The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has contracted BAE Systems to develop a space evaluation and analysis testbed.
Under the $12.8m contract, the company will design and develop an advanced and secure enterprise software architecture that will, in turn, facilitate the creation of a testbed facility.
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The new testbed, Space Enterprise Analysis Capability (SEAC), will help DARPA develop, integrate, evaluate and analyse advanced space enterprise command and control (C2) tools and capability technologies.
The SEAC will allow realistic, scenario-based exercises for testing space C2 technologies against sophisticated emerging threats.
It will also support live data feeds from diverse sources and provide strong security and data protection for varying levels of classification, in addition to external interfaces to support air, cyber, land, and sea environments, BAE stated.
BAE Systems Ground Resiliency and Analytics director Mike Penzo said: “Military commanders must have superior space domain awareness in order to quickly assess, plan, and execute operations in this increasingly complex environment.
“The Hallmark testbed is designed to help the military quickly evaluate and integrate technologies for space C2.”
The US military must be able to quickly establish situational awareness and execute operations in space.
Many thousands of objects are currently moving at extreme velocities within the space domain, which must be tracked and managed.
The information collected must be fused with land, air, sea, cyber, defence, and intelligence data in order to make critical, time-sensitive decisions to protect space assets while supporting terrestrial missions.
