DRAGON Army Operations holds Sprint Advanced Concept Training Aug. 17-21. Courtesy/LeoLabs
AFRL News:
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — DRAGON Army Operations, an Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) program, is holding a Sprint Advanced Concept Training (SACT) this month.
The event is held both virtually and in-person at the Catalyst Campus in downtown Colorado Springs, with the goal of disrupting the DoD space technology acquisition pipeline, providing a lower barrier to entry for new and non-traditional participants.
SACT, which is co-hosted by the Department of Commerce, is a multi-cell, multi-nation, DoD event taking place every four months, and represents an integration of commercial space technologies to enhance space traffic coordination to augment DoD operations, including USSPACECOM.
Multi-cell live exercises will include multiple DoD space operations cells, with commercial entities demonstrating new software, sensor, and crew capabilities pertaining to space traffic management and defense, with emphasis on experimentation and innovation as well as coordination between cells.
Crews also will “build” international space traffic coordination and norms of behavior in the commercial space sector. International participants include France, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. The European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking (EUSST) will be riding along for the first time as an observer at SACT 20-2 with representatives from Germany, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Romania.
Between SACT events, innovations are integrated through AFRL DRAGON Army’s two-week sprint cycles and showcased in smaller live experiments called DRAGON Army Ops Days. DRAGON Army Operations (Dragon Ops for short) is an AFRL program that creates the environment, ecosystem and capability pipeline serving SACT events.
“SACT events are not only a time for demonstrating individual commercial capabilities, but also are meant to celebrate the collaborative efforts within the community,” said Dr. Emily Bohner, AFRL’s Operations Program Manager for DRAGON Army Ops. “The often-classified nature of space technologies can limit how we interact with the commercial space industry, but in this case we have cast a wide net.”
AFRL’s DRAGON Army Operations seeks to break down barriers across DoD, commercial, academic and allied partners in a mission area that requires collaboration: cooperative space traffic management.
“SACT events provide live and sim-over-live orbital events, where for example, potential collisions, can be tackled together as a community,” Bohner said. “Together we can learn how to take on growing challenges facing the space community, as space becomes increasingly congested.”
One high-level goal is to disrupt the DoD space technology acquisition pipeline, providing a lower barrier to entry for new and non-traditional participants.
“The AFRL DRAGON Army Operations program has sought to create an open architecture—computationally, operationally, and culturally,” Bohner said. “We are onboarding new participants every single sprint cycle. Feedback goes straight back into development, to accelerate technologies toward relevant commercial space, Air Force, and Space Force capabilities.”
The SACT Commercial Cell fosters creativity and collaboration between government and non-government entities.
“By creating a culture of innovation and boundary-pushing, as well as giving room for trial and error, we cast our net wider to reach commercial and non-traditional contractors entering the space domain,” Bohner said.
The events is Aug 17 to 21 at the AFRL Colorado Springs Catalyst Campus.
