The sound recording accompanying this piece is offered by the Air & Space Forces Association, commemorating and assisting our aviators, space defenders, and their kin. Discover further details at afa.org
The Space Force is advancing its initiatives to establish a tangible testing and instructional facility that will incorporate a blend of terrestrial and orbital assets, having issued an official call for bids for a nearly one-billion-dollar agreement involving multiple suppliers to conceive, construct, merge, and maintain these functionalities.
Space Systems Command launched its call for submissions for the National Space Test and Training Complex Innovative Technology and Engineering-Space Test and Range, abbreviated as NITE-STAR, on March 18 and intends to grant preliminary agreements by summer. As stated by SSC’s principal program official for operational test and training infrastructure, Col. Corey Klopstein, the objective is to pinpoint a selection of firms to contend to construct components of that tangible setting terrestrially or to furnish active, orbital range functionalities—such as spacecraft or measuring devices—whether for exclusive deployment or as a utility.
“Existing commercial capacities are available that we aim to utilize in an unconventional manner for evaluation and instruction … and we’ve employed range-as-a-service functionalities via business suppliers,” he remarked during a March 25 event hosted by Defense One. “Our aspiration is to witness a greater prevalence of this in the future. Simultaneously, we are likewise crafting specialized functionalities which will reside in space.”
NITE-STAR constitutes a component of the Space Force’s wider endeavor to establish the necessary practice areas and simulation tools needed to instruct Space Guardians and confirm the proficiencies they will employ. Klopstein said the service is concentrating its OTTI initiatives on three fundamental domains: tangible training grounds, virtual assessment and educational settings, and the foundational framework, or core support system, for data administration.
Over the past several years, the service has been collaborating intimately with private enterprises to deploy swift remedies to address its immediate requirements for evaluation and instruction, distributing grants totaling “tens of millions of dollars” via commercial solutions solicitations and other expedited procurement agreements, Klopstein said. These agreements have fostered the advancement of functionalities such as the Space Warfighter Operational Readiness Domain, or SWORD, a virtual instructional asset. This utility, offering simulated extraterrestrial impacts and situations, originated from the 392nd Combat Training Squadron at Schriever Space Force Base, Colo., in collaboration with SSC. The branch has subsequently issued multiple agreements to broaden its scope.
Klopstein’s group has also employed a venerable “other transaction authority” to establish a “range-as-a-service” agreement for executing instructional drills utilizing private spacecraft. Collaborating with Mission Delta 2, the service’s space domain recognition unit within Combat Forces Command, they recently managed to orchestrate the trajectory of a commercial satellite permitting Guardians to monitor it from Earth and employ it for an instructional session.
Although that improvised method has proven beneficial for the service thus far, it lacks long-term viability, Klopstein said. Innovative procurement instruments and market-ready remedies will continue to be significant going ahead, he said, however, agreements such as NITE-STAR are designed to establish the enduring groundwork for more advanced, realistic, and simulated instructional capacities.
Before publicizing the NITE-STAR call for bids, the Space Force granted an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity agreement during the previous year for the core data infrastructure component. Klopstein and his OTTI squad also intend to issue a Request for Proposals for the virtual setting project and finalize an agreement prior to year-end.
“This represents the foundational contractual framework we are establishing,” he said. “Our aim is to secure those essential agreements for digital and tangible infrastructure. Subsequently, we plan to leverage instruments such as our [commercial services solicitations] or [other transaction authorities] to supplement these, enabling swift capability deployment.”
Local Training Areas
When outlining the Space Force’s concept for a virtual or imitative instructional setting, Klopstein stated the objective is to forge the space sector’s parallel of a “local practice area,” where Guardians can accumulate “repetitions and sequences” at their primary bases.
“An air combat unit or strategic bomber group stationed at a base … can operate within airspace near their primary installation,” he said. “That serves as their proximate training ground. Subsequently, for extensive force maneuvers, they journey to locations such as the Nevada Test and Training Range, the Utah Test and Training Range, or Eglin [Air Force Base] to engage in inter-mission area operations—involving fighter aircraft, bombers, and aerial refueling craft. Our aim is to replicate this model for the Space Force.”
To Guardians, the service seeks to offer that localized instructional setting through a mission simulation device. Currently, the service employs duplicates of active systems for Guardians’ instruction. Its aspiration is for the vendors creating a particular system to incorporate a “practice function” that allows instruction to take place directly on the operational platform. SWORD, the virtual instructional environment utility, would be merged with the operator’s control panel to mimic the surroundings with extraterrestrial phenomena and situations.
“They can execute their drills under any required circumstances, however, we supply the friendly models mimicking other potential systems, and the adversary models simulating dangers, and this is managed within the core of that simulated setting,” Klopstein said. “Our goal is to implement this directly on the operational floor.”
SWORD presently facilitates extensive instructional maneuvers such as Space Flag, and SSC intends to migrate it to a cloud infrastructure in the forthcoming years, thereby enabling it to facilitate local base instruction and synchronous dispersed training across various facilities. The branch anticipates initiating a pilot project in 2027 to showcase an inaugural cloud-hosted SWORD implementation and subsequently refine and expand the utility throughout the ensuing five years.
For accurate, detailed evaluation, the service has become a member of the Joint Simulation Environment user community and intends to establish a JSE for assessing space assets. The JSE represents a physics-driven virtual setting initially conceived for critical F-35 evaluations, but is now being broadened for deployment by additional initiatives and for aviator instruction.
Although that virtual evaluation and instructional framework will undeniably require time to mature, Klopstein stated that the immediate imperative for the OTTI squad is to delineate its requirements, setting benchmarks, and forging avenues for the sector to cultivate those proficiencies.
“Our crucial task is to ensure we precisely delineate these settings, specify the criteria that permit the integration of functionalities within these environments, and subsequently disseminate this information to the industry, other principal program officials, and various program divisions, thus ensuring that as they construct assets, create satellite replicas, undertake new advancements, or develop training sequences for their terrestrial systems, they comprehend the benchmarks to adhere to,” he said.
The sound recording accompanying this piece is offered by the Air & Space Forces Association, commemorating and assisting our aviators, space defenders, and their kin. Discover further details at afa.org