(Tribune News Service) — Every operation in the military somehow relies on space, U.S. Space Force Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough said.

That dependence drove a panel discussion this week at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs on how the military and private sector are working to improve resilience and response time should a satellite be destroyed or incapacitated.

The military calls this a “tactically responsive space” mission, or TacRS mission. It differs from previous efforts at resiliency in several ways, but the most obvious is the timetable. With TacRS missions, filling a gap occurs within 24 hours.

This doesn’t always mean launching a new satellite into orbit within 24 hours of an existing one becoming compromised, Birchenough said. Having a duplicate satellite “in the barn” is a rarity, panel members said.

“(Tactically responsive) doesn’t mean that we’re going to have a duplicate satellite on the ground just sitting there waiting for the time, but it does mean that we find some way to augment that capability,” she said. “There’s a few different ways that Space Force is approaching that.”

One leverages existing satellites, repositioning them to fill the hole left by the now compromised one. The other involves a reliance on partners, both commercial and international, to purchase satellite time and other resources as needed. The third, far rarer option, was to have a new satellite on the ground ready to go.

This is where aerospace giants like Northrup Grumman can step in. Northrup Grumman has a system called Pegasus, an air launched rocket system, that it has used in 45 successful launches. In June 2021, Pegasus successfully launched the Tactically Responsive Launch-2, and did it in 21 days.

“The approach was to take a very mature launch system, with mature experienced program personnel, and run it fast,” said Kurt Eberly, director of the space launch vehicles business unit at Northrup Grumman. “Traditionally, you don’t want to launch until the paperwork exceeds the weight of the rocket; that’s been a rule for years.”

The launch was a success, but Eberly said many planning and operational lessons were learned. One major lesson was the timelines are not always known ahead of time. Eberly recalled getting the call for the Pegasus launch on a Saturday. But this is part of what makes tactical space response difficult because the timelines for launch aren’t known or planned for ahead of time, CEO of Firefly Aerospace Bill Weber said.

In terms of flexibility and overall resiliency, the panel took a strategic perspective. Modularity may be the key to giving the U.S. and allies a significant advantage over adversaries, said Millennium Space Systems CEO Jason Kim.

“(There is a) common misperception that you could just go commercial with everything to support the military,” he said. “If you had interchangeable components, modular deployments and open architectures, those will really give us a leg up against the adversary.”

One aspect of resiliency and “tactical space response” that Birchenough wanted to drive home was its defensive nature. She stressed these capabilities are being looked at to ensure the U.S. can continue to operate in the way that it has for years.

Weber agreed, saying not having tactical flexibility may encourage an adversary to act aggressively because the U.S. would be in no position to interdict. Consequently, he said this puts the onus on the private sector to ramp up production and build successful platforms.

“More availability will mean that our nation has at our disposal options to be able to say at a moment’s notice, ‘We need to put that into that sector of space’ and be able to respond in general,” he said.

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