The GPS III SV-08 was launched via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. It’s the eighth space vehicle for the GPS III constellation to go on orbit. The series of satellites, built by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, brings significant improvements over previous GPS constellations by offering greater accuracy and advanced anti-jamming capabilities for military users.

Notably, the Space Force was able to execute the mission just three months after the service notified both Lockheed Martin and SpaceX to prepare for liftoff — a much faster pace than traditional national security launches, which could take up to two years from the initial contract award, said Walt Lauderdale, mission director and chief of Falcon systems and operations at Space Systems Command.

“The volume of data for the Falcon launch system allows us to focus our attention on the most critical areas and confirm acceptable flight risk,” Lauderdale said earlier this week during a media roundtable ahead of Friday’s launch. “This experience over time allows us to leverage SpaceX’s commercial tempo, optimize our own review timelines and utilize previously flown hardware — as with our last GPS III launch.”

Friday’s mission marks the second GPS III launch executed under what the Space Force calls a “rapid-response” schedule, demonstrating the ability to prepare and deploy a satellite on a rushed deadline. In December 2024, the service conducted a secretive mission dubbed Rapid Response Trailblazer that saw the seventh GPS III satellite go into orbit onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 after five months of planning.

Work conducted during the Rapid Response Trailblazer mission and other previous GPS III launches allowed the Space Force to streamline Friday’s launch even more because most of the mission profile and analysis for launch was already completed, Lauderdale said.

“The ability to once again demonstrate a quick-turn launch of crucial capability helps us understand the key aspects that enable such a capability and further prepare for similar mission timelines in the future,” he said.

With adversary advancements in the space domain putting more demand on the Space Force, the service is exploring ways to increase the resiliency of its constellations. While one method has been proliferating large numbers of satellites on orbit to add redundancy, the Space Force also wants to reduce the time it takes to put new systems in space.

One such effort is SSC’s Victus mission series under the Tactically Responsive Space program, which focuses on launching small payloads on commercial rockets with only 24 hours notice. While the recent pair of rapid GPS III missions are separate from Tactically Responsive Space and are geared towards payloads in the National Security Space Launch-class, the efforts share a common goal of reducing overall launch cadence.

“We’re trying to prove that we can quickly respond to an on-orbit failure of a vehicle, but we’re also trying to show the best ways to be resilient,” Col. Andrew Menschner, Mission Delta 31 commander, told reporters Wednesday. “Now that we have the timelines of launch headed to much shorter durations, one form of resilience is having a completed vehicle in the factory and ready to go to respond. Said another way: We don’t always have to have a vehicle on orbit for it to be providing resilience in the constellation.”

The Space Force initially planned to launch the eighth GPS III satellite onboard one of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan rockets later in 2025. However, the service announced in April that it would pivot to using a SpaceX Falcon 9 in order to get critical capabilities on GPS III — such as the jam-resistant M-code signal — on orbit faster, Lauderdale said.

“What we’re doing this time is, we’re trying to make sure that we address getting some M-code capability up, and it was an opportunity to work with SpaceX and ULA to make sure we are equipped among all the parties and make sure that we could balance making sure that we can get M-code up there while taking care of both of the companies,” he said.

Menschner noted that because the GPS III satellites are qualified for multiple launch vehicle providers, it provided additional flexibility to switch to the Falcon 9 — a lesson that Mission Delta 31 is passing to others across the Space Force and Pentagon.

Moving forward, Lauderdale said he expects that lessons from the GPS III missions will open doors for other NSSL launches on faster timelines. 

“So what we’re proving out with our GPS teammates shows the capability and capacity that we could do from the NSSL program. Multiple launch vehicles gives us assured access to space,” he said. “And so when we look the future, what we’re demonstrating here is that it is possible, with our current vehicle systems, that if there is a need to get something on orbit quickly, something that is unpredicted at the time we put it under contract, we have a capacity, and we know what it would take in order to make that happen.”

The remaining two satellites for the GPS III series are currently slated to launch onboard ULA’s Vulcan rockets before the end of 2025.

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Col. Rich Kniseley, director of the Commercial Space Office (COMSO), told reporters Thursday that the service will stand up CASR pilots across three mission areas in 2025. One program will focus on small launch and is anticipated to kick off before the end of fiscal 2025, while the other two — satellite communications, and tactical surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking — are expected to be ready by December, Kniseley said.

The program’s growth comes just two years after the Space Force first conceived it as its own version of the Air Force’s Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Under CASR, the service can contract space-based services from commercial vendors during peacetime, which could then be used to augment and support military operations in the event of crisis or conflict.

In March, the Space Force launched CASR’s pilot phase when it awarded contracts to four commercial vendors to provide space domain awareness capabilities. The agreements cover an initial three-month period of performance and include peacetime and pre-priced surge capabilities, as well as the ability to conduct wargames with vendors, Kniseley said.

“What that allowed us to do is to start exercising some of the processes while we are still working in the background with some of the more challenging aspects of CASR, whether that’s prioritizing capabilities for US government use [or] denial of service,” he said during a media roundtable at the annual Space Symposium.

For the small launch pilot, the office will look to commercial launch providers already part of the Space Force’s Orbital Services Program-4 (OSP-4) program, which focuses on fast-turnaround launches of small payloads, Kniseley said. COMSO is partnering with Space Systems Command’s Assured Access to Space (AATS) directorate and the Space Safari program office for the pilot.

“It’s formulating a framework around launch, but small launch specifically,” Kniseley said. “Think of a call-up at a given point and some of the ongoing pieces. It will be a tabletop exercise more than anything, instead of an operational call.”

The pilot will align closely with the Space Force’s ongoing Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) initiative that aims to improve the service’s ability to respond to new threats on-orbit, such as by reducing time taken to launch payloads or prepositioning assets in space, Kniseley said.

He added that while the small-launch effort isn’t quite ready to serve as a mechanism for TacRS, the program’s managers are learning from COMSO’s pilot — including supply chain management and how it’s building the contracts to “surge and scale.”

Similarly, COMSO is looking to leverage the pool of vendors under the Space Force’s larger Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) program for its upcoming surveillance, reconnaissance and tracking pilot, Kniseley said.

Broadly, the service’s TacSRT effort allows combatant commanders to quickly and directly purchase unclassified data from imagery and sensors collected by commercial satellites — but COMSO’s pilot will be framed through the CASR concept.

“What if we were to put a company on to provide X number of products during peacetime? If I want to scale that up, and as things go on and I’m going to be getting more and more requirements from the combatant commands — that’s the type of model and framework I’m seeing for that,” he said.

And while Kniseley didn’t provide specifics for the service’s SATCOM pilot plans, he said the mission area was the focus for the office’s first CASR wargame completed recently. The event was critical, as it gave COMSO a slew of action items and topics it needs to work on with commercial vendors as it builds out the program.

During the wargame, Kniseley exercised a forceful activation of CASR — representing a real-life scenario in which industry would be required to turn off capabilities to other customers to fully support U.S. military operations. The event allowed companies to coordinate together, while also giving them the opportunity to think about how they would work with their investors and other customers.

“I viewed that as a complete success because it wasn’t 100% successful,” Kniseley noted. “What I wanted to do was have nothing but commercial capability or vendors in there, and I wanted to start exercising the framework for CASR. I really wanted to key in on some of the aspects that we have questions on, and to have that dialog back and forth.”

As COMSO prepares to launch the three new pilot programs, the office is also conducting a study with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the legal community on financial protection options for CASR vendors, Kniseley said. The results of the study should be released in the next few months to provide guidance on how the office plans to proceed, he added.

Overall, Kniseley said his office’s efforts to integrate commercial capabilities on a larger scale have garnered positive support from Congress. Before receiving $40 million in funds from the yearlong continuing resolution passed in March, lawmakers added $50 million to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for commercial space services, which was critical to getting COMSO initiatives like CASR off the ground.

He also pointed to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order calling for prioritization of commercial capabilities within the Defense Department as validation for COMSO’s work.

“[When] I look at the executive order, I look at it more as an exclamation point on a lot of the things that we’re doing,” he said. “But it will require additional budget. It will also require additional resources, and that usually means people, as well.”

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Under the $21.8 million deal announced Thursday evening by Space Systems Command’s Space Safari program office, the company will position a launch vehicle and space vehicle on standby so that it can be ready for action at a moment’s notice. At an unknown point afterwards, the Space Force will order the firm to prepare the vehicles so they can be hoisted into orbit as quickly as possible. 

“The Victus Sol launch will provide the operational capability to have a launch vehicle and space vehicle on standby while we continue to launch other commercial and government missions until we’re called up by the Space Force,” Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim said in a statement. “We’re further improving our readiness to provide a rapid response capability.”

The Victus Sol mission builds upon the Space Force’s previous demonstrations as part of the service’s tactically responsive space (TacRS) program. The effort broadly aims to optimize the organization’s ability to rapidly react and respond to new threats in space in a number of ways — such as by drastically reducing the time it takes to put new payloads into orbit or prepositioning space assets that address changes in the domain.

Firefly was the launch provider for the Space Force’s record-breaking Victus Nox mission in 2023. After the service gave the go-ahead, it took the company just 27 hours to mate a space domain awareness satellite to its launch vehicle, conduct final preparations and hoist the payload into orbit.

The demonstration dramatically outpaced the Space Force’s previous record of 21 days for a responsive space launch — a critical step forward in the service’s goal to be able to put national security satellites into space with just 24-hours notice by 2026.

Meanwhile, Firefly has also been tapped by True Anomaly to launch an autonomous orbital vehicle for the Space Force’s upcoming Victus Haze mission, which is targeted for 2025. The service contracted True Anomaly in 2024 to develop and test its Jackal AOV for the demo, after which it will be transported to Firefly’s payload processing facility where the company will wait for launch orders.

Along with decreasing launch time, the service also wants to use its Victus demonstration series to test the ability for maneuverable satellites to address emerging threats in the space domain. In the coming years, the Space Force plans to conduct two missions — dubbed Victus Surgo and Victus Salo — that will experiment with prepositioned orbital maneuver vehicles able to move satellites between orbits. SSC awarded a contract to Impulse Space in 2024 to build two OMVs for the demo.

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Under the agreement, Impulse will deliver two orbital maneuver vehicles (OMVs) for two missions — Victus Surgo and Victus Salo — that will test how prepositioned space assets could improve the Space Force’s ability to quickly address on-orbit threats, according to Space Systems Command (SSC). The Small Business Innovation Research Phase 3 agreement is being funded by the Space Force and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU).

The demonstrations will be the third and fourth for the Space Force’s Victus series under its tactically responsive space (TacRS) effort, which broadly looks to refine how the service will react and respond to new threats in space. The service wants to have an operational TacRS capability by 2026, but expects to keep holding Victus demonstrations on an annual basis.

Previous experiments have focused on drastically reducing the time it takes to launch payloads into orbit, such as the Space Force’s record-breaking 2023 Victus Nox mission that saw a satellite launched into space just 27 hours after orders were given.

However, TacRS is also exploring how maneuverable space vehicles could quickly address changes in the space domain. The program’s next mission, Victus Haze, aims to quickly deliver and launch a satellite into space, but will also require space vehicles to maneuver away from on-orbit threats. In April, SSC awarded contracts to Rocket Lab and True Anomaly for the Victus Haze mission, slated for 2025.

Victus Surgo and Victus Salo will experiment specifically with pre-positioned OMVs, also known as space tugs, that can move space assets from one orbit to another. Impulse Space will provide two updated versions of the company’s Mira OMVs — designed for “last-mile deliveries” from low-Earth orbit (LEO) to a payload’s intended destination — for both missions, a company press release stated.

During Victus Surgo, Impulse Space will launch one Mira OMV equipped with a commercial-off-the-shelf optical payload into LEO via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, according to SSC. The payload will then be lifted to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) using the company’s new high-energy kick stage vehicle, dubbed Helios. 

The Victus Surgo demonstration will be the first launch for Impulse Space’s Helios capability, which is being developed to rapidly move payloads from lower orbits into geosynchronous orbit (GEO), the company stated.

As for Victus Salo, another Mira OMV will be launched into LEO using SpaceX’s Rideshare program and will carry a government payload developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL), according to Space Systems Command.

Once on orbit, both space vehicles will be able to conduct space domain awareness missions “using a precise, high thrust and high delta-V propulsion capability,” an SSC press release stated.

“We are continuing to push the boundary to prove out how to quickly deliver on the warfighters’ urgent needs,” Col. Bryon McClain, SSC’s program executive officer for space domain awareness and combat power, said in a statement. “The collaboration with Impulse, MIT LL and many others further enables our ability to rapidly integrate, deploy, and operate on tactically relevant timelines.”

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The Defense Innovation Unit awarded a $32 million contract to Rocket Lab’s national security subsidiary, and SpaceWERX will award a $30 million deal to Colorado-based startup True Anomaly to provide technologies for the Victus Haze project, according to a release from Space Systems Command.

The U.S. military is looking for industry to demonstrate the ability to deploy a space vehicle within 24 hours of tasking and have the system ready for operations in less than 48 hours after it reaches the intended orbit.

Victus Haze is unfolding amid concerns about threats to U.S. satellites and their support systems from adversaries’ counter-space weapons — such as anti-satellite missiles, directed energy systems, electronic warfare and cyber attacks — as well as other spacecraft and debris.

The initiative also comes as the U.S. military is looking to the commercial sector for tech that could aid its missions.

DIU, headquartered in Silicon Valley, is partnering with the Space Safari acquisition program office and SpaceWERX on the effort.

“The commercial space industry is advancing at an unprecedented pace that will provide the Space Force additional options to quickly respond to adversary aggression,” Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough, Space Systems Command’s materiel leader for Space Safari, said in a statement.

The announcement about the contract awards came a day after the Space Force unveiled its new Commercial Space Strategy.

The two vendors tapped for Victus Haze will help prove out capabilities that could be used for future tactically responsive space operations “in direct support of urgent Combatant Command on-orbit needs,” Birchenough said.

Rocket Lab and True Anomaly “will both demonstrate their ability to build rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO) capable space vehicles (SVs) and command and control centers with a delivery target no later than fall 2025. Once the build phase is completed the mission will enter several successive phases to include hot standby, activation, alert and launch phases. While this is a coordinated demonstration, each vendor will be given unique launch and mission profiles,” according to the SSC release. “Both SVs will quickly begin operations after reaching orbit. Once on orbit, the operations teams will conduct a variety of scenarios to demonstrate [space domain awareness] and characterization capabilities.”

Rocket Lab will put its system into orbit using the company’s Electron reusable small launch platform launched from Wallops Island, Virginia or Mahia, New Zealand. True Anomaly’s vehicle will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California via a “rapid rideshare,” per the release.

“We recognize the significant opportunity to leverage the commercial space industry’s innovations to counter China as America’s pacing threat,” Col. Bryon McClain, SSC’s program executive officer for space domain awareness and combat power, said in a statement, adding that Victus Haze “will demonstrate, under operationally realistic conditions, our ability to respond to irresponsible behavior on orbit.”

Space Safari aims to begin delivering more advanced tactically responsive space capabilities for the joint force by 2026, according to DIU.

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The service’s tactically responsive space (TacRS) effort is intended to rapidly speed up how it acquires, builds and launches national security systems into orbit — a process that normally takes several weeks or even months to complete. By doing so, the United States could immediately respond to on-orbit threats or replace space-based systems that have been targeted by an adversary.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Friday, Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein emphasized that the success of TacRS is not dependent on a specific hardware or technology — but rather the mindset of the Space Force.

“Tactically responsive space is about a culture shift with the United States Space Force to get the entire set of guardians thinking on tactically relevant timelines,” Guetlein said. “Everything in my psyche as a Space Force member — as a guardian — needs to be about how I provide that capability. What can I do to get it there tonight? What can I do to guarantee that it’ll be there tomorrow? And what can I be guaranteed to do to make sure I have competitive endurance in the future with a credible capability?”

The Space Force has begun a series of demonstrations that will help the service understand what changes are needed to have a persistent rapid launch capability — which it wants no later than 2026. That includes the concept of operations, acquisition authorities, training requirements, clearance processes and more, Guetlein said.

During its most recent TacRS demonstration, dubbed Victus Nox, the Space Force and its industry partners launched a satellite into space just 27 hours after the service gave orders to do so. The mission shattered the service’s previous record for a rapid space launch, which was 21 days from notice-to-launch.

Now the service is gearing up for its next TacRS demonstration — Victus Haze — alongside the Defense Innovation Unit. 

“Victus Haze is about continuing to break those paradigms, and to show how we would rapidly put up a space domain awareness capability and operate it in real time against a red threat,” Guetlein said.

As it prepares for the upcoming demo, one question being considered is whether TacRS could be something the Space Force purchases from industry as a service or if it needs to be a bespoke capability. According to Guetlein, all options are up for consideration.

“It might be through the commercially augmented space reserve that I reach into industry and I repurpose an asset that’s already on orbit. It might be that I reach into industry and I take something off the production line and repurpose it like we did for Victus Nox. It might be that I already have capabilities stored on orbit. It might be that there are some capabilities that we want to store on the ground so that we have rapid access to them,” he said. “Tactically responsive space is all of those concepts together, wrapped up into a mindset and a culture change within the United States Space Force.”

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