Military thrust for Microsatellites and nanosatellite Clusters for more resilient space architectures

Micro- and nanosatellites  have emerged as a highly versatile and economical resource for the satellite community, becoming one of the major areas of development and growth. They  find application in scientific research, communication, navigation and mapping, power, reconnaissance, and others including Earth observation, biological experiments, and remote sensing.

 

There is  growing utilization of miniaturized satellites for military and defense applications.  Defense organizations have been launching communication nanosatellites and microsatellites to provide communication signals to soldiers stationed in remote locations or in dense forests. The military needs more data bandwidth and reliable communications infrastructure for its UAVs, which can be fulfilled using constellations of nano and microsatellites.

 

Large networks of small, cheap satellites derived from commercial technology would be harder for China or Russia to kill than a handful of expensive, exquisite large military satellites. “The larger numbers of satellites complicates an adversary’s decision-making calculus and increases the uncertainty of outcomes. Smaller, lower-cost satellites, built and launched on frequent schedules could also make it much easier to reconstitute space capabilities, and introduce new technologies and capabilities. New countermeasures could also be added as the corresponding threat systems are developed and fielded.”

 

DARPA had launched a program called Blackjack and invited companies to pitch ideas on:, “How to leverage the commercial sector at LEO, how we leverage the manufacturing of smaller cheaper satellite buses, and looking at how we put our payloads into those more affordable buses,” Walker said.

 

DARPA Director Walker said it’s time for DoD to shift future spending to constellations in low earth orbit made up of dozens or hundreds of small satellites. Both DoD and the commercial sector have “very exquisite satellites,” he said. They are high-performance systems but cost too much, and take too long to build and launch, Walker added. “We have been saying this for 10 years: We want to see a shift to LEO, get capabilities in larger constellations.” The more satellites in the system, the harder it will be for the enemy to take it down, the thinking goes.

 

Larger constellations can be used for multiple missions, Walker said, and they could even “enable a battle management system for tactical war fighting on the ground,” he said. “We’ve been talking about this for a while” but only recently have these ideas been taken more seriously. Under Blackjack, DARPA hopes to have successfully launched 20 demonstration satellites with a variety of experimental payloads based on a ‘standardized’ commercially-provided satellite bus by the end of fiscal 2022, according to the agency’s website. DARPA asked for $25 million for the project in FY2020, up from $16.4 million the previous year.

 

Both the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) and the Pentagon’s brand-new Space Development Agency (SDA) are laying plans to transition Blackjack’s technology into their own acquisition programs. “SMC is currently partnered with DARPA and providing funding for Blackjack. When Blackjack is proven successful, SMC is planning a transition of the architecture to a program called CASINO [Commercially Augmented Space Inter Networked Operations].”

 

“SMC is currently partnered with DARPA and providing funding for Blackjack. When Blackjack is proven successful, SMC is planning a transition of the architecture to a program called CASINO [Commercially Augmented Space Inter Networked Operations],” Col. Dennis Bythewood, Program Executive Officer for Space Development at SMC, told me in a Friday evening email statement. “SMC is also working with the newly created SDA to define roles and responsibilities and how our respective efforts will complement each other. SMC is committed to continued partnership with DARPA and SDA to provide future capabilities to the warfighter.”

 

Lt. Gen. Jim Dickinson, head of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command explained the technology in Colorado Springs, Colo., on the final day of the 34th annual Space Symposium. Currently, the average Army combat brigade takes 3,000 pieces of satellite gear into battle, he said. And the reliance is only growing. One of the key concerns for the Army is potential enemies’ greater likelihood of being able to jam US satellite signals, Dickinson said. Often, Dickinson said, soldiers will encounter technical problems on the ground not knowing that the problems originate from space.

 

So the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command is developing a series of “nano-satellites” designed to compensate for damage done to larger satellites, the Gazette reported. Unlike the larger satellites, which are designed to stay in orbit for decades, the “nano-satellites” will stay in orbit for months or weeks. “We envision a constellation of nano-satellites,” Dickinson said.