The Air Force, which is trying to shift away from large satellites and field smaller, more numerous ones instead, plans to create a more frequent and predictable launch schedule to accommodate that change.
Instead of conducting launches “on demand,” as the Air Force does now, “we want to get to a freight-train-to-space model … where we have regularly scheduled launches to specific orbital regimes,” said Brig. Gen. Stephen Whiting, director of integrated air, space, cyberspace and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations at Air Force Space Command. The Air Force will build “interfaces between our payloads and our launch systems such that we can quickly mate a payload and get it to any of those orbital regimes on that regularly scheduled launch manifest.”
Whiting, who spoke at an Air Force Association breakfast on Capitol Hill Sept. 9, said the Air Force has an ongoing dialogue with industry about how to achieve its goal. While SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA) currently compete with each other to launch military satellites, other companies, many of them start-ups, could vie for such work if they receive the required certification. ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Boeing [BA]. Smaller satellites will require smaller launchers, which many of the new entrants are focusing on.
Michael Blum, chief financial officer of Firefly Space Systems, which is developing the Alpha small-satellite launcher and hopes to offer scheduled weekly launches, told Defense Daily that his company has had “conversations with multiple government agencies, many of whom have expressed a keen interest in this kind of service frequency. We think we will be in a position to deliver this type of service in about six to seven years from now.”
The Air Force’s emphasis on smaller, single-purpose satellites — an approach known as disaggregation — is designed to make satellites easier to defend and less expensive and time-consuming to develop and build. Fielding large satellites can take 10 to 15 years or more, meaning their technology is often outdated by the time they reach orbit. And since they usually have multiple payloads, they make tempting targets for potential adversaries.
Successors to the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) missile-warning satellites and the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) communication satellites could be the first programs influenced by the new Air Force-led Space Enterprise Vision, which aims to make military satellites more resilient through disaggregation and other means. A team that is studying potential follow-ons to SBIRS and AEHF is expected to report its conclusions “over the next couple months,” Whiting said.