Space Situation Awareness Operations

Space Situation Awareness Operations under the Air Force's Research, Development, Test & Evaluation budget activity, aims to enhance the Space Domain Awareness (SDA) capabilities critical to national security. This program focuses on surveillance of objects in earth orbit and beyond to support tasks such as satellite tracking, space object identification, and satellite attack warning. It also involves the development and upgrade of SDA data exploitation capabilities, including Global Sensor Watch (GSW), TAPOUT, and Space Surveillance Telescopes. The program supports the Joint Task Force Space Defense (JTF-SD) Commercial Operations (JCO) mission to provide persistent and rapid SDA coverage for Protect & Defend missions.

The Unified Data Library project within PE 1203940SF supports the integration, exploitation, and delivery of data sources for command and control and battle management of space forces. It involves on-boarding new data sets, expanding data services, federating between enterprise data lakes, and adding non-metric data to the SDA marketplace. Additionally, the SF Weather Services Research project funds the operational development necessary to acquire, sustain, and modernize Air Force Weather Service capabilities in support of the 2018 National Defense Strategy. These efforts provide timely, accurate environmental information to enable global battlespace situational awareness for various military branches and government agencies.

Overall, the goals of this budget line item are centered around enhancing space surveillance capabilities, integrating data sources for improved command and control of space forces, and modernizing weather service capabilities to support national defense strategies.