As reported by the American resource "Breaking Defense" in the material Teresa Hitchens "Newest sats launched by DoD include jammer-evading, classified payloads" ("The latest satellites launched by the US Department of Defense include a secret payload to avoid interference"), On July 2, 2022, Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne air launch vehicle launched seven small experimental military satellites with promising secret payloads into low Earth orbit as part of the US Department of Defense space testing program.
The take-off of the Virgin Orbit LauncherOne space launch complex, which includes a Boeing 747-400 carrier aircraft called Cosmic Girl with an air launch vehicle. During this launch (the fifth for LauncherOne), seven small satellites were launched into low Earth orbit, most of which were secret military satellites in the interests of the US Department of Defense. Mojave (California), 02.07.2022 (c) Virgin Orbit / Dae Dae
Among the seven experimental satellites launched last week by Virgin Orbit for the Pentagon's space testing program, there is a "cognitive" radio frequency system created by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), designed to provide interference-protected high-speed satellite communications in conditions of intense electronic warfare.
The experimental CubeSat, called Recurve, uses artificial intelligence/machine learning to make autonomous decisions about data transmission directions through large groupings of interconnected satellites in low-Earth orbit, called "mesh networks", to ensure that the right information is transmitted to the consumer in need at the right time in the right place, according to a press release.to the AFRL release of July 6.
"Recurve brings us closer to ubiquitous communication networks, including beyond the line of sight, to ensure that our military personnel receive the information they need quickly and reliably," said Lieutenant Colonel David Johnson, head of the AFRL Spacecraft Control Complex Experiments and Tests unit.
Recurve was designed and built by the AFRL Spacecraft Management entirely on its own, the report says.
Cognitive radio frequency systems, in fact, can reconfigure themselves by determining which ranges of the radio frequency spectrum are most accessible (that is, free from noise caused by weather conditions and/or enemy interference), and quickly switch to other frequency ranges to ensure uninterrupted transmission. Thus, this technology can provide an additional level of fault tolerance compared to that already provided by mesh networks, which already have the advantage that they can directly connect to as many other nodes in space, in the air and on the ground and work together, providing data routing to and from users, regardless of which- or one satellite.
This capability will be crucial for various satellite groupings planned for deployment in low Earth orbits, developed by the Space Development Agency (SDA) of the US Department of Defense, such as the grouping of data relay satellites, which should serve as the basis for the potential of a promising multi-medium command and control system (Joint All Domain Command and Control - JADC2) of the Pentagon.
This AFRL satellite and the other six payloads delivered to orbit on July 2 during the launch by Virgin Orbit, codenamed Straight Up, were provided as part of the Space Test Program
The Pentagon, which, in fact, is joint for experimental space launches of the US Department of Defense and NASA. Virgin Orbit uses a modified Boeing 747 jetliner called Cosmic Girl for its LauncherOne rocket system to launch spacecraft into low Earth orbits.
The launch itself was provided by the US Space Forces as part of the Rocket Systems Launch Program, which purchases launch services from small and medium-sized suppliers. The July 2 launch included three more payloads related to national security.
Firstly, it is Gunsmoke-L, which is a secret experiment within the framework of the US Army project on prototyping the Tactical Space Layer, which is led by the Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC). Since 2018, the US Army has developed and launched a whole series of Gunsmoke satellites with slightly different, but extremely vague and sometimes mutually repeating tasks described. The Gunsmoke-L experiment, launched on July 2, included two small CubeSat 6U satellites created by Dynetics, which are characterized by the army as "tactical space auxiliary vehicles", but most likely they are used to test the capabilities of radio-frequency geolocation, which should allow troops to operate deep in enemy territory, where GPS signals will be absent.
Another Slingshot-1 device is a 12U CubeSat satellite from Aerospace Corporation, designed to accelerate "the development of modular and autonomous technologies by harnessing the potential of open standards and non-proprietary interfaces to simplify and accelerate the development and integration of the payload," according to a July 2 press release. Notably, this CubeSat carries 19 tiny payloads, 16 of which were built by Aerospace-a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), not a defense contractor. Among the payload of the Aerospace development: "the reconfigurable space orientation control system Vertigo, which allows satellites to find targets on Earth; Blinker, a GPS transponder for space traffic control; HyPer, a hydrogen peroxide accelerator engine that provides high performance for small satellites; and LaserComm, a next-generation space-to-earth laser communication system, - the release says.
Finally, Modular Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance B (MISR-B) is a classified work of an unspecified government agency. The development and procurement of reconnaissance satellites has traditionally been the responsibility of the National Directorate of Military Space Intelligence of the United States (National Reconnaissance Office - NRO), but over the past year or so, the US Space Forces have advocated taking over the acquisition of reconnaissance spacecraft designed for what they call "tactical reconnaissance". and intended for the prompt provision of reconnaissance satellite images to field commanders.
