TACSAT AND ORS ACTIVITY

摘要

In May 2003, the Office of the Secretary of Defense's(OSD's) Office of Force Transformation (OFT) undertookan initiative to perform Operationally ResponsiveSpace (ORS) experimentation. Three years later, Tac-Sat-1, 2, 3, and 4 experiments are all underway; a statusof each is included in this paper. TacSat experiments arenow jointly selected each year via an iterative missiondevelopment process engaging the operational community,Coordinating Commands (COCOMs) and Services,and the Department of Defense (DoD) Science andTechnology (S&T) community. TacSat experimentationand funding has largely transitioned to the DoD S&Tcommunity with OSD's OFT continuing to provideguidance and bus standards development. Each TacSatexperiment tests key elements needed for an operationalsystem by taking frequent tangible steps to spiral capabilityand receive operational feedback, while movingtoward an acquisition. Operational experimentation is acore tenet of the ORS efforts and will continue toincrease as TacSats are launched and other tiers of assetsare added to the mix. ORS has also made significantstrides toward an operational system. The formal ORSConcepts of Operations (CONOPS) and requirementsare being developed by the US Strategic Command(STRATCOM) and the Services. These will likely to beformalized in the Joint Capabilities Interface DevelopmentSystem (JCIDS) process. Also, a Joint Office forORS coordination will be defined in fiscal year 2007.Because many ORS experiments and processes are nowin progress, this paper is oriented more toward the statusand relationships of efforts underway than toward newconcepts. As a result, this paper is related to a series ofpapers on TacSat and ORS: RSC papers 2003-3001,2004-5003, and 2005-1006 and ESA 4S 2006 papers#374584 and #378143 provide context and additionalinformation supporting this paper.