{"id":55391,"date":"2022-05-17T21:50:14","date_gmt":"2022-05-17T13:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/space-development-agency-director-tasks-industry-for-cyber-solutions\/"},"modified":"2022-05-17T21:50:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-17T13:50:14","slug":"space-development-agency-director-tasks-industry-for-cyber-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/space-development-agency-director-tasks-industry-for-cyber-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Space Development Agency Director Tasks Industry for Cyber Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES<\/em> \u2014 Frank Turner, technical director of the Space Development Agency<\/strong>, is a man with a lot of problems, and he doesn\u2019t mind talking about them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not standing here today giving you answers,\u201d he told an audience of satellite industry executives at the CyberLEO conference. \u201cI\u2019m standing here today giving you problems. I\u2019m hoping you\u2019ll come back with the answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

SDA\u2019s problems, Turner said during the May 13 keynote, are the problems of its customers, the warfighter on the front line \u2014 whether that\u2019s in a foxhole, at a forward operating base, or as part of a littoral expeditionary force.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur customers are the warfighters. We work with the warfighter and try to solve their problems. We work with you to try to take in your solutions [to those problems] and integrate them across the national defense space architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SDA \u2014 slogan \u201cSemper citius,\u201d which translates to \u201calways faster\u201d in Latin \u2014 was founded, Turner said, \u201cto solve a problem that the warfighter has \u2014 they do not have reliability at present on the space layer for tactical purposes. It\u2019s the whole idea behind SDA. We\u2019re solving a tactical problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

In military parlance, \u201ctactical purposes\u201d means those associated with frontline units fighting or maneuvering with the enemy. Strategic purposes, on the other hand, includes things like ensuring communications up and down the chain of command, from the rear echelon to the front line, or detecting the launch of and intercepting intercontinental ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n

SDA is starting with the Transport Layer \u2014 a globe-spanning Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellation that can move sensor and targeting data anywhere in the world it\u2019s needed, giving frontline units access to imagery from overhead spy satellites, for instance. SDA will build its constellations with \u201cspiral development\u201d \u2014 launching its satellites in waves, or tranches, each more advanced than the last.<\/p>\n

The first experimental wave of 20 SDA satellites in the transport layer \u2014 Tranche 0 \u2014 will start launching in September, Turner said, after the contracts were signed in August 2020. These satellites will cost an average of $14.1 million each, representing a huge increase in speed and a decrease in cost from conventional military satellites, which cost hundreds of millions of dollars and can take a decade or more to buy, design, build, and launch.<\/p>\n

As the Tranche 0 satellites are being built, the agency has already signed contracts for the much larger, operational second wave of 126 LEO satellites in Tranche 1.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery two years, we\u2019re going to fly something and demonstrate it and then we\u2019re going to deliver it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re flying, we\u2019re building, we\u2019re buying all at the same time, and we\u2019re going to keep going like that,\u201d said Turner.<\/p>\n

This non-linear approach, and the speed at which it was moving, meant the agency had to be flexible and agile, Turner added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may not launch exactly what we said we were going to launch two years previously, but there will be a minimum viable product for the warfighter that will accomplish what the warfighter needs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He cited the optical inter-satellite links the agency had planned to use to create the mesh network which would allow the transport layer to quickly move data where it was needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe honestly thought we were going to have a vast number of optical inter-satellite links from a number of companies. Turns out maybe they\u2019re not quite ready, and we\u2019re narrowing down. We will still \u2026 demonstrate for the warfighter what it means to have low latency data from point A to point B at the tactical edge. But we may not do it with the diversity of optical satellite links that we thought we were going to. Now, that [diversity of OISL] is going to come along in Tranche 1,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That agility and flexibility had to characterize the agency\u2019s attitude to security as well, Turner said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we\u2019re connecting to existing warfighter tactical data links, like Link 16. We\u2019re connecting to other warfighter data links, we\u2019re connecting to commercial constellations, we\u2019re connecting to a myriad of ground stations. We\u2019ve got a problem space [and an attack surface] that\u2019s growing exponentially. We need your help to figure out how to fill it in and make it work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner promised SDA would be open to all kinds of ideas. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a good idea about something that you think will help from a cyber perspective or another perspective, I will make time to have the conversation. I can\u2019t promise it will go anywhere, but I\u2019ll make time. So please, if you have ideas, come see us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more coverage of CyberLEO: <\/strong><\/p>\n

LEO Operators and Manufacturers Wrestle with Supply Chain Cybersecurity<\/em><\/p>\n

Space Force Offers Free Cyber Scanning to Commercial Satellite Vendors<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES \u2014 Frank Turner, technical director of the Space Development Agency, is a man with a lot of problems, and he doesn\u2019t mind talking about them. \u201cI\u2019m not standing here today giving you answers,\u201d he told an audience of satellite industry executives at the CyberLEO conference. \u201cI\u2019m standing here today giving you problems. I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}