DARPA taps BAE to create space tech testbed

BAE Systems’ U.S. arm has received a potential $12.8 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Avgency contract to create a testbed for the U.S. military to use in its development, integration, evaluation and analysis of space technology programs.

DARPA’s “Hallmark testbed” program aims to help advance the military’s space command-and-control posture that includes situational awareness and execution of operations. BAE will develop the Space Enterprise Analysis Capability testbed to enable modeling of current and future space environments, the company said Tuesday.

The agency started the Hallmark effort in 2016 to help military commanders more quickly plan, assess and carry out operations in space. DARPA said in a release that involves work to track many thousands of objects floating in space and send that data to users along with other intelligence in land, air, sea, cybersecurity and defense domains.

Once complete, the SEAC will be located in Northern Virginia and have personnel to support integration of external space command-and-control tools and data. The Hallmark architecture needs to be able to model current and future technologies, subsystems and systems, DARPA said.

DARPA envisions the testbed being able to expedite the creation and assessment of a comprehensive set of new and improved tools and technologies that could be spun off into near-term operational use for the Defense Department’s Joint Space Operations Center and Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center.