Space Force preps infrastructure, operators for target-tracking mission

The Space Force expects to launch its first ground moving target indicator satellites in 2028 — but until then, it’s working to craft operational concepts and experiment with enabling technologies that will shape the future constellation.

The service has been working closely with the intelligence community to develop a framework for managing a layered moving target indicator capability that pulls data from space sensors and other sources and feeds it to operators to better track threats on the ground — a mission that’s typically been conducted by aircraft.

As part of that effort, the Space Force and its partners in the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency have launched systems like low-end radars and electro-optical sensors that will enable that future architecture. The next step, according to the service’s operations chief, Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, is to put ground moving target indicator, or GMTI, satellites in orbit in the coming years.

Speaking Monday during a virtual Mitchell Institute event, Burt declined to say how many spacecraft would be launched as part of that initial batch or provide a specific timeline.

In the meantime, she said, the service has been busy experimenting with that enabling capability, building out a command-and-control, or C2, architecture and readying its operational units around the globe to support the new capability once it launches. That includes partnering with U.S. Space Command to develop a concept of operations and standing up a new squadron to lead the effort within Space Delta 7, its operational ISR hub. The service also plans to launch additional sensors to support the effort over the next year.

“This is a crawl, walk, run [process], as the constellation is launched, to build the humans and the training and the data and machine-to-machine C2 that has to happen to make this successful,” Burt said.

The Defense Department’s vision is for space-based GMTI to at least partially replace some of the capability that’s long been provided by the Air Force’s E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, which the service retired. The Space Force requested $1 billion for space-based GMTI in its fiscal 2026 budget.

The service is also crafting a plan to take on another leg of the mission — tracking moving targets from the air, or AMTI. The technology required to shift to satellites from air platforms like the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System isn’t as mature as it is for GMTI, which means the service is likely several years from being able to shoulder that work.

However, the Air Force’s E-3 fleet is aging and while it had plans to replace that platform with the new E-7 Wedgetail, its FY26 budget request proposes canceling that effort.

Burt declined to comment on how quickly the service could move to get an AMTI network in orbit and fill the capability gap, but noted that all of its work on GMTI will inform that effort. She also pointed to an ongoing study slated to wrap up this fall that will provide more details on the way ahead for AMTI, including recommendations about what technology is best suited to track faster targets of various sizes from space.

“Every bit of that learning on GMTI will apply to air moving target indicator,” she said. “We are working with a variety of commercial entities and industry partners on what are the different phenomenologies that would allow us to track air moving targets.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to correct information provided by the Space Force about the timing of the first GMTI satellite launch.

Space Force preps infrastructure, operators for target-tracking mission

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