As the Space Force races to embrace its space control mission, its Rapid Capability Office is expanding from simply developing payloads to delivering complete satellites.
Much of the work done by the Space Rapid Capabilities Office is classified, but director Kelly D. Hammett told AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on June 24 that “in the next year or so, we’ll be launching our first full-up satellites.”
Hammett didn’t specify what those satellites will do, but in an unusual twist, he said the SRCO will control the spacecraft through launch and early operations under an agreement with Space Operations Command.
The office has launched payloads on classified missions before. But the move to launch and operate entire satellites hints at a growing role for the Space RCO. It’s also part of an “evolving story” in how the office handles programs, Hammett said—following through from developing technologies and into production and fielding.
The Space RCO is charged with delivering “timely and operationally relevant space superiority and resiliency capabilities.” As Hammett put it more simply at April’s State of the Space Industrial Base Conference: “We work on space control.”
That includes “about a dozen” programs centered on Space Control, what the service’s newest mission. Space Control refers to the ability to protect U.S. space assets and defend U.S. forces from space-enabled attack.
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