As the Defense Department moves to implement Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s sweeping acquisition reforms, Space Force leaders warn that the depth of workforce cuts is threatening to cripple the service’s ability to execute them.

“You have to have a strong, vibrant workforce to do the work and we’re in a really interesting time and a troubling time. There is a strong, motivated force but there have been an incredible amount of pressures on them this past year,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, acting assistant secretary for space acquisition and integration at the Department of the Air Force, said Nov. 20 during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. 

“We have a looming increase in acquisitions coming down the pike, and so that presents us with a really difficult situation of where we need to double down on our acquisition workforce, our acquisition training. We are in a situation where we barely have enough acquirers to do all of the work that we have now,” he added.

Purdy said the service has spent the last few years implementing the acquisition tenets set by Frank Calvelli, who stepped down as assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration in January. Calvelli pushed the service to “build smaller satellites and smaller ground systems and minimize non-recurring engineering or new design.” He also preferred to use fixed-price contracts when possible. Calvelli’s “tenets” were a back-to-basics formula meant to fix chronic problems in space programs.

“We’ve built upon that this last year. We haven’t let grass grow under our feet as we’ve kind of taken over in January. And we’ve built upon that foundation and moved on out and really done a lot this year that kind of foreshadowed [Hegseth’s] acquisition reforms. But the workforce question is really the key piece,” Purdy said.

The Trump administration push to reduce the size of the federal workforce through initiatives such as the deferred resignation program and voluntary early retirement has had an “outsized impact” on the Space Force. In May, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told Congress the service had lost nearly 14% of its civilian workforce — much of it coming from Space Systems Command, the Space Force’s acquisition hub.

“I’m worried about replacing that level of expertise in the near term as we try to resolve it and make sure we have a good workforce doing that acquisition,” Saltzman told the Senate Armed Services Committee at the time. 

When asked about the acquisition workforce, Saltzman told reporters that these workforce reduction efforts have taken civilian experts “out of play,” leaving gaps in the institutional knowledge and technical skills.

As the Space Force begins implementing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s acquisition overhaul, which calls for using commercial technology as the default option, great competition and faster delivery, Purdy warned the service may not have the workforce needed to shift to the new way of doing business. 

“If you look at [Hegseth’s] acquisition reforms that he’s laid out, a bunch of great initiatives and things we need to get after. But … you need the numbers of people, and you need the quality to understand. If you say ‘go commercial,’ and if you say, go after ‘new manufacturing mechanisms’ and take advantage of all of the new space companies that are out there, you need a larger number of people just to even track that activity. You need to be able to understand all that’s going on. You need to understand the incentive structure,” Purdy said.

The strain is particularly acute in contracting since the service simply doesn’t have enough contracting officers to handle a much larger workload created by recent acquisition reforms.

“In the past, if we had an acquisition program and we would go 20 years and it would be with one prime, we would maybe have one or two contracts, an R&D contract and a production contract. Pretty simple. One prime, a couple contracts. Now, with some of our programs there’ll be a five-year program, but we’ll probably have 20 contracts because I’m dealing with 10 or 15 different contractors in industry, which is literally what acquisition reform is telling us to do,” Purdy said.

“We have a serious issue here at a federal level on contracting and it’s just the numbers of folks. We do not have the numbers of contractors that we need at a federal level. Every federal agency has problems, and so we do not have the right numbers that we need,” he added.

Saltzman said the service is trying to ease the strain by requesting waivers to the hiring freeze that has been in place since the start of the Trump administration, as well as hiring authorities to fill essential acquisition and contracting roles.

The service also recently launched its first acquisition training course.

Kay Sears, vice president and general manager of space, intelligence and weapon systems development at Boeing, said that while the Space Force acquisition community is more open and collaborative than ever, it is also apparent that the service’s workforce is stretched thin.

“You can tell that they’re stressed. You can tell that they’re overworked. And then when you get into that contracting element that’s really where I see the slowdown, the, ‘Hey, I’ve only got one playbook — I’m going to go follow the playbook,’ and we really start to lose sight of the mission objective,” Sears said.

Acquisition experts have said that while the proposed acquisition changes could meaningfully reshape how the Pentagon buys capabilities, the success of Hegseth’s reforms will hinge on whether the department can equip the workforce with the skills needed to operate differently. 

“Scores of case studies have shown, there has to also be an aggressive, intentional and holistic approach to change management, prominently including how the relevant workforces are developed. Absent re-aligning those processes, real change will remain elusive,” Stan Soloway, president and CEO of Celero Strategies and federal acquisition expert, told Federal News Network.

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Around this time last year, officials at United Launch Alliance projected 2025 would be their busiest year ever. Tory Bruno, ULA’s chief executive, told reporters the company would launch as many as 20 missions this year, with roughly an even split between the legacy Atlas V launcher and its replacement—the Vulcan rocket.

Now, it’s likely that ULA will close out 2025 with six flights—five with the Atlas V and just one with the Vulcan rocket the company is so eager to accelerate into service. Six flights would make 2025 the busiest launch year for ULA since 2022, but it would still fall well short of the company’s forecast.

Last week, ULA announced its next launch is scheduled for December 15. An Atlas V will loft another batch of broadband satellites for the Amazon Leo network, formerly known as Project Kuiper, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. This will be ULA’s last launch of the year.

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The commander of the military unit responsible for running the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida expects SpaceX to begin launching Starship rockets there next year.

Launch companies with facilities near SpaceX’s Starship pads are not pleased. SpaceX’s two chief rivals, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, complained last year that SpaceX’s proposal of launching as many as 120 Starships per year from Florida’s Space Coast could force them to routinely clear personnel from their launch pads for safety reasons.

This isn’t the first time Blue Origin and ULA have tried to throw up roadblocks in front of SpaceX. The companies sought to prevent NASA from leasing a disused launch pad to SpaceX in 2013, but they lost the fight.

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The Space Force is finalizing a strategic roadmap that will lay out what space systems, infrastructure and manpower it will need over the next 15 years to stay ahead of emerging threats.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said most of the work on the document, known as the “objective force” is largely complete. 

“I want to publish objective force 2025 before the end of the calendar year. That’s the task I’ve given the staff. And of course, they immediately push back saying we can’t possibly do that. I think they can. So I’m really trying to hold them. I think the bulk of the work is almost complete,” Saltzman said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event Thursday.

Saltzman said the “objective force” is designed to be a living document, updated regularly and republished every five years. The 2025 version will outline what the service will need between now and 2040, but its purpose is not to list everything new that’s needed by 2040. Instead, it maps out which systems the service will need to sustain, phase out or bring online over the next 15 years.

“There are systems we are flying today that we will continue to use into 2040, so the objective force will account for that. There are some systems we use today that we will wean ourselves off of in the intervening years between now and 2040 — the objective force will say that, ‘Hey, we plan to sunset in the 2030 time frame, 2035 and the new system will be growing along the same time so we preserve that mission capability,’” Saltzman said.

“That’s the way you want to think about, it’s not what do we need for 2040, it’s what happens between now and 2040 to make sure we have that objective force we need,” he added.

The document, however, will go beyond simply cataloging the types of systems the service already has or will need in the future. It will also outline the broader infrastructure needed to sustain the mission, including how many bases and squadrons are required and whether new military construction will be necessary — offering a full roadmap for what it will take to build and maintain a future Space Force. 

Saltzman acknowledged that circumstances and requirements will inevitably change, so the roadmap is meant to adopt along with them. 

“There will be annual updates based on resourcing, obviously, and then every five years we will re-snap the chalk line and say, ‘So objective force 2030, we’ll be looking to 2045.’ It’ll be this rolling campaign of learning to make sure that we have the force documented that we think we’re going to need in the out years,” Saltzman said.

Clear demand signal

Saltzman said the Space Force needs to clearly and formally communicate what it needs long-term to its stakeholders, including Congress, defense contractors, allies and partners. 

“We’ll try to lay all of that out, to publish it to the stakeholders so that they can see what our plan is and see a stable, comprehensive demand signal to what we need to buy, what approvals we need, how much resourcing we might need to put it in place,” Saltzman said. 

While Saltzman had originally aimed to publish the document by the end of 2025, he said its release will most likely slip into 2026.

“I think while you may not see a published document before the end of December, I can pretty much tell you that the work will be complete by the end of December, and we will be in final approvals to say yes. We’ll take this to the secretary, obviously, and make sure that the whole staff understands what we’re trying to do,” Saltzman said.

“I think the work of the force design will be done in 2025, and then hopefully publish it again to stakeholders in early 2026. That’s kind of what I see as the current timeline,” he added.

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A little more than a century ago, the US Army Air Service came up with a scheme for naming the military’s multiplying fleet of airplanes.

The 1924 aircraft designation code produced memorable names like the B-17, A-26, B-29, and P-51—B for bomber, A for attack, and P for pursuit—during World War II. The military later changed the prefix for pursuit aircraft to F for fighter, leading to recognizable modern names like the F-15 and F-16.

Now, the newest branch of the military is carving its own path with a new document outlining how the Space Force, which can trace its lineage back to the Army Air Service, will name and designate its “weapon systems” on the ground and in orbit. Ars obtained a copy of the document, first written in 2023 and amended in 2024.

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• Transgender Air Force and Space Force servicemembers are suing the Trump administration for rescinding pensions that had been previously granted by the Air Force secretary. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January that banned transgender people from serving in the military. In June, the Air Force approved retirement orders for the Airmen named in the lawsuit, but two months later the service reversed the course, informing airmen, each with at least 15 years of service, that they would be separated without retirement benefits under the ban. The lawsuit argues that revoking those retirement orders violates Air Force policies and procedures. Transgender servicemembers affected by this will lose an estimated $1 to 2 million over the course of their lifetimes, the lawsuit says. It will also strip them of lifetime access to TRICARE health coverage.
  (Transgender veterans sue Trump administration for denying retirement benefits - U.S. Court of Federal Claims)
• The bill to re-open the federal government would also extend a critical cybersecurity law. The continuing resolution passed by the Senate would extend the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 until the end of January. The law’s authorities expired on Oct. 1. Experts say CISA 2015 provides crucial liability and privacy protections that encourage companies to share data about cyber threats. Government officials say companies have continued to share information following the law’s expiration. But they say a longer-term lapse could derail public-private collaboration on cyber threats.
  (CR bill text - Senate Appropriations Committee )
• A bipartisan bill would require the Labor Department to keep track of AI-related layoffs happening across the federal workforce. The bill would also require the department to collect data on AI’s impact on jobs at major companies. Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are leading the bill. They say the legislation would give the federal government a clearer picture of which jobs are impacted the most by AI and which new jobs are being created.
  (Hawley, Warner to introduce bipartisan legislation revealing number of jobs lost to AI - Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.))
• A Senate-passed spending deal to end the government shutdown also sets staffing targets for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The spending bill gives the VA 90 days to provide the House and Senate appropriations committees with a staffing model that will ensure it can provide timely health care and benefits. The VA previously planned to eliminate more than 80-thousand positions, but scrapped plans for a department-wide reduction in force, and instead planned to eliminate 30,000 positions through attrition by the end of fiscal 2025. The spending bill specifically bars the VA from reducing staffing levels, hours of operation or services at the Veterans Crisis Line or any of its other suicide prevention programs.
  (Senate-passed spending deal sets VA staffing targets amid reorganization - Federal News Network )
• Violent threats against public servants have been escalating over the last decade. A new report from the Public Service Alliance and The Impact Project found that threats of doxxing, harassment and physical attacks have all been on the rise since 2013. The two non-profit groups recently released a “security map,” showing not only an increase in volume, but also an expansion of who is targeted.
  (New dataset on threats to public servants reveals over a decade of danger - Public Service Alliance and The Impact Project)
• Federal employees have a new opportunity to share more about their experiences in the workplace this year. The Partnership for Public Service has launched a new governmentwide survey for federal employees, in an effort to fill a major gap in workforce data. The initiative comes after the Trump administration canceled the 2025 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey earlier this year. Current civilian federal employees can take the Partnership’s Public Service Viewpoint Survey between now and Dec. 19. The topline results will be released in early 2026.
  (Amid data gap, an alternative to FEVS emerges for federal employees - Federal News Network)
• After a banner recruiting year, the Coast Guard is identifying locations for a new training center. The service released a request for information on Monday to identify facilities that could lodge 1,200 new recruits. The Coast Guard is planning to add 15,000 personnel to its ranks in the coming years. It recruited more than 5,200 new service members last year — well above its annual target of 4,300 recruits. The deadline to respond to the Coast Guard’s training center RFI is Dec. 8.
  (Coast Guard solicits potential locations for additional training center - Coast Guard )
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is putting pressure on a leading industry group to stop opposing bipartisan right-to-repair efforts that would allow service members to fix their own equipment. In a letter to the National Defense Industrial Association, Warren called the organization’s opposition to reform proposals in the House and Senate versions of the annual defense policy bill a “dangerous and misguided attempt to protect an unacceptable status quo of giant contractor profiteering.” NDIA argues that the provision would allow the Defense Department to provide parts, tools and information to any authorized third-party contractor, including a company’s direct competitors. The industry group said these efforts will “hamper innovation” and “deter companies from contracting with the DoD.” Warren said that “the opposite is true” and that the argument “appears to be a late-in-the game effort to confuse and scare members of Congress and muddy the terms of the debate.”
  (Senator accuses defense industry of blocking Congress’ right-to-repair reforms - Federal News Network)

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CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING – The missile threat against the U.S. has quietly and significantly grown over the past four decades as U.S. adversaries have added more sophisticated missiles to their arsenals, investing in both the scope of their systems as well as their ability to reach the U.S. homeland, according to experts.

As one of his very first actions in office, President Trump issued an executive order to address it, calling it the Iron Dome for America. And while some experts believe the name itself is “unfortunate” because it creates unrealistic expectations of what the system can actually do, it also represents what many believe to be a “necessary and long overdue shift in thinking and policy to begin to better address” the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland.

The name itself, the Golden Dome, is meant to echo Israel’s battlefield-proven Iron Dome, the short-range rocket defense system that has proven incredibly effective at saving Israeli lives. Yet while Iron Dome protects a sliver of territory with ground-launched interceptors, Golden Dome is pitched as something far more audacious: a planetary shield in orbit, capable of destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from Russia or China, intercepting hypersonic glide vehicles, and blunting Iran’s growing arsenal.

The scale alone is staggering. Washington has signed off on $175 billion, most of which will flow to defense giants Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), and L3Harris, to design the satellites, interceptors, and ground systems. Billions more are headed to the U.S. Space Force and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which will be tasked with weaving the pieces into a functioning shield. The effort is less like Iron Dome and more like the Apollo program—a bet that space-based interceptors can alter the nuclear balance of power.

Since July, when President Trump unveiled the plan and appointed U.S. Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein to lead it, Golden Dome has begun to take shape. Early budget outlines, hints of which defense firms are poised to win contracts, and debates among scientists and strategists all point to the same conclusion: the United States is embarking on one of the most ambitious defense projects in modern history and as with ambitious endeavors, this one is not without risk.

What’s New: Price Tag, Commander, and a Sprint Schedule

At the May 20 White House launch, Trump vowed that Golden Dome would be operational before his term ends—a three-year sprint to bolt revolutionary technology onto legacy missile defenses. He also named states like Alaska, Florida, Georgia, and Indiana as benefitting from the program, indicating that the way it’s being implemented could be politically strategic as well.

These are not random mentions: Alaska hosts vital long-range radars, Florida provides launch ranges, Georgia is home to contractor and military facilities, and Indiana is a hub for advanced aerospace and defense manufacturing. In short, the rollout carries as much weight for domestic politics and jobs as it does for national defense.

The program itself relies on space-based interceptors (SBIs) and missile-tracking satellites linked to existing ground and sea defenses. An early sign of the complications associated with the program came from The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which promptly warned that the actual cost could exceed $540 billion over the next two decades.

Over the summer, the outlines have grown sharper: $40 billion for the Space Force, including $24.4 billion specifically for Golden Dome. Nearly $9.2 billion is allocated for tracking satellites, $5.6 billion for orbiting interceptors, and approximately $1 billion for integration and testing. Congress added another $25 billion through the fast-track “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The shortcut could accelerate prototypes—but with less oversight, which is not an unfamiliar gamble for big-ticket defense programs.

How It Would Work

Despite its evocative name, the Golden Dome is not a physical shield arching over pockets of the United States. It is a layered missile-defense architecture stitched together by artificial intelligence and rooted in a mix of space and ground systems. Here’s how the architecture is designed to function:

Spot and track: Satellites equipped with infrared sensors detect missile launches the moment engines ignite and then track their trajectories.

Boost-phase intercept (BPI): New space-based interceptors (SBIs) would attempt to destroy missiles in the first minutes after launch, before they can release decoys or split into multiple warheads.

Midcourse and terminal defenses: If anything gets through, existing systems fire. The Navy’s Aegis system launches Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) interceptors from ships at sea, while the Army relies on Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries and Patriot missiles closer to the ground.

The brain: A central hub known as Command and Control, Battle Management and Communications (C2BMC) fuses satellite, radar, and electronic intelligence data, then assigns the best shooter to make a split-second kill decision.

In simpler terms, the system would begin by using satellites equipped with infrared sensors to detect launches and track missiles. Those satellites would feed data to interceptors in orbit, designed to strike in the “boost phase”— the brief moments right after a missile takes off, before it can release decoys or multiple warheads. If a missile makes it past that first layer, existing defenses would kick in: the Navy’s Aegis system with SM-3 and SM-6 interceptors, the Army’s THAAD batteries, and Patriots closer to the ground. A central command system would fuse data from satellites, radars, and electronic intelligence to make split-second engagement decisions.

"I think the real technical challenge will be building of the space-based interceptor,” said Space Force General Michael Guetlein shortly after being confirmed as head of the Golden Dome Program. “That technology exists, I believe. I believe we have proven every element of the physics [to the point] that we can make it work. What we have not proven is, first, can I do it economically, and then second, can I do it at scale? Can I build enough satellites to get after the threat? Can I expand the industrial base fast enough to build those satellites? Do I have enough raw materials, et cetera?"

Feasible but Costly

Experts agree that the most complex and most ambitious piece is the boost-phase intercept. Dr. Patrick Binning, a space-systems expert at Johns Hopkins, calls it the “holy grail” of missile defense. Taking out a missile right after launch gives the U.S. its best chance of success. But the hurdles are enormous: maintaining global satellite coverage, striking within seconds, and defending the system itself from cyberattacks, jamming, or anti-satellite weapons.

Binning calls the idea “quite feasible, but also likely quite costly.”

“Designing, developing, and deploying the space-based interceptors are the key technical risk,” he tells The Cipher Brief. In other words, the concept is sound, but building the hardware will be the real test.

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Peter Garretson, Senior Fellow in Defense Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, argues that the technology is no longer science fiction.

“Completely feasible,” he tells The Cipher Brief, citing decades of progress: successful missile intercepts in space, proven battle-management systems like Aegis, miniaturized computing power, and advances in artificial intelligence. In his view, the building blocks for a space-heavy defense are finally in place.

The White House aims to have the Golden Dome operational within just three years. Binning, however, is blunt.

“Full operational capability in three years? Never going to happen,” he observes.

At best, he predicts, “the Golden Dome could conduct a sophisticated intercept test against an intercontinental ballistic missile test target using a newly orbiting space-based interceptor.”

Yet, turning a demonstration shot into a reliable shield will take far longer. But Garretson sees political risk in missing the target.

“Golden Dome must achieve both successful testing and initial deployments before the 2028 election,” he says. If that happens, “no political party will remove a missile shield from the U.S. public.”

But he warns that bureaucratic turf wars inside the Pentagon could be as dangerous as engineering setbacks.

Even if the politics align, the physics remain punishing. Building a shield in the sky is not just about winning budgets or inter-service battles—it’s about scale. Seeing everything—and firing first—requires massive constellations of satellites and interceptors. That scale creates two problems: launch bottlenecks and space debris.

Strategic Effects—And a Dual-Use Case

Golden Dome is meant to complicate the war plans of China and Russia while reducing leverage from Iran and North Korea. Garretson argues it could force adversaries to rethink their arsenals.

“It will cause their current force structure to be a wasting asset and cast doubt on their current investments,” he said. “They will be forced to massively overbuild to compensate and for their war plans to have similar confidence.” In time, he suggests, the pressure could open doors to new arms-control talks—just as President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) pushed the Soviet Union to the table.

Beyond deterrence and diplomacy, advocates see the Golden Dome serving another role: safeguarding the United States’ own presence in space. The conversation isn’t only about missile defense. Proponents argue that the Golden Dome could also guard the satellites that anchor U.S. power in space.

“The space-based interceptors will have a dual-use capability to also protect our critical space systems from anti-satellite interceptors being developed by our competitor nations,” Binning asserts.

In other words, Golden Dome might not only shield against nuclear attack—it could also defend the satellites that underpin U.S. communications, navigation, and intelligence.

Politics and Procurement

The administration has built political durability into the Golden Dome by spreading contracts across multiple states. Congress’s $25 billion “accelerator” allows the Pentagon to bypass some oversight in the name of speed. However, credibility will depend on rigorous testing—multiple simultaneous launches, decoys, and heavy jamming.

Garretson argues that management will matter as much as technology.

“Centralized leadership reporting directly to the President, with broad independence and exceptions from normal oversight,” will be needed, said Garretson. “Focus on sprints to incremental testing… Deploy in tranches and continuously upgrade… Focus on building and testing, not on studies and requirements documents.”

The core question isn’t whether Golden Dome can stop every missile. It is whether it can change how rivals think. A reliable boost-phase layer could force Beijing and Moscow to adjust their nuclear strategies. However, a fragile or easily compromised system could invite a preemptive attack.

For now, Washington hasn’t built a shield in space—it has placed a bet. The coming months will reveal whether defense contractors can turn promises into hardware, whether early tests prove the concept, and whether Congress will continue to write checks for a program on par with Apollo in terms of cost and ambition.

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OPINION — “The need for accurate and uninterrupted PNT (Positioning, Navigation and Timing) has never been more essential to our warfighters who operate in GPS (Global Positioning System)-denied environments. The successful launch of the NTS-3 (Navigation Technology Satellite-3) system is the first step in updating 20th century technology to help address current threats to our national security.”

That was Ed Zoiss, President of the Space & Airborne Systems segment for L3Harris Technologies, speaking August 13, about the successful launch and arrival in orbit of NTS-3, the most advanced U.S. experimental navigation satellite in nearly 50 years, that was designed and led by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) with L3Harris Technologies as prime contractor.

NTS-3 is managed by the AFRL Transformational Capabilities Office in partnership with the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Air Force.

Space Force’s GPS provides critical positioning capabilities to military, civilian, and commercial users around the world. The United States government created GPS for the military in 1973, launched the first satellite in 1978, made the system available to civilians in 1988, and has operated the full system of 24 satellites since 1993.

Today it is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver, which means more than six billion users worldwide, according to GPS World, with an estimated 170 million in the U.S. Every day, GPS satellites aid in air traffic control, banking, farming, cellular networks, and countless other industries, and it is perhaps the space system that most people around the world depend on each day.

However, according to the Air Force, “The rapidly increasing pace of new threats to GPS, such as jamming and spoofing, indicate that agile and resilient approaches to augment the GPS system are needed to maintain users’ access to its critical service.”

The GPS system’s 24 operational satellites are strategically placed in six medium earth orbits (MEOs), at an altitude of approximately 12,550 miles, with three to four satellites in each plane making two orbits a day. This configuration ensures that at least six satellites are visible from any point on Earth at any given time.

NTS-3, is expected to change the architecture for satellite navigation and to deliver more robust PNT capabilities to warfighters.

NTS-3 will carry out some 100 tests over the coming year from near-geosynchronous orbit (GEO), where the satellite orbits directly above the equator at about 22,236 miles above the earth. The satellite's orbital period is close to 24 hours and appears stationary from the ground,

thus giving NTS-3 a clear, unobstructed and distinct vantage point without the interruption of weather or atmospheric distortion.

The NTS-3 program integrates a space-based payload, a reconfigurable ground control segment, and agile user receivers -- all linked by reprogrammable software. This architecture allows for rapid updates across all segments, enabling operators to counter jamming, deploy new signals, and adapt to evolving mission requirements without replacing hardware.

According to an AFRL release, “The [NTS-3] satellite will broadcast navigation signals from its phased-array antenna, which can electronically steer signals to a desired region [on earth] without physically moving the satellite. These signals are created through a digital, on-orbit reprogrammable PNT signal generator, which not only supports legacy signals and advanced signals not currently broadcast on GPS, but also allows new signal updates after launch.”

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NTS-3 will test a new digital signal generator, AFRL said, “that can be reprogrammed on-orbit, enabling it to broadcast new signals, improve performance by avoiding and defeating interference, and adding signatures to counter spoofing.” A goal is to make possible the uploading of a signal to the satellite and start transmitting it without having to relaunch the entire satellite.

AFRL also said NTS-3 will also test “the CHIMERA (Chips-Message Robust Authentication) signal authentication protocol, which is designed to jointly authenticate satellite orbit data and measurements of the range between the satellite and user.” CHIMERA provides “an extremely robust protection against GPS spoofing for civil users. Future versions of CHIMERA, or different kinds of signals, can be uploaded to the satellite at any point after launch, based on new knowledge or threat developments on the ground.”

Over the next year, AFRL will conduct a series of demonstrations to assess these technologies in realistic operational scenarios, from countering electronic interference to rapidly deploying new signal configurations in response to emerging threats.

“Because SATNAV (satellite navigation) is critically dependent on precise timekeeping,” AFRL said, “NTS-3 will have multiple atomic clocks and timing sources onboard the satellite that will be used both independently and as an optimized ensemble to allow for automatic clock error detection and correction.”

The NTS-3 Ground Control Segment (GCS), AFRL said, is compatible with the Enterprise Ground Services, an architecture that the Space Forces’ Space and Missile Systems Center is developing, to provide a common system for satellite command and control. “The goal is to move from a portfolio of stove-piped ground systems to a single system that will connect with all Air Force and Space Force satellites, saving millions of dollars by streamlining user training and operations,” AFRL said.

NTS-3 ground control is also planning to leverage commercially-available services such as ground antennas and monitoring receivers to increase opportunities for contact time with the satellite while reducing dependence on already strained government antenna resources.

AFRL is also working with the non-profit MITRE Corp., to develop a reprogrammable software-defined receiver called the Global Navigation Satellite System Test Architecture (GNSSTA). That new receiver will allow users to receive both legacy GPS and advanced signals generated by NTS-3 -- and is of course critical.

Warfighters will be the ultimate beneficiaries of the impact of new navigation technologies and integrated SATNAV capabilities, and any changes to the signal being broadcast from space must be communicated to and coordinated with that user segment. NTS-3 tests will be used to demonstrate new features for warfighters carrying so-called Software-Defined Radios (SDRs), capable of receiving and processing reprogrammable SATNAV signals.

Testing will show whether warfighter SDRs “will be able to access accurate PNT data and enhanced flexible anti-jam and anti-spoof protections,” according to AFRL. “Lessons from the GNSSTA software architecture developed through NTS-3 will pave the way for future DoD major defense programs to successfully connect service men and women to a flexible and resilient SATNAV architecture of the future.”

Much like downloading a new smartphone app, think of what future NTS-3 software updates can bring routinely to future users without the recapitalization effort typically required to upgrade.

This is the future for users of GPS. Hopes are high that NTS-3 will guide us down the right path.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

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