Spacelift Range System (SPACE)

The Spacelift Range System (SP ACE) program, also known as the Launch and Test Range System (LTRS), is a critical initiative under the U.S. Space Force, with the primary objective of ensuring public safety and assured access to space. The LTRS operates at two key locations: the Eastern Range at Patrick Space Force Base/Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and the Western Range at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. These ranges support a broad spectrum of missions, including launches of national security space payloads, civil and commercial space missions, ballistic missile and missile defense tests, and aeronautical weapon evaluations. The overarching goal is to maintain and modernize the infrastructure and systems necessary to meet the increasing demands of national launch requirements, while ensuring safety and operational resilience.

Delta-V is a major thrust within the Spacelift Range System program, focusing on the modernization of software and IT infrastructure for both the Eastern and Western Ranges. The Delta-V initiative is designed to enhance the quality and rate of software capability delivery, enabling rapid adaptation to evolving technological and operational requirements. The program aims to establish a software factory that will build, buy, and sustain spaceport and test range software systems, leveraging modern software development methodologies such as Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) and DevSecOps.

In FY 2025 and FY 2026, Delta-V will prioritize the development of cloud-based infrastructure, agile software projects, and situational awareness tools, with an emphasis on system resiliency and cyber survivability to operate effectively in contested space environments.

Enterprise Systems Engineering and Integration (SE&I) to Support Government-Controlled Baseline provides critical engineering support to manage and synchronize the system and subsystem-level baseline requirements for the LTRS. This effort ensures that multiple modernization projects and sustainment activities are integrated and aligned with long-term operational needs. SE&I is responsible for developing investment strategies to keep the Eastern and Western Ranges operational beyond the Future Years Defense Program (FYDP), adopting cloud-native data governance, and facilitating digital transformation strategies.

While this line item is being consolidated under the broader LTRS Range Technology Integration effort in FY 2026, its focus remains on ensuring that range systems are agile, resilient, and responsive to mission demands.

LTRS Range Technology Integration is the primary vehicle for advancing the modernization and integration of all twelve LTRS subsystems, including range safety, command destruct, telemetry, radar, optics, weather, surveillance, communications, data handling, timing and sequencing, and planning and scheduling. This effort supports configuration management, requirements analysis, and special studies, as well as experimentation, prototyping, and risk reduction activities.

In FY 2025 and FY 2026, the program will continue transitioning commercial and government launch customers to Automated Flight Safety Systems (AFSS), away from traditional manned and manual Flight Termination Systems (FTS). The integration of advanced data analytics, predictive modeling, and automation is intended to enable real-time decision support and facilitate simultaneous launch operations, supporting the Spaceport of the Future (SOTF) vision.

The acquisition strategy for the Spacelift Range System program is based on incremental system modernization and digital transformation, with the goal of enabling the accelerating national launch cadence. The strategy emphasizes the development of scalable, cloud-enabled systems that can respond to both national security and commercial space needs. Contracted engineering and integration services play a key role in innovating and inserting new technologies into the LTRS technical baseline, while Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) provide mission-critical technical and cybersecurity analysis.

This approach ensures that promising prototypes and technologies are rapidly transitioned into operational use, maintaining the nation's assured access to space.

The budget justification for this program element reflects a deliberate shift from a procurement-dominated funding profile to a balanced mix of procurement and Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) funding. This realignment is intended to better support the modernization of range instrumentation and associated services, particularly through the software acquisition pathway. No procurement requirements were sacrificed in this transition; instead, modernization activities were repositioned to ensure the most appropriate funding streams are used for mission fulfillment.

The program also includes funding for civilian pay expenses necessary to manage and deliver LTRS critical space operations capabilities, supplementing other Space Force program elements.