whether to invest in the capability and isn\u2019t ready to make it a requirement for industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe intend on using this very first period with our IDIQ to really help us refine the requirement with industry as a partner in this, instead of us just doing an architecture and a design saying, go build this,\u201d McClain said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to lay the groundwork for bigger service decisions that haven\u2019t been made yet.\u201d\t\t<\/p>\n Space domain awareness programs like GSSAP and RG-XX give the Space Force another tool for monitoring and responding to threats in space\u2014a growing need for the service as China and Russia demonstrate increasingly aggressive tactics in orbit. U.S. Space Command has called for the service to invest in more maneuverable satellites that can rapidly change orbits<\/a>, a concept it calls dynamic space operations, but the Space Force hasn\u2019t landed on a strategy to meet that requirement.<\/p>\n