BAE Systems will develop a space evaluation and analysis testbed under a $12.8 million contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced on 14 November.

The testbed will help the US military develop, evaluate, integrate and analyse advanced space enterprise C2 tools and capability technologies as part of DARPA's Hallmark programme.

The US military must be able to quickly establish situational awareness and execute operations in space. Within the space domain, many thousands of objects that are moving at extreme velocities must be tracked and managed. This information must be fused with land, air, sea, cyber, defence and intelligence data in order to make critical, time-sensitive decisions to protect space assets while supporting terrestrial missions.

the backbone of technology development and experimentation. The architecture would facilitate the creation of a testbed facility — the Space Enterprise Analysis Capability (SEAC) — that would support the modelling of current and future space situational awareness and C2 technologies. The SEAC would also enable realistic, scenario-based exercises for testing space C2 technologies against sophisticated emerging threats.

The testbed will support live data feeds from diverse sources and provide strong security and data protection for varying levels of classification, in addition to external interfaces to support air, cyber, land, and sea environments.

Mike Penzo, director of ground resiliency and analytics at BAE Systems, said: ‘Military commanders must have superior space domain awareness in order to quickly assess, plan, and execute operations in this increasingly complex environment.

‘The Hallmark testbed is designed to help the military quickly evaluate and integrate technologies for space C2.’