Satellites protect Navy ships by giving them domain awareness. Some officers think the Navy can return the favor.
The pitch: Putting SDA tech on ships would provide better service—and be harder to hit than terrestrial counterparts, panelists at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference said Monday.
“We have terrestrial space capabilities, and those are targets. So if you have maritime assets that are dynamic, maneuverable, harder to target—that can bring a lot to the fight,” said Rear Adm. Karrey “DeWayne” Sanders, deputy commander of Navy Space.
Beyond hardening assets against threats, seaborne space monitoring could also allow the military to view its satellites from new angles, Sanders argued.
“We have 70% of the world covered by water, and we have ships that navigate all over that,” Sanders said. “Just imagine what they can bring to space domain awareness.”
To-do list: Turning ships into mobile sat-trackers would mostly require upgrading existing platforms—a project the Navy has already embarked on, Sanders said. Still, he didn’t rule out developing all-new capabilities or vessels.
However, moving SDA off of solid ground will require more than just hardware, pointed out Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo, acting director of the Space Development Agency. Since SDA is the Space Force’s job, expanding capabilities offshore (instead of off-planet) would require some policy changes.
The rub: Integrating domains requires officers to be able to think at different “speeds of fight,” Sandhoo said. Sea and land battles may occur over the course of days, weeks, or months, but battles in space can take place in minutes. Space’s increasingly important battlefield role in the fight means it’s critical to figure out that gap in timing, according to Space Command’s Deputy Director of Global Space Operations Rear Adm. Tracy Hines.
“We think sea, air, land, cyber, but space is fundamental to all those domains. No one does anything without space,” Hines said.
ICON Prime Launches, Led By Former TX Rep
Robotic construction company ICON today announced the establishment of ICON Prime, a new business unit that will work with the Pentagon and NASA.
One-On-One With SDA’s GP Sandhoo
It’s been about six months since the SDA launched its first operational tranche of satellites—but troops still aren’t benefiting from the better comms tech because of a series of small issues that forced the agency to take a “strategic pause,” SDA Acting Director Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo told Payload.
Leonardo’s Missile-Defense Demo in Ukraine Aims To Be a Blueprint for Other Nations
Leonardo is positioning itself to become a mass distributor of space-enabled missile defense shields.
A Recap of Payload’s Space Stage
Two days. Nine panels. Two dozen speakers—and that’s just the space content.
ATMOS Space Cargo has closed a €25.7M ($30.2M) Series A to continue development of its orbital reentry vehicles, the company announced today.
Balnord and Expansion Venture Capital led the round for the European space transport company. Keen Defence and Security and the European Innovation Council also participated in the Series A, with the latter offering grant and equity funding through its accelerator program.
Threefold goals: ATMOS has laid out three priorities that the funding will support:
Keep reading