BADGER's first demonstration, held in late August, "marks the first end-to-end test of the steerable phased array modules and software," Col. Greg Hoffman, of SpRCO's Strategic Capabilities Acquisition Delta, said.
"Commercial data, commercial processing is not classified. It does not matter that the DoD wishes it were," said Barbara Golf, special advisor to Space Systems Command.
One Maxar official told Breaking Defense today that Maxar's "mission focus" on NRO will not be affected by the split up.
"It can't just be a strategy with aspirational platitudes about how we're going to work together," Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said. "It has to have more tangible guidance, things that we can take action on."
The space operations chief wants systems that can gather "exquisite, high fidelity information about what's going on" in geosynchronous Earth orbit "and beyond," more sensors in the Southern Hemisphere to keep an eye on low Earth orbit and — critically — a better way to fuse data.
"Each nation possesses unique advantages, technological capacities, and strategic geographic positions that, when combined, have the potential to significantly advance humanity's understanding of what's going on in space," the paper says.
The COMSPOC study included a look at risks from unannounced rendezvous and proximity operations — such as those being routinely performed by the Russian "inspector" satellite Luch/Olymp that have raised hackles at the Defense Department — and the risks to US military satellites cause by mis-plotting the trajectories of adversary birds.
There is growing concern about what happens when different countries' predictions of an on-orbit collision do not match, said Matt Hejduk, of The Aerospace Corporation. "A man with two watches never knows what time it is," he quipped.
"Providing space operators with relevant, timely data can help to prevent operational surprise and support efforts to protect and defend space assets," a recent report to Congress on Pentagon space policy and strategy says.