The new Joint Integrated Coalition Space Operations Center is a place to experiment on how to share information with the intelligence community in the case of a conflict that extends into space, the commander of Air Force Space Command said at ASC15 on Sept. 16. The existing Joint Space Operations Center provides space traffic management and directs space support to theater, but it doesn’t prepare a force for a fight that involves space, said Gen. John Hyten during a four-star forum Wednesday. “We don’t know exactly what the future’s going to be,” but in a conflict extending into space, the US must be able to defend that terrain and the ability for command and control,” Hyten said. The new center, a 3,000-square-foot room at Schriever AFB, Colo., is “just a place where we can go experiment,” to create requirements for the future and an integrated concept of operations, he said. “We need to be able to defend the entire space domain,” he said.
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…