Advanced Space Command and Control (SC2) capability to process and exploit SSA data generated from sensors and catalogues to provide a complete space picture

Topic description

Specific Challenge:

Theatre of an unprecedented strategic and military competition, space is likely to become a new confrontation frontline in the near future. Easier access to space, increased space debris in orbit, the existence of large space objects capable of offensive actions imply the necessity for Member States to acquire or upgrade capabilities to protect their countries and strengthen their role as sovereign powers.

The 2018 Capability Development Plan (CDP) points to a shortfall in the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and early warning domain and identifies the need of an essential capability for securing Member States by preventing natural and manmade threats.

As a prerequisite for further defence cooperation in space, Member States should be able to reach a shared comprehension of what is happening in space.

A European military Space Surveillance Network (SSN) and SSA Command and Control (SC2) system are recognized as peculiar solutions to monitor the space situation and detect threats.

The main challenge is therefore to harmonize a shared military space picture: what its content must be, how to build it, how to share it among Member States according to an agreed information policy, considering that the participating Member States may start from different heritages and may have different interests in space.

The long-term objective of such an extended capability is to achieve a European independence on military SSA, to safeguard European interests in space and rebalance the strategic dialogue on the military SSA topic.

The proposals, supplementing the civilian objectives of EU SST, must address the development of an advanced space C2 solution to process and exploit SSA data generated from sensors and catalogues in order to provide a complete space picture.

Such solution must take into consideration the following aspects:

• in-orbit assets to monitor and to protect;
• perception of the threats, accidental and intentional, in LEO (Low Earth orbit), MEO (Medium Earth orbit), GEO (Geostationary Earth orbit);
• access to a catalogue and to identification data, from patrimonial / partners / trustable-commercial sensors, with different levels of quality and availability;
• SSA centres / C2s, or at least different analysis tools;
• perimeter of responsibilities of ministries of defence and national civil agencies;
• level of participation in the EU SST (Space surveillance and tracking) consortium, which currently provides the main European capability for detection and tracking.

One of the objective of the proposal must be to agree on and implement the content of a shared actionable recognised space picture.

Targeted activities

The proposals must cover the study, design and prototyping of systems and subsystems, not excluding downstream activities.

The targeted activities must in particular include:

• feasibility studies and system architectural definition of a European SC2 capability. This phase must cover military user requirements analysis, architecture definition, establishment of a programmatic roadmap, preliminary specification of the SSA architecture components (C2, communications, networking);
• formalisation of joint requirements, CONOPS drivers, use cases and architectural drivers, by involving the ministries of defence of the participating Member States to ensure design / operational consistency with other actions, if any, relating to SSA sensors in this call;
• identification and characterization of the relevant sources of data that can contribute to feed the system:
  • patrimonial sources from participating Members States;
  • sources from their institutional partners;
  • sources from trustable / qualified commercial providers.
• definition of CONOPS of the shared part of the SC2, especially:
  • which (and how) catalogue, identification and other types of data should be accessed or shared, between which ministries of defence or other national entity (content, level of processing, mode of access, security;
  • how could these data be further processed and fused, in order to improve their coverage, accuracy, reactiveness;
  • which sensors (or network of sensors) could be accessed and shared, by who, and how;
  • which military services and analysis tools can be shared, e.g. to characterize objects, detect abnormal behaviour, evaluate intentional threats, support military operations (ground, air, sea, space);
• experimentation of such joint CONOPS, exchange of data and services under simulated and real conditions;
• agreement on a shared architecture for networking national C2s / SSA centres, sensors (or network of similar sensors), data repositories, including a potential multinational shared area;
• definition of a roadmap for further development, in coherence with national roadmaps of participating Member States;
• overall C2 system architecture and preliminary design of a « network / federation » of enhanced national space operational centres, existing or being developed / planned by participating Member States; definition of interoperability standards, tools, procedures;
• performance engineering regarding cataloguing and identification of space objects on all orbits: completeness, accuracy, reactiveness;
• definition of the overall data model, pertaining to:
  • technical data: orbital and tracking data, identification data (optical and radar imagery, optical and RF spectral data), their auxiliary data, in order to ensure a consistent ingestion, storage, exploitation, share of data within either national C2 or a shared multinational area;
  • operational and supervision data, allowing the national C2s to reflect the operational status of shared sensors;

This activity must associate the provider of each selected data.

• development of a military SC2 prototype to evaluate architecture performances, help to support concepts of operation with users and support specifications. It must serve to demonstrate how:
  • requests (measurement or access to database) from different national authorities are taken into account and validated;
  • ground sensor planning and tasking is performed;
  • segregation and confidentiality of requests and results are preserved, according to the policy that must be defined, and how the common operational space picture is achieved.
• specification, prototyping and experimentation of structural or critical components, including security management (connectors, etc.);
• coordination with other actions, if any, relating to SSA sensors in the same call.

Main high-level requirements

The proposed solution should fulfil the following requirements.

• The networking of C2, and the (potential) multinational / sharing area, together with the set of shared national, partners and commercial data and exploitation services should meet the following requirements:
  • an all-orbit coverage;
  • a detection / tracking / characterization sensitivity compatible with intentionally threatening objects and events;
  • an accuracy and a reactivity sufficient to detect abnormal / threatening / hostile behaviours, with a sufficient reaction time to protect national assets.
• It should include services to efficiently and securely (cyber resilience):
  • connect/interface the national operational centres;
  • exploit and merge all available types of data: orbital, imagery, spectral (optical, RF), traffic dataflow, open sources;
  • plan and task ground based sensors;
  • share access to data and services;
  • edit joint reports;
  • generate shared visualization and space picture;
  • simulate future events, organize joint training and wargaming sessions;
  • support military operations in ground, sea, air, space;
  • guarantee the planning, coordination, and on-orbit synchronization of activities;
  • monitor the mission.
• The security rules of participating Member States should be met, to protect national and shared data and operations;
• It should make appropriate use of national existing / in-development / planned SSA C2’s or equivalent assets.
• The European military SSN should allow the national military space operations centres to improve detection and tracking capability of events such as appearance of new objects, close approach of a high value asset by a foreign object.
• The SSN should also allow gathering intelligence on unknown objects through their dynamic behaviour, their optical signature and its variation, and their radio emissions in order to support the evaluation of their mission.
• In this scenario, new applications should be available to complement traditional SST services such as collision avoidance, conjunction analysis, re-entry and fragmentation:
  • pattern of life;
  • anomaly detection;
  • spawning;
  • warning.
• The SC2 should fulfil the following requirements:
  • the SC2 system should provide the capability to detect, track and characterise space objects of military interest as expressed by participating Member States;
  • the SC2 system should be modular and allow each participating Member State to configure / adapt the SC2 at national level to meet its own requirements;
  • the SC2 system should meet the military performance standard in terms of security, RAMS (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety), response time, resilience, surveillance capacity;
  • the SC2 system should allow processing of data from heterogeneous sources (own SSA sensors, partner sensors (military/civil) as well as commercial sensors, contributor sensors (e.g. early warning sensors) or other external data sources);
  • the SC2 system should have an incremental approach for deployment – e.g. near-term architecture using existing assets, mid-term architecture using additional new sensors and final architecture should be defined, avoiding any duplication with on-going initiatives at national and Union level (especially EU-SST);
  • the space surveillance interoperable architecture should be scalable by design, easy to extend, able to accommodate an increasing number of users and an increasing capacity;
  • the technical implementation of the data processing and data exchange should foresee the possibility to define data policy rules and should ensure the required level of data security (data integrity, authentication and encryption, etc.);
  • SSA data and requests should be exchanged in standardised formats, prioritizing already agreed international standards (if available, such as ECSS or CCSDS (Consultative committee for space data systems.); TDMs (Tracking data messages) and OEMs (Orbit ephemeris messages​) etc.) for sharing space tracking data and orbital position data or should be agreed amongst partners;
  • SSA information should be exchanged in a cyber-secured and controlled way, ensuring data integrity, authentication and encryption, in respect of the relevant applicable security standards, and allowing exchanges amongst agreed levels of security classification;
  • the SC2 system should provide user interfaces suitable for use by trained personnel within their area of expertise, adaptable and upgradeable;
  • a common glossary/documentation of exchanged data, accuracy, underlying models and algorithms should be produced to ensure interoperability. Test procedures should be defined to allow confirmation.

Nota: Member States will maintain full control on their own military SSA capabilities and data, including data dissemination.

• Contribute to the design of an agreed operational and technical SSA capability, shared within associated Member States, with no unnecessary duplication, and providing synergies of data, sensors, services for a mutual benefit;
• Ensure secure and efficient solution of high performance system for specific military end-users, to complement and optimize the use of civilian SST systems;
• Implement the first step of a more efficient share of national capabilities, in order to create a complete SSA capability among Member States with minimal gap;
• Define roadmap allowing the technical transition from the initial operational capability (IOC) to a final operational capability (FOC) European military SC2;
• Make European SSA assets interoperable, enhancing cooperation between undertakings across Member States and achieving a high level performance through overall cost reduction thanks to avoidance of unnecessary duplication.