DARPA Blackjack

Re: DARPA Blackjack plus Pitboss

DARPA solicits proposals for Blackjack's Pit Boss technology

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is calling for industry input into a software development effort known as Pit Boss, which will demonstrate space-based autonomous command-and-control and data processing to support the agency's highly watched Blackjack program.
 
Would it be possible to develop the same concept for GPS satellites?
 
Radio signals to track moving vehicles. This feature could be very useful in a battlefield.
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1412802776191705089
View: https://twitter.com/DARPA/status/1412802776191705089

DARPA successfully deployed two satellites on June 30 as part of the SpaceX Transporter 2 launch. Both Mandrake 2 spacecraft, Able and Baker, are functioning well and progressing through checkout and commissioning. Conceived as an early risk-reduction flight for DARPA’s Blackjack program, the Mandrake 2 mission will prove out advanced laser communications technologies for a broad government stakeholder team that includes DARPA, Space Development Agency (SDA), Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate (AFRL/RV), and Office of the Secretary of Defense’s (OSD) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) office.

During its on-orbit mission, Mandrake 2 will demonstrate the viability of low size, weight, power, and cost laser communications terminals that are interoperable. “This constitutes a game-changing advancement and a critical enabler for proliferated space architectures,” said Stephen Forbes who is program manager of the Blackjack program in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “Mandrake 2 has already successfully demonstrated a rapid satellite development timeline, since the Blackjack program moved from contract award to delivery of space vehicles at the launch site in less than nine months.”

https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2021-07-07
 
The company is currently providing its optical cross-link terminals for DARPA’s Blackjack program, which seeks to prove the viability of a proliferated small satellite constellation in low Earth orbit. Mynaric also worked with other cross-link providers as well as the Space Development Agency to develop an interoperability standard to ensure laser cross-links on the U.S. military’s small satellites can communicate effectively with commercial constellations in development by Amazon, SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat and more.
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Grey Havoc said:
https://www.defensenews.com/top-100...stry-is-booming-so-why-isnt-berlin-buying-in/
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jsport said:
https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefiel..._term=Editorial - Military - Early Bird Brief
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If you look at the history of DARPA space projects, they don't have a very good track record. A lot of their technologies go nowhere, or they don't finish the project. I don't know why that is. I heard from somebody years ago that for one of their major projects (the refueling/servicing satellite) they did a bad job of listening to the potential user, the Air Force. The result was that they produced something that the user was not interested in and that's why a decade later we still don't have a servicing satellite for the military.
 
https://www.defenseone.com/technolo...worries-mount-about-keeping-them-safe/366265/
Frazier highlighted work that Maxar has been doing with the Army’s 82nd Airborne, as part of their Scarlet Dragon events, which occur every 90 to 100 days. Over the past 18 months, he said, they learned how to move images to troops on the battlefield in one-tenth of the time.

The company is also putting up more satellites, which “is going to allow us to continue to collect imagery at very high resolution, so 30 to 50-centimeter resolution, but then also be able to dramatically increase revisit over areas of the world that matter.” Over the mid-latitudes, the region between the tropics and the polar circles that includes much of Asia, “We'll have the ability to collect up to 15 times a day and then also be able to interweave that with other sources to just get persistence.”

In the years ahead, expect an explosion in other kinds of satellite-gathered data—for example, unencrypted radio chatter from military units that are broadcasting their location via global positioning. At the conference, Annie Glassie, a mission analyst with HawkEye 360, a satellite company that specializes in gathering radio signals, showed how her firm could identify ships that had turned off their AIS receiver— in effect, trying to go dark.

Kari A. Bingen, HawkEye 360’s chief strategy officer, said, “What we are able to detect is effectively.. those electronic warfare, those indicators, emitters, jamming GPS radars, other things that are a leading indicator of, frankly, where Russia forces are and where they're moving.”

But some officials and representatives from industry are increasingly worried that commercial intelligence satellites will soon become key targets for adversaries who want to return to the days when the world couldn’t easily track their military formations.

“Both Chinese and Russian military doctrine now capture their view of space as critical to modern warfare. And they consider the use of space and counter space capabilities as a means of reducing U.S. military effectiveness and for winning future wars,” said Lt. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the chief operations officer for the U.S. Space Force. “We've seen destructive debris generated by anti-satellite missile tests, [radio-frequency] interference, cyber attacks on terrestrial space nodes and provocative on-orbit anti-satellite demonstrations, such as firing projectiles.”
 
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aonestudio said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1412802776191705089
View: https://twitter.com/DARPA/status/1412802776191705089

DARPA successfully deployed two satellites on June 30 as part of the SpaceX Transporter 2 launch. Both Mandrake 2 spacecraft, Able and Baker, are functioning well and progressing through checkout and commissioning. Conceived as an early risk-reduction flight for DARPA’s Blackjack program, the Mandrake 2 mission will prove out advanced laser communications technologies for a broad government stakeholder team that includes DARPA, Space Development Agency (SDA), Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate (AFRL/RV), and Office of the Secretary of Defense’s (OSD) Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) office.

During its on-orbit mission, Mandrake 2 will demonstrate the viability of low size, weight, power, and cost laser communications terminals that are interoperable. “This constitutes a game-changing advancement and a critical enabler for proliferated space architectures,” said Stephen Forbes who is program manager of the Blackjack program in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. “Mandrake 2 has already successfully demonstrated a rapid satellite development timeline, since the Blackjack program moved from contract award to delivery of space vehicles at the launch site in less than nine months.”

https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2021-07-07
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How long has this project been going, for the A and B satellites to be named Able and Baker instead of the international Alpha and Bravo?!?
 

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