By On June 12, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released a notice seeking information for the Rapid Reconstitution of Space Capabilities program. Responses are due by 5:00 p.m. Eastern on July 8.
The United States leverages space assets and the services they provide for economic prosperity, weather forecasting, scientific discovery, critical infrastructure, and national security. Conversely, other nations seek to position themselves as leading space powers while undermining the stability and tranquility that allows space to benefit all nations. Some U.S. competitors are implementing a sustained effort to develop a broad range of offensive counterspace capabilities through a variety of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, including direct attacks on satellites, jamming and spoofing of signals, and continued cyberattacks on satellite and ground infrastructure.
Use of these weapons could have serious consequences for all nations that benefit from space-based systems. Space is an increasingly contested environment, presenting a multitude of threats to U.S. space assets. Adversarial attacks could impact strategic capabilities such as those that support communications, position navigation and timing (PNT), and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). Therefore, there is a strategic need to be able to quickly respond to disrupted assets and reconstitute degraded space capabilities.
To address this dynamic threat environment, the U.S. Space Force and the Department of War (DoW) have sought the ability to rapidly deploy and operate space-based assets in response to immediate, urgent, and often unforeseen tactical needs. In a milestone toward achieving tactically responsive space (TacRS), the 2023 Victus Nox mission launched its space vehicle a mere 27 hours after the order came, beating the previous record for responsive space launch by more than two weeks.
Likewise, Space Systems Command’s (SSC) Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) is augmenting space-based capacity during a crisis or conflict by establishing contracts with commercial space companies. CASR is one of multiple ways the DoW is ensuring that the web of satellites it can draw upon is so great, that attacking or disrupting them would be a wasted and escalatory effort.
Rapid space capability reconstitution is a complex task requiring a multi-faceted approach and presents numerous technical, logistical, contractual, and regulatory challenges, many of which are still ripe for novel solutions and methodologies. DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office (STO) seeks information supporting technical solutions and operational concepts and strategies to enable rapid, responsive, cost-effective reconstitution of any lost or degraded space capabilities resulting from attacks.
The end goal is to develop and deploy effective response mechanisms to rapidly restore critical services to minimum levels or higher, on tactical timelines of hours to weeks, in response to demand surge needs, lost assets resulting from potential adversaries’ ASAT engagements, or orbital debris collisions. The fixed capacity of launch vehicles and the relatively limited frequency of launches across multiple launch providers drive the need for greater functionality, resiliency, and flexibility in space assets. This requires minimizing spacecraft assembly, launch, and deployment time while maximizing the capabilities they provide. Reconstitution solutions must consider existing architecture integration. Possible solutions could be realized with reconfigurable, software-defined, multifunctional, and multi-mission payloads, as well as proliferated/mesh architectures and rapid on-orbit deployment concepts.
Review DARPA’s rapid reconstitution of space capabilities notice.
Source: SAM
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