The SPACECOM list includes almost $704 million for three unnamed classified programs, as well as $90 million to fund a trio of classified Navy electronic warfare-based "counterspace" capabilities.
SpaceX alone was responsible for 98 of the 109 launch attempts made by the US in 2023, and 1,937 of the 2,234 US satellites successfully orbited.
"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.
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.
IARPA hopes to transition the results of its debris detection and tracking research to the Space Force, NASA and other Defense Department and intelligence agencies.
DoD is working with Commerce to provide expertise on how to crunch space observational data, said Travis Langster, DoD principal director for space policy.
The award is a modification to a contract L3Harris won in 2020 to sustain and improve the systems used to track objects whizzing around the Earth.
Not happy with America's ability to precisely track adversarial satellites, Maj. Gen. David Miller fumed, "Somebody's got to figure this out. The American people have paid for this. Somebody's got to deliver."
The two hosted payloads, designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory, will keep tabs on spacecraft and dangerous debris in geosynchronous orbit (GEO).
Greg Kuperman, Space-WATCH program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office told Breaking Defense they're actively seeking space companies to provide data, and later will figure out how to aggregate it into an effective, dispersed LEO-monitoring system.