Officially activated July 10, the “system deltas” (SYDs) include one for missile warning and tracking, and another for space-based sensing and targeting. According to the service, the new structure reorganizes part of SSC’s acquisition efforts to focus on a key mission area instead of a functional specialty such as cyber or intelligence.

“SYDs consolidate SSC program offices that design, develop and deliver mission systems under a force design structure for acquisitions,” the Space Force said in a statement. “The SYDs will ensure mission area analysis is continuous and improves upon mission advocacy with a singular focus on mission sets, unity of effort and properly aligned accountability.”

The move follows a similar restructuring done by Space Operations Command (SpOC) — the service’s arm for conducting daily operations — in 2024, when it stood up a new unit structure known as the integrated mission delta (IMD). Like SSC’s system deltas, SpOC’s integrated units consolidate the personnel, training and sustainment functions for a single mission area under one unit.

To ensure there are no gaps between the Space Force’s procurement programs and the service’s operational requirements, the acquisition-focused system deltas will team up with their corresponding integrated mission delta under SpOC moving forward.

“Through unity of effort, the Space Force’s system delta framework allows us to streamline the work between acquisitions and operations accomplished through intimate collaboration with our mission delta counterparts across the field commands,” SSC Commander Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant said in a statement. 

The new System Delta 84 for missile warning and tracking will be led by Col. Stevie Medeiros and partnered with SpOC’s Mission Delta 4, the service noted in a press release. The unit will be responsible for developing and delivering a number of programs — such as the Resilient Missile Warning and Missile Tracking – MEO (MEO MW/MT) effort — that can detect and respond to emerging missile threats, like hypersonic weapons.

Space Delta 810 will oversee space-based sensing and targeting, comprising portfolios that provide environmental monitoring and tactical sensing to warfighters during mission planning and execution, according to the Space Force. It will be led by Col. Dane Bannach and work with SpOC’s Mission Delta 2.

With the activation of the two system deltas, Garrant said in a statement that the Space Force is already working to transition more of SSC’s acquisition deltas into system deltas “in the coming months.”

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Under development by L3Harris, ATLAS is the Pentagon’s latest attempt to modernize antiquated systems used by the Space Force to track satellites, spacecraft and other objects on orbit. The software-based platform is the foundation for a broader effort to replace the 1980s-era Space Defense Operations Center (SPADOC) computer system.

“ATLAS is going very well, we expect to go into operational acceptance testing this year,” Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of Space Systems Command (SSC), told reporters last week during a media roundtable at the annual Space Symposium.

ATLAS is designed to integrate and disseminate a range of data types — including space domain awareness, command and control, and intelligence — with the help of automation capabilities to give operators a complete picture of the space domain. The system is one piece of the service’s Space Command and Control initiative, started after the previous SPADOC replacement known as the Joint Space Operations Center Mission System (JMS) was terminated in 2018 due to poor performance.

Although it’s now on track, ATLAS was considered one of the service’s most beleaguered programs by former space acquisition lead Frank Calvelli. The Space Force initially wanted the system operational by 2022, but software integration challenges and lack of trained operators have plagued ATLAS during its development, forcing the service to delay decommissioning of SPADOC.

Furthermore, the program has notched multiple Category 1 deficiencies — designated for problems that could cause serious harm or damage — as well as less severe Category 2 deficiencies.

To tackle some of ATLAS’s key challenges, Calvelli last year directed that the program be moved from SSC — the service’s acquisition arm — to Mission Delta 2-Space Domain Awareness. The organization is one of the newest integrated mission deltas under Space Operations Command (SpOC) and brings the mission area’s personnel, training elements and acquisition professionals for maintenance and sustainment under one commander.

Garrant commended the decision, as it allowed guardians to better understand the complexities of the system and put urgency on developers to deliver capabilities on time.

“The connective tissue with the operators and getting them early time on the system, and even closer connections at low echelons of command between the developer and the operator — that’s probably the biggest success we’ve seen in all of our mission deltas and all of our sustainment squadrons,” he said. “It’s been incredibly successful, I think you’re going to see more of that.”

The new approach was also key for L3Harris in its work to get ATLAS across the finish line, because the company is now working closely with operators to test and integrate capabilities through an agile development cycle, Charles Clarkson, vice president and general manager for the company’s space superiority and imaging division, told DefenseScoop.

To prepare for IOC this year, SpOC is conducting quarterly capability integration tests (SCITs) where test squadrons, space operators and L3Harris work together to analyze ATLAS and deliver additional capability. The service recently completed its tenth SCIT in March.

“We test it in a development environment, and then we also test it in an operational environment, with the operators then being able to provide that real-time feedback to the software development team,” Clarkson said in an interview on the sidelines of Space Symposium. “It’s all about creating closeness to the mission, and then being able to incorporate those requirements to keep pace with the threat.”

L3Harris received a $53 million indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract to develop ATLAS in 2018. Since then, the company has received multiple extension awards from the Space Force for the program — including a $90 million follow-on contract in January to “meet ATLAS initial operational capability and achieve software stability,” according to the Defense Department.

The contract extension will also give L3Harris the opportunity to improve ATLAS with additional tools and technologies, Clarkson added.

“It’s also looking at then, how do we build on [and] augment capability on top of that foundational layer that was primarily giving operators and warfighters a modern toolset, and just scaling so that we could keep pace with the exponential launches in space,” he said.

Clarkson emphasized that even with the delays, L3Harris did not have to pare back any of the capabilities for ATLAS. The company is also resolving the remaining deficiencies identified during SCITs, he said. An SSC spokesperson confirmed to DefenseScoop that all of the program’s Category 1 deficiencies will be resolved “prior to trial period entry.”

“I don’t look at it and say, ‘Hey, we had a dozen, two dozen, three dozen [Category 1 deficiencies] coming out of a SCIT,’ as a negative thing. What that really means is we’ve actually seen an increase in recent SCITS, and that’s really driven by the fact that it’s becoming very, very real,” Clarkson said. “That’s exactly what we want to see in agile software development, is you identify those deficiencies and you burn them down over the next sprint.”

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Space Systems Command’s Front Door — which facilitates the Space Force’s collaboration with commercial industry — launched the Orbital Watch effort March 21 by releasing “an unclassified threat fact sheet” to over 900 companies registered with the organization, according to a press release. The program intends to disseminate critical data to commercial providers so they can improve the designs of their systems against modern threats.

“Front Door is moving out on this essential effort,” Victor Vigliotti, director of Front Door, said in a statement. “We are providing our commercial partners the information needed to increase system resilience and mitigate threats, both of which are foundational to the successful integration of commercial space capabilities in national security space architectures.”

Last year, the Pentagon and Space Force each released strategies outlining how they planned to improve collaboration with the rapidly growing commercial space industry. While the Pentagon’s strategy outlined department-wide guidance on policy and procedures, the Space Force’s document focused on service-specific use cases for commercial technology integration.

Both strategies called for the establishment of processes that allow the Defense Department to share threat information — such as space domain awareness and cybersecurity — with companies in order to mitigate risk to commercial vendors working with the military.

“This initiative is in direct alignment with the DoD Commercial Space Integration Strategy and the USSF Commercial Space Strategy, as well as congressional guidance,” Col. Richard Kniseley, senior materiel leader of SSC’s Commercial Space Office, said in a statement. “Front Door has vast ties to industry right now and a clear mechanism for communicating threat information. The goal is sharing threat information in a timely manner, and Front Door is well equipped to do that.”

According to the Space Force, Orbital Watch will roll out in phases. The initial operating capability — or “beta phase” — will focus on releasing unclassified assessments of evolving risks in the space domain on a quarterly basis. That cadence will increase as SSC’s Front Door identifies and consolidates more sources of unclassified threat data.

“The full operational capability phase of Orbital Watch will introduce a secure ‘Commercial Portal,’ enabling two-way threat information sharing between the government and commercial space providers deemed critical to Space Force operations,” a service press release noted.

The Orbital Watch program comes as the Space Force continues exploring how to better integrate commercial capabilities into its warfighting architectures and operations. Notably, SSC is in the midst of reviewing its portfolio of legacy programs to understand if some of its requirements could be fulfilled using technology developed by industry.

The review was initiated in March by Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, military deputy for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, and began with an acquisition decision memorandum focused on analyzing commercial options for new space domain awareness capabilities that cover geosynchronous orbit.

However, SSC commander Lt. Gen. Phillip Garrant said the effort has expanded to every major acquisition program under the Space Force, and that program managers are now considering how they could meet their requirements with commercial capabilities. 

“It’s aligned with the pivot we’re trying to make, and everything’s on the table — from [the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability], which is a major construction project around the world, to satellite systems,” Garrant told reporters Tuesday on the sidelines of Space Symposium. “Nobody got a pass, everybody has to do this excursion of, could I start over and meet my requirements commercially?”

Garrant added that he hasn’t seen any initial results from program managers, but emphasized the review is much more than an academic exercise.

The Space Force has been clear about which mission sets can lean heavily on commercial technology — such as satellite communications and imagery — and others that will need to remain within the government’s purview, including defensive and offensive space control. However, Garrant noted that other mission areas are more difficult to delineate between what commercial can and can’t bring.

“Flying a GPS satellite could be commercial, [but] application of regional military power is probably inherently governmental,” he said. “So, it depends. But there are specific missions that won’t ever be commercial.”

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Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman observed the Starship’s sixth test flight from the company’s Starbase facility in Texas on Tuesday, with SpaceX founder Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump also in attendance. The 400-foot-tall reusable launch vehicle comprises SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster and Starship spacecraft, giving it much larger payload capacity than any other rocket available today.

Although the launch vehicle’s development is critical for NASA’s plans to resume missions on the moon and exploration of Mars, the Space Force is also tracking Starship for military applications — notably for logistics missions, Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, commander of Space Systems Command (SSC), told reporters Thursday.

“We are thinking about how we might use it. We think the first, most logical, given the payload volume, … would be some type of rocket cargo delivery mechanism,” Garrant said during a roundtable hosted by the Defense Writers Group. “[We are] absolutely interested in the potential military utility and definitely following their progress.”

The Space Force recently took the helm of the Air Force Research Lab’s experimental Rocket Cargo Vanguard program, renaming the effort Point-to-Point Delivery (P2PD). The concept seeks to use commercially available rockets to quickly launch military supplies to anywhere on Earth, including non-traditional landing pads both near structures and in remote locations.

In its budget request for fiscal 2025, the service asked for $4 million dollars to “support the detailed engineering design necessary for a P2PD service provider to perform airdrop payload delivery,” with the goal to support U.S. Transportation Command’s resupply missions, according to justification documents.

Garrant also pointed to the rocket’s potential to launch a large number of satellites into low-Earth orbit (LEO) — where both the government and commercial space industry are expected to put massive constellations of hundreds of platforms — as a “game changer.” In other cases, Starship could put multiple satellites in LEO to allow other orbital transfer vehicles to carry them to other locations in space.

He added that SpaceX has not approached the Space Force to discuss certifying Starship for future national security missions, but emphasized certification isn’t off the table.

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Whiting currently serves as the first-ever head of Space Operations Command (SpOC) — the Space Force field command that acts as the Space Force’s primary service component to Spacecom. As an organization, SpOC is responsible for generating and sustaining much of the service’s space, cyber and intelligence capabilities.

A former space operations officer in the Air Force, Whiting previously served as deputy commander of the Air Force Space Command before it was restructured as the Space Force. He’s also previously held a number of positions at Space Command, Strategic Command and the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Whiting would become the second four-star general to lead Space Command if confirmed by lawmakers, succeeding Gen. James Dickinson, who has served as Spacecom commander since 2020.

In addition to Whiting’s nomination, Biden picked Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein to serve as the next vice chief of space operations at the Space Force. Guetlein is currently leading the service’s acquisition field command, called Space Systems Command (SSC). Guetlein would take the helm from current Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. D.T. Thompson, if confirmed by lawmakers.

The White House also submitted a nomination for Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, deputy chief of space operations, strategy, plans, programs, and requirements, to succeed Guetlein as head of SSC. 

The trio of Space Force officers must be confirmed by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

In recent months, committee member Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville has put a blanket hold on top-level military promotions in protest of the Pentagon’s abortion policies. The blockade has put a halt to a number of key military appointments, most recently including Gen. Eric Smith, nominee to be Marine Corps commandant, leaving the service without a Senate-confirmed leader for the first time since 1859.

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