The Space Force relies entirely on data—but it lacks the systems and tools to analyze and share that data properly even within the service, let alone with international partners, officials said May 1.
“It’s the backbone of everything that we’re going to do, every application that we’re going to build, every system that we use,” Shannon Pallone, program executive officer for battle management and command, control, and communications at Space Systems Command, told an audience of defense contractors at the ACFEA Northern Virginia chapter’s Space Force IT Day in suburban Virginia.
She said space is increasingly a “system of systems environment … You don’t have satellite A over here, and satellite B over there and they never talk to each other. Everything interacts.” She compared it to a mapping app on a modern smartphone: “They’re interacting with data, they’re getting smarter over time. They’re pulling in restaurant reviews, pulling in real-time traffic data, pulling in weather,” she said.
In the same way, Pallone said, the Space Force has to think about data as a principle element in all its technology. “If we’re not thinking about it with a data-first mentality, we’re going to end up buying the wrong things. They’re not going to talk to each other, and we’re never going to get to where we need to go.”
“It’s the most foundational and fundamental thing that we need to get right as a Space Force,” she told a panel on data and artificial intelligence.
Data “really enables all our space operations,” agreed Lt. Col. Jose Almanzar, commander of the 19th Space Defense Squadron, which is one of the Space Force units responsible for tracking objects in space. “You can’t do launch, can’t fly satellites, can’t really de-orbit or even operate satellites safely without having that fundamental space domain awareness data. … Without [that data] I think all the other functions we do in space are in jeopardy,” he said.
Tracking 46,000 objects in orbit generates about 1 million observations daily, Almanzar said. That’s on top of a daily feed of commercial SDA data compiled by the service’s Joint Commercial Office, he said.
Such a huge volume of data creates a couple of challenges, he explained. “One, how do we prevent important data from falling beneath the noise floor, and it goes unnoticed? That’s a big risk. But, two, when a lot of things are coming at the operators, how do we minimize the risk that they get inundated with useless data? And how do we tease out what’s useful, what’s not, in different environments?”
Providing that firehose of SDA data, even to other Space Force components, is challenging, Almanzar said, because of the limitations of aging legacy systems.
Some of the Guardians that joined his team “probably saw some really nice commercials on TV with really cool graphics and whatnot,” Almanzar said.
“And when they show up to [our unit], and they see the system that we’re working with, they’re like, what is this? What are we dealing with? And that’s not just a 19th [Space Defense Squadron] thing, that’s across the Space Force,” he said, adding that the service was investing heavily to modernize quickly.
But, in the meantime, he said, “there’s risk there, because a lot of the systems we’re using aren’t interoperable.”
He explained that, to move data around, operators frequently have to burn it onto a CD. “Those are small round plastic discs for the folks that don’t remember,” he joked.
Those problems are even worse when it comes to international partners, explained Group Capt. Jonny Farrow, the deputy director for strategy, futures, partnerships, and requirements at Space Force HQ and a Royal Air Force exchange officer, during an earlier session.
As a result of over-classification and other restrictions on information, he said, adversaries can know more about what U.S. forces could achieve in space that allies do.
“To put things in terms of red and blue, I would say collectively, the red forces probably know more about blue capabilities than the blue forces know about each other. And that’s an absolute fact. And it’s certainly something that we really need to get over if we are going to get further,” he said.
He added it was frustrating because in an operational context, “when there’s an existential threat or risk to life, then we’re able to move these barriers away. And then when we go back to steady state, normal jogging, the barriers come back down again.”