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Defense #defense · USA/DoD February 28, 2026

Space Force bets $2 billion to replace aging radar planes with satellites

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Space Force bets $2 billion to replace aging radar planes with satellites

The News

The U.S. Space Force is accelerating development of space-based radar satellites designed to track fast-moving aircraft, drones, and missiles—a capability historically provided by aging airborne platforms now vulnerable to modern air defenses. Speaking at the Air Force Association's annual Warfare Conference this week, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman revealed that incoming fiscal 2026 funding totaling $2 billion (pending congressional approval) will speed development of Airborne Moving Target Indicator (AMTI) satellites, with both the Space Force and National Reconnaissance Office reporting "highly encouraging" results from prototype demonstrations.

The timing is significant: these satellites are intended to replace the U.S. Air Force's E-7 Wedgetail aircraft—itself a modernized alternative to the 1970s-era E-3 AWACS—before it fully enters service. The strategic logic is blunt. "JSTARS and AWACS are not going to survive right off the coast of China at the beginning of a war," Gen. Gregory Gagnon, commander of Space Force Combat Forces Command, told the conference. As adversary air defenses improve, the Pentagon is betting that space-based sensors are the only way to maintain persistent surveillance of enemy air and naval movements.

The Bigger Picture

This effort is part of a broader Pentagon shift from air-breathing platforms to orbital ones. The Space Force is simultaneously developing Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) satellites—designed to replace the aging E-8 JSTARS fleet for tracking ships, tanks, and mobile missile launchers on Earth's surface. Both programs are foundational to the Trump administration's "Golden Dome" initiative, an ambitious plan to create a comprehensive air- and missile-defense shield over the continental United States by the early 2030s.

The AMTI program represents a technical leap in difficulty compared to GMTI. Tracking slow-moving ground vehicles is straightforward; tracking fast jets and hypersonic missiles presents what NRO officials call a "multi-phenomenology challenge." The data processing burden is immense: satellite sensors must detect targets, transmit data to ground stations, have that data automatically fused with information from other sensors (both space-based and airborne), and deliver actionable targeting coordinates to warfighters—all in near-real time, often measured in seconds.

Technical Hurdles and Solutions

Gen. Saltzman emphasized that the Space Force's prior experience building GMTI satellites provides a roadmap. "How will the RF links come back? How do we do data processing? How do we rapidly fuse the information?" he said, noting that solutions developed for ground-target tracking will accelerate AMTI development. The key differentiators for AMTI, according to Space Force leadership, are speed (both of targets and of data analysis) and clutter—the challenge of distinguishing fast-moving aircraft from other radar returns in the upper atmosphere.

To tackle sensor fusion at scale, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink announced a new series of exercises called "Ringleader," designed to help the Air and Space Force coordinate disparate sensing systems into a unified targeting network. This orchestration problem may prove as challenging as the satellite technology itself.

What's Next

While Saltzman declined to provide specific timelines or contractor names (citing classification), Space Force leaders are optimistic about FY27 budget prospects under the Trump administration's planned $1.5 trillion defense topline. Both AMTI and GMTI are slated for operational orbit by the early 2030s—a compressed timeline that depends on sustained funding and successful prototype-to-production transitions. Congress will need to approve the $2 billion AMTI allocation, and watch for announcements about the full constellation architecture and launch vehicle assignments.

💡
Think of it like...

$2 billion in fiscal 2026 reconciliation funds—equivalent to the annual GDP of a small nation, or roughly the cost of 40 next-generation fighter jets—is being directed toward AMTI satellite development.

Related Entities

Space Force·agency
National Reconnaissance Office·agency
Gen. Chance Saltzman·person
Kelly Hammett·person
Gen. Gregory Gagnon·person
Boeing·company
E-7 Wedgetail·vehicle
E-3 Sentry AWACS·vehicle
E-8 JSTARS·vehicle
Royal Australian Air Force·agency
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Space Weather1 day ago

NASA's Twin Spacecraft Will Map Mars' Atmospheric Death

NASA's Twin Spacecraft Will Map Mars' Atmospheric Death NASA's ESCAPADE mission has switched on its science instruments, marking the first operational phase of an unprecedented dual-spacecraft venture to understand how the Sun systematically stripped Mars of its once-habitable atmosphere. Launched November 13, 2025, aboard a Blue Origin New Glenn rocket, the two orbiters are currently looping around Lagrange Point 2—a gravitational waystation 1 million miles from Earth—before executing a gravity-assisted maneuver off our planet in November 2026 to reach Mars in September 2027. The mission arrives at a critical moment for Mars exploration. While robotic rovers have mapped the planet's surface for decades, ESCAPADE represents the first coordinated two-spacecraft investigation of Mars' magnetosphere and the solar wind processes that have transformed the Red Planet from a warm, wet world into a frozen desert over billions of years. "Having two spacecraft is going to help us understand cause and effect," said Michele Cash, ESCAPADE program scientist at NASA Headquarters. This stereo perspective—simultaneous measurements from two vantage points—will reveal how the solar wind interacts with Mars' magnetic field and drives atmospheric escape in real time. Why Mars Lost Its Atmosphere (And Why That Matters for Human Missions) Mars once possessed a dense atmosphere and a robust global magnetic field capable of deflecting the Sun's relentless particle stream. Today, the Red Planet's magnetosphere is a patchwork: remnants of ancient crustal magnetism combined with a weaker, induced field generated by solar wind interactions with charged particles in the upper atmosphere. This "hybrid" magnetosphere provides minimal protection against solar radiation—a critical liability for future human explorers. Understanding this process isn't merely academic. Before NASA sends astronauts to Mars, engineers must quantify radiation exposure on the surface and develop shielding protocols for habitats. ESCAPADE will also characterize Mars' ionosphere, the electrically charged upper atmosphere layer that future missions will rely on for radio communications and navigation systems. "If we ever want GPS at Mars or long-distance communications, we need to understand the ionosphere," said Rob Lillis, the mission's principal investigator at UC Berkeley. A New Approach to Mars Trajectory ESCADADE showcases a paradigm shift in deep-space mission planning. Traditional Mars launches required Earth-Mars orbital alignment—a constraint that restricted launch windows to every 26 months. By adopting a "loiter" orbit around Lagrange Point 2, ESCAPADE decouples launch timing from planetary mechanics, enabling missions to depart Earth almost on demand. During this extended loop, the twin spacecraft will traverse an unexplored region of Earth's distant magnetotail, approximately 1.2 million miles from our planet, collecting the first direct measurements of this region's plasma and magnetic field properties. Technical Innovation: Stereo Magnetosphere Monitoring Once in Mars orbit, ESCAPADE's dual-spacecraft architecture enables groundbreaking measurements. For the mission's first six months, the orbiters will follow identical orbital paths, passing over the same magnetic features at different times. This configuration allows detection of magnetosphere variations on timescales as short as two minutes—previously impossible with single-spacecraft missions. After six months, one spacecraft will climb to higher altitude while the other remains closer to Mars, enabling simultaneous upstream solar wind measurements and magnetosphere monitoring. "Prior spacecraft could either be in the upstream solar wind, or they could be close to the planet," Lillis noted. "ESCAPADE allows us to be in two places at once and measure the cause and the effect." What's Next The spacecraft will arrive at Mars in September 2027, initiating a multi-year science campaign timed to inform NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate planning for crewed missions. ESCAPADE's data will directly feed into radiation protection standards, landing site selection, and life support system requirements for Mars exploration. The mission's success could validate the Lagrange Point loiter trajectory as a standard approach for future deep-space missions, fundamentally reshaping how NASA schedules interplanetary exploration.

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NASA's SpaceX Crew-5 in space station mockups
Discovery1 day ago

NASA Just Made Moonlight into Breathable Air

The News NASA's Carbothermal Reduction Demonstration (CaRD) project has cleared a critical hurdle: successfully extracting oxygen from simulated lunar regolith using nothing but concentrated sunlight. The integrated prototype test, conducted aboard the International Space Station, confirmed that solar-driven chemistry can produce carbon monoxide from lunar soil—the essential first step toward generating breathable air for astronauts living on the Moon. This isn't theoretical anymore. It's hardware that works. Why This Matters Right Now The challenge facing long-duration lunar missions is brutally simple: you can't ship enough oxygen from Earth. Resupply missions are expensive, infrequent, and add massive weight to launch vehicles. For NASA's Artemis program to establish a sustainable lunar base—a cornerstone of the Moon-to-Mars architecture—the agency needs to generate life support resources on-site rather than hauling them across 240,000 miles of vacuum. CaRD solves this by turning lunar geology into life support. The Moon's regolith, the pulverized rock covering its surface, is approximately 45% oxygen by mass, locked inside silicate minerals. The catch: extracting it requires intense heat. CaRD uses a solar concentrator—essentially a sophisticated mirror array—to focus sunlight into a reactor hot enough to drive carbothermal reduction, the same chemistry used on Earth to refine metals from ore. The Technical Achievement The CaRD prototype integrates four major components: a carbothermal oxygen production reactor built by Sierra Space, a solar concentrator designed by NASA Glenn Research Center, precision mirrors from Composite Mirror Applications, and avionics and gas analysis systems from Kennedy Space Center. Johnson Space Center pulled the systems engineering together. During testing, they confirmed production of carbon monoxide (CO) from the regolith simulant—proof that the concept works in controlled conditions. The real power lies downstream: when CO is converted into O₂ using additional chemical processes already in development, the system could produce a steady oxygen supply for habitat life support, fuel cell operations, or even metallurgical processes. Why carbothermal reduction specifically? It's proven industrial chemistry, scalable, and—critically—it requires no chemical inputs that aren't already abundant on the Moon. Sunlight is the only external resource needed. What Comes Next The immediate path forward involves coupling this oxygen extraction with conversion technology to turn CO into usable O₂. Beyond the lunar south pole, NASA is already eyeing how to adapt CaRD for Mars, where the technology could extract oxygen from Martian regolith or even convert atmospheric CO₂ into propellant. The cost and logistics savings are staggering: reducing payload mass for human missions, decreasing launch frequency, and enabling crews to live off the land rather than Earth's supply chain. CaRD was funded by NASA's Game Changing Development program under the Space Technology Mission Directorate—signaling this is no longer moonshot research, but mainstream development. As Artemis missions ramp up in the coming years, technologies like this transition from "demonstration" to "flight hardware." The Moon just became a lot more hospitable.

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