COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — One of the leading advocates for space on Capitol Hill unveiled wide-reaching legislation Tuesday at the Space Foundation's annual Space Symposium.
The legislation aims to integrate commercial and military space operations to better combat emerging threats.
"America has long dominated the 'ultimate high ground' of space. However, space is becoming more congested, contested, and competitive," Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., said in an April 12 statement announcing the legislation. "Even so, private companies are developing revolutionary technologies — from reusable rockets to asteroid mining and human space habitats. The American Space Renaissance Act makes comprehensive and bold policy advances and reforms necessary to ensure American leadership in space."
The emergence of new companies across the spectrum of space services is transforming the way the government thinks about operations and acquisitions in space, Bridenstine said in a recent interview. The goal is to use commercial assets to minimize the burden on space operators while maximizing effectiveness for the war fighter, he said.
Stove-Piped Communications Networks
One problem the war fighter faces on a daily basis is that military and commercial communications networks are stove-piped. For example, often the terminals used by assets in theater only have the capacity to communicate via exclusively commercial or exclusively military satellites, not both. This severely limits the flexibility of our combatant commanders to conduct operations in theater, Bridenstine said.
"Communication satellites use C-band and Ku-band, and military use X-band and Ka-band, so if you have a UAV out there is doing great work, it might have only the ability to use commercial satellites because it's got a C-band antenna on top of it," Bridenstine said. "We want to make sure that whatever asset is in theater is capable of communicating over the horizon both with commercial communications satellites and military communication satellites."
Bridenstine's legislation directs the secretary of defense to come up with a plan to integrate the commercial and military satcom architectures. In order to ensure flexibility, the bill requires future satcom terminal acquisition programs have multiband capability; that way, it doesn't matter if the network is enabled by a military Wideband Global Satellite or a commercial ViaSat system; the asset can communicate through either pipe.
"That's not going to be easy, it's not going to happen quickly, and it's certainly not going to be inexpensive, but it's necessary," Bridenstine acknowledged. "It's something that has to be done gradually, but if we don't start it now then we will never get there."
The legislation also aims to improve synchronization of major satellite programs by requiring the Pentagon build commonality into the ground, space and terminal segments. Right now, each of the five major government-owned and operated systems — Space-Based Infrared System for missile warning, Advanced AEHF for nuclear command and control, GPS for position navigation and timing, WGS for communications, and the Defense Meteorological Satellite program for weather — is built by a different contractor and requires a unique skill set to operate.
Investing in Constellations of Small Satellites
The bill also urges the Department of Defense to examine opportunities to work with commercial companies that are producing high volumes of small satellites. Investing in an architecture made up of "constellations" of hundreds or thousands of miniature systems, instead of just a few expensive, large satellites, could reduce cost and enhance resiliency, Bridenstine said.
If the US has thousands of satellites in a constellation, and a robust production line on the ground, adversaries like Russia and China are less likely to invest in anti-satellite missiles, Bridenstine said. In such a scenario, if an enemy successfully shoots down one satellite, the US would still have thousands more.
"If you can prevent our competitors and enemies from developing anti-satellite missiles by making it such that if they shoot down a satellite it's irrelevant in the outcome of the war, then they are not going to develop anti-satellite missiles," Bridenstine said. "And so it is a deterrent from these space-denial capabilities."
Outsourcing Space Collision Reporting
Historically, the Air Force has been responsible for space traffic control and situational awareness, in other words analyzing data and maneuvering assets in space to make sure they don't collide with each other or with orbital debris. Bridenstine's bill aims to allow the war fighter to focus on emerging threats by outsourcing some of that responsibility to a civil agency.
The command and control piece of space trafficking can be done commercially for a lower cost, according to Bridenstine. Right now, the Pentagon's Joint Space Operations Center (JSPOC) is responsible for analyzing sensor data from around the world and providing warnings of potential collisions to commercial operators across the globe. But in a world where commercial operators and foreign governments now have the capability to do this job themselves, the Air Force no longer wants to be "the FAA for space."
"The Department of Defense is providing a service to the world for free, and it is burdening the JSPOC when they spend the first half of their day trying to determine if a screw that was launched in 1969 is going to run into the international space station," Bridenstine said. That's not what the war fighters ought to be focusing on."
Bridenstine's legislation proposes that the FAA's office of commercial space transportation take over responsibility for conjunction reporting across the globe, using unclassified information from the JSPOC as well as commercial data.
Space Launch
Bridenstine's legislation also touches on the contentious issue of US reliance on the Russian RD-180 rocket engine to launch national security payloads into space. The bill provides incentives to domestic companies to develop a homegrown rocket engine.
For military space launch competitions starting Dec. 31, 2022, DoD will consider any bid using an engine built in the US as 25 percent less than the total bid, Bridenstine explained. The bill also provides a 10 percent tax credit for the insured value of a payload that is launched on a domestic rocket, he added.
In addition to SpaceX's recently certified Falcon 9, several companies like Aerojet Rocketdyne and Orbital ATK are investing in developing a homegrown rocket engine. However, these systems likely won't be ready before 2019 at the very earliest.
"The idea here is not to punish anybody who is currently in a tough position, but to encourage that in the future we're going to make sure that we're incentivizing a domestic launch industry that will be second to none," Bridenstine said.
Bridenstine sits on the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which oversees some military space programs, and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which oversees NASA.
Email: lseligman@defensenews.com
Twitter: @laraseligman
