How Leidos accelerates space domain awareness with collaboration and commercial tech
Space, considered the ultimate high ground for our warfighters, is increasingly contested by near peer adversaries investing heavily in space operations. That is one reason that the U.S. Space Force (USSF) Space Systems Command (SSC) is in a “Race to Resilience by 2026,” a focused push to develop space-based capabilities that empower our warfighters, protect our nation, and ensure our prosperity.
In doing so, the SSC is casting a wider innovation net and standing up accelerators like the Space Domain Awareness Tools, Applications, and Processing Lab (SDA TAP Lab).
Selected to participate in SDA Tap Lab Cohort 3, Tim Bode, Leidos senior space solutions architect, and JP Scaduto, Leidos software engineer, were highly energized by the government, industry, and academia collaboration shown at the lab, ultimately helping the SSC collapse kill chains with software-driven solutions.
We spoke with Bode and Scaduto after they wrapped up their involvement in Cohort 3’s “Demo Day” to hear about their experience, lessons learned, and future work. Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
What was the space domain awareness problem statement you worked on?
Initially we applied to tackle problem statement eight, “develop a method for managing multiple sensor cues that maximizes the likelihood of reacquiring a satellite or space launch vehicle.” After speaking with Maj. Sean Allen, inaugural chief of the SDA Tap Lab, during the cohort application process, not only did we demonstrate that we could enable cross-mission cueing but we also brought OC2ELOT, our broader command and control (C2) capability, to the table to tie together the other industry and academia capabilities selected for Cohort 3.
Related reading: Leidos collaborates with Space4All in support of space STEM workforce
Why was the C2 capability so useful in this exercise?
The amount of space objects and space debris is growing at a tremendous scale. Our ability to integrate commercial sensors and analytics in OC2ELOT to provide a central C2 capability enables our stakeholders to be aware of and rapidly respond to what those targets are doing, even when we’re keeping track of 30,000 different objects all at once.
How are you able to track space objects at that scale?
We took some of the things we’ve done in other domains – such as fires modernization which has performed at scale for the Army – and married that up with our space domain expertise within the company. Using portable SecDevOps and our secure runtime environment to integrate with the USSF Unified Data Library (UDL), we were able to quickly develop and deploy new capability within OC2ELOT for our work with the cohort.
Related reading: Leidos outlines fires modernization insights from PC22, an Army cJADC2 exercise
Does this relate to work you’re doing in multi-domain operations?
Very much so. When you look at what some of the other cohort members that worked “left of the kill chain” using either terrestrial or space sensors – for things like seismic detection, weather sensor detection, launch site monitoring, collision avoidance – our ability to integrate insights from multi-domain sensor data to generate indications of activity are critically important for realizing the vision for combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (cJADC2).
How does this translate from the lab to the real world?
Integrating all data through OC2ELOT, we gained custody and characterized the SpaceX Starship flight test 4 – from sensing launch detection to sending tasking messages through the UDL – in 1.1 seconds.
When we looked at objects already on orbit, working with cohort members that worked “right of the kill chain,” we provided monitoring cues and scheduled mission-specific tasking to learn more about those objects. As we continue to work with partners in Cohort 4, we’ll be developing capabilities to provide cues and intelligent C2 actions further down the kill chain.
Why is collaboration so important in the race to resilience?
Maj. Allen emphasized to our cohort that our developments have to be able to talk to each other – to have that machine-to-machine interaction – to collapse the kill chain. We excelled at this because at Leidos, we’ve been working on non-proprietary open architecture for some time.
This is important because no one company is going to own the entire architecture or entire system – and they shouldn’t from a resiliency standpoint. So, demonstrating that you have this mosaic capability made up of different vendors who are the best at what they do individually where you can plug-and-play things as needed is a smart approach by the government to build system resiliency.
How will you apply what you learned to future work in commercial technology integration?
Through this process, we learned first-hand that non-classified capabilities can fill critical gaps and can fill them quickly — something noted recently by Barbara Golf, USSF strategic advisor for space domain awareness. Bringing the data to bear from those non-classified capabilities can help government address threats more rapidly. We’ll apply this as we integrate commercial capabilities with emerging sensor and analytics technologies in OC2ELOT to bring immediate value to C2 mission threads globally.
Learn more about Leidos cJADC2 capabilities
