A Boost for Space Forces

CONFLUENCE OF FACTORS COMPELS U.S. AIR FORCE SPACE COMMAND TO PLACE INCREASED EMPHASIS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MORE ROBUST SPACE CONTROL CAPABILITY AND TO ENHANCE SPACE SITUATIONAL AWARENESS.

by Peter Buxbaum, MSMF Correspondent

Space has become an ever more central and an ever more complex warfighting domain. The use of space capabilities in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as for communications and weapons guidance, has led the U.S. military to regard it as a significant force multiplier. At the same time, space has become a contested domain with an ever-growing number of nations and non-state actors attaining space capabilities. “Satellites are now being launched from 12 known foreign launch sites as well as from sea launch locations,” said Colonel Shawn Barnes, director of the Air Force Space Command’s Office of Space Situational Awareness and Command and Control. “There are 450 active foreign spacecraft in orbit today. By 2010 there will be more than 600 foreign spacecraft. In addition to the active spacecraft, there are over 16,500 other objects in space.”

The prospect of war in space was advanced by a January 2007 incident, during which China destroyed one of its own weather satellites by launching a ground-based ballistic missile. A challenge from China, or other nation or actor, could compromise the U.S. military’s increasing reliance on spaceborne assets.

“Anything that threatens the connectivity of satellite communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and launch capabilities can threaten our space capability,” said Barnes, “and make the U.S. military less precise and slower in its ability to carry out effects on a global level.” These factors have led the U.S. Air Force Space Command to place increased emphasis on the development of a more robust space control capability and to enhance space situational awareness (SSA). These efforts, at the technology level, have emphasized greater network- centricity and the implementation of a service-oriented architecture to replace legacy systems and enhance communications and interoperability among systems. These capabilities are increasingly being developed with the joint force in mind.

“Space control operations encompass all elements of the space defense mission,” said Barnes. “Space forces must surveille space and terrestrial areas of interest that could impact space activities, protect the ability to use space, prevent adversaries from exploiting U.S., allied, or neutral space services, and negate the ability of adversaries to exploit space capabilities.”

SSA is also fundamental to the ability to conduct space operations, according to Barnes. “It is a top priority for space control because it is the enabler for accomplishing all other space control tasks,” he said. “SSA involves characterizing as completely as possible the space capabilities operating within the terrestrial and space environments. It includes components of surveillance, reconnaissance, environmental monitoring, analysis and reporting, and intelligence functions.”

Barnes’ group has been working on establishing an analytical foundation upon which to base requirements and solutions for space situational awareness and to that end established a long-range roadmap for Space Situational Awareness capabilities. (See sidebar.)

Following this roadmap work Barnes developed an interim SSA architecture. “This begins to match system types or possible system solutions to capability needs,” he explained.

One of the key issues the space command had to tackle was to make space command and control systems more network- centric. “It is common today for many of our sensor systems to have point-to-point interfaces to processing centers and information systems, which makes it difficult to share data across mission areas or use data in ways not originally intended,” said Barnes. “To address this challenge, we are completing an advanced concept technology demonstration aimed at net-centrically exposing legacy sensor data.”

Much of the effort to expose legacy sensor data and make space C2 more netcentric has involved incorporating SSA and C2 into a service-oriented architecture. “Our goal is to build a foundational tool set of services that provide the Joint Force Component Command Space with SSA and C2 capability,” Barnes said. “By doing it in an SOA framework, we can make it scalable and extensible and flexible enough to rapidly adjust to meet changing and growing needs. This was something we just couldn’t do with our previous systems.”

A service-oriented architecture refers to an approach toward the development of applications and capabilities through the integration of loosely coupled, reusable elements. These modules, or services, published in a directory, are drawn upon and combined by developers into packages to create capabilities. Because these modules can be easily combined, a services orientation promotes interoperability and efficiency as well as the multiplication of capabilities.

TWO FORMAL PROGRAMS

The Air Force Space Command’s efforts have been incorporated into two formal programs. The Integrated Space Situational Awareness (ISSA) program is aimed at migrating and evolving legacy surveillance capabilities into services, making key enhancements and adding environmental and intelligence capabilities. The Integrated Space Command and Control (ISC2) program is focused on providing an SOA infrastructure and core services.

Integrated Space Command and Control recently received a boost when Lockheed Martin announced the delivery of an upgrade to the Combatant Commanders Integrated Command and Control System (CCIC2S), a communications processing system, which is part of the ISC2 program. The CCIC2S upgrade enhances space message delivery reliability to and from the Space Data Operations Center. This final delivery of CCIC2S Block 1 allows air mission operators, missile warning operators and space communications operators to reach across the spectrum of the nation’s space and strategic assets.

“The CCIC2S Block 1 completion modernizes Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station’s command and control infrastructure and significantly improves battlespace awareness, collaboration and effects-based planning for the warfighter,” said Cliff Spier, director for Strategic C2 Systems for Lockheed Martin’s Mission & Combat Support Solutions.

The CCIC2S Communications Processing System upgrades are part of an effort to modernize and integrate 40 systems inside the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station. CCIC2S integrates previously stovepiped systems for air surveillance and warning and replacing old hardware and software with updated technology.

The ISC2 service-oriented architecture draws on commercial technologies to enable continuous technology insertion, which allows users to stay current with ongoing commercial advances in areas such as Web-based and e-systems, data display and data mining, and desktops. The same architecture serves as a foundation for CCIC2S, allowing interoperability across existing legacy command and control systems as well as future systems that can be incorporated.

“The legacy systems were all standalone, unique systems, which did not interoperate or interoperated only on a limited basis,” said Spier. “The legacy systems operated on different equipment and platforms. We replaced those systems with an integrated system for communications processing that operates on a unified, single architecture.

“The new approach addresses ISC2 network-centricity in space command and control,” Spier added, “because it can take messages in any format, translate it into languages like XML that are used by modern technologies, and route it to the appropriate user.”

This interoperability enables a common operational picture and the achievement of global integration of information systems. Data updates, regardless of their source, can be fused and made available to authorized users worldwide.

This User Defined Operational Picture (UDOP) capability is one of the key deliverables of ISC2 and will allow more effective responses to requests from theater commanders, according to Barnes. “The UDOP is a huge step forward in being able to share SSA data with multiple users, allowing them to make better C2 decisions,” he said.

“With this release, the current Cold War-era system can be decommissioned, as operations are migrated to this new system,” added Spier. “This common architecture allows faster and more accurate decisions to be made by strategic and theater commanders. Along with command and control upgrades, the new system will have the capacity to fuse data from multiple intelligence sources. This will allow analysts to better predict changes in satellite orbits as well as emerging space threats.”

TSAT TO IMPROVE SPACE C2

Space situational awareness and the network-centricity of space command and control operations can be expected to improve with the eventual deployment of the Transformation Satellite (TSAT) communications system, which is scheduled to be launched in 2019. TSAT will use routers and lasers to provide mobile and fixed users 100 times the bandwidth of the legacy MILSTAR communications satellites.

“TSAT will help realize all the benefits of network-centric operations such as rapid, real-time sharing of a common operating picture and increased speed in decisionmaking,” said John Peterson, the TSAT program director at the Boeing Co., the TSAT prime contractor.

“Our analysis shows that the benefits of a networked force with significant capacity and high data rates provides up to a ten-fold improvement in measures of effectiveness such as casualties, conflict duration and equipment loss.”

The capabilities that TSAT will bring to warfighters will be wholly new, according to Peterson. “It enables new capabilities that are not provided by any current military satellite on orbit or satellites that are currently being manufactured,” he said. “TSAT will bring the benefits of internet-like connectivity to its three missions: assured access to strategic forces, communications on the move, and airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”

TSAT will be the first satellite system to provide full internet protocol (IP) routing capabilities onboard, while laser communications on the TSAT satellites will provide high-speed cross-links between satellites to rapidly move large amounts of data, such as video files from unmanned air vehicles, to anywhere in the world. “Dynamic bandwidth control will allow automatic adjustments of communications links to accommodate changes in weather, rapid changes for demand and larger file sizes,” said Peterson. “TSAT will provide eight times the capacity” of the current Milstar 3 Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) military satellite constellation.

THE JOINT FORCE PERSPECTIVE

The space command and control capabilities being developed by the Air Force Space Command are increasingly being made with the joint force in mind, according to Barnes. “Military space operations are an integral part of joint operations,” he said. “The importance of space operations is increasing due to the enabling capabilities they provide to the joint force.”

The space mission area is complex and situationally dependent. Space capabilities may support theater or national objectives, or both, from fixed locations around the globe and deployed locations as required. “Since space capabilities may have global applications, space forces can support military operations simultaneously in multiple areas of responsibility,” said Barnes. “Space systems and capabilities are finite and must be prioritized, deconflicted, integrated and synchronized across all joint operations.”

Understanding the joint and national nature of space, the Air Force Space Command must provide capabilities that address joint needs, according to Barnes. “Together with our integrated space situational awareness program, our space command and control effort is focused at providing a foundational capability to support joint operations,” he added. “These new capabilities will transition stovepiped capabilities and migrate them to plug-and-play services through the implementation of a service-oriented architecture enabling the ability to share information with the joint force, coalition partners, government agencies and commercial partners and supporting integration across the air, space and cyberspace domains. Concurrently we will be able to add new command and control capabilities providing the Joint Space Operations Center [at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.] with the functionality to more effectively and efficiently apportion high demand, low density space forces.” ♦

Sidebar Article

Space Situational Awareness: The Key Elements

Colonel Barnes’ Office of Space Situational Awareness and Command and Control began with a “clean sheet of paper” to analyze surveillance capabilities and evaluate their contribution to SSA.

“We were looking to identify capability gaps and set a context in which to make best value choices when it comes to systems,” said Barnes. “Then we established a long-range roadmap for SSA capabilities. In this effort we defined the elements of SSA and have grouped capability needs into six categories.”

1. Data integration and exploitation: producing and disseminating actionable SSA knowledge and products.

2. Intelligence: developing a foundational analysis that provides characterization and assessment of non-friendly space systems.

3. Surveillance: identifying space objects and accurately ascertaining their position.

4. Reconnaissance: identifying capabilities that support future space systems.

5. Environmental monitoring: identifying what is happening with the natural space environment.

6. Friendly force status: gathering and maintaining the status and characteristics of all U.S. and cooperative countries’ space-related systems and links. ♦