Space RCO Looking Outside U.S. For Orbital Refueling, Dynamic Ops

ORLANDO, Florida—The U.S. Space Force’s secretive rapid acquisition arm needs to expand how it reaches out to industry to meet its most pressing needs, and that includes looking outside America’s borders for international companies exploring different ways to meet top needs such as refueling and propulsion for dynamic operations, a top official says.

The Space Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) is tasked with meeting critical needs in space by starting programs and launching hardware in less than five years. The office’s director, Kelly Hammett, says the Space RCO has been directed by U.S. Space Command to no longer provide any satellites that cannot be refueled, so the office is looking at new ways to adopt this technology.

The office’s work is highly classified, so it has traditionally only sent requests for information to cleared companies to determine what technology is available. But Hammett says the office has needed to branch out from Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIF) to survey startups.

“We were missing a big segment of the market potentially to be able to meet this,” he says.

In the spring, Hammett visited the UK and the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus near Oxford, where there are two or three companies planning to build on-orbit refueling systems this year.

“In the U.S., we have one company that’s done it. And we have another company that’s proposed a standard and is trying to compete with the other company,” he says. “So that’s an example of getting out, getting your head up, seeing what’s going on. There’s a ton of technology innovation happening in these startups and these privately funded companies internationally. Our job is the mission—go fast and get it done—and not necessarily to spend 10 years developing the new technology. We need to harvest stuff that’s available and be able to integrate it into our systems as soon as possible.”

The Space RCO now has 17 programs in its portfolio, an increase of three from the past year. While many of these are classified, Hammett provided some updates to a few.

The first is the Satellite Communications Augmentation Resource (SCAR), a $1.4 billion effort that started with a May 2022 contract to address the overcapacity and aging satellite control system. The Space RCO completed one demonstration in August, with the first full-up system on track to be delivered in March 2025. The first basing location for the SCAR has been determined, with ground broken on new facilities, though the location is not releasable.

Another is the Rapid Resilient Command and Control Program (R2C2), which is being designed to operate mobile satellites for dynamic space operations. The office has awarded contracts to multiple companies to design the system, with working software expected to be demonstrated in the next two to three months, Hammett says.

In September 2022, the office awarded a contract for Remote Modular Terminals, which are ground-based jammers. The first four units were delivered two months ago.

In January 2023, the office had its first programs launched. While the specifics are largely secret, the payload included threat awareness sensors and a cryptological, reprogrammable payload that provides enhanced cyber security on orbit. These systems completed design and checkout in about 60 days, and “they’ve been flying around the GEO [geostationary orbit] belt collecting data,” Hammett says. The office is now looking to move these sensors to other systems beyond the first demonstration.

“We have learned a lot of interesting data that I can’t go into the details here, but I can say that has been shared with the intelligence community,” he says. “It is changing the intelligence estimate on certain foreign capabilities.”