Each technique available now or in the foreseeable future for what is known as alt-PNT comes with a need to make size, weight, power and cost trade-offs based on what type of platform is being used, according to experts.

The bill sticks to budget caps laid out by the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

The draft FY25 NDAA language would force DoD to create a new pilot project designed to kickstart its nascent plans to create a so-called hybrid space architecture linking national security, commercial, civil and allied satellites into a massive mesh network.

“In the end, what we’re really going to have to figure out here is: what needs to change? Is it policies? Is it authorities? Is it processes? Is it funding? Is it purely just advocacy and communication?” said National Space Council Director Chirag Parikh.

In an exclusive sit down with Breaking Defense, Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth defended his agency’s role in moving commercial and government satellite data to the field in a timely manner.

The delay in the review, however, is not expected to impact the planned delivery schedule, an Air Force spokesperson said. That said, neither the Pentagon nor the NRO has revealed the hoped-for schedule. 

“Our first challenge is to strengthen our workforce, more specifically to address the shortfalls in those specific masteries and experience levels that constrain our capacity to grow,” the chief of the Royal Australian Air Force said.

Meanwhile, the report says, the Space Force should be in charge of pursuing large networks of small satellites under the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) — differentiating its “tactical ISR” job from the “strategic” mission of NRO.

The status change should give the Space Force more weight in debate about how to share acquisition authority for commercial intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Lt. Gen. David Miller, head of Space Operations Command, said the ongoing tussle with the Intelligence Community is like when dogs first meet in a dog park. “The dogs like spend five minutes sniffing each other’s butts. That’s the phase I think we’re in. We just need to get off that,” he said.

“I don’t want to take a very expensive, very, very capable [alternative] PNT system that belongs on, let’s say, a Stryker platform or an Abrams tank or something like that, and … stick it on the robot that is the one that I’m training to take first contact,” Michael Monteleone, head of the Army’s new All-Domain Sensing CFT, explained. 

“The United States has been aware of Russia’s pursuit of this sort of capability dating back years, but only recently have we been able to make a more precise assessment of their progress,” said Mallory Stewart, State Department assistant secretary for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability.

The new project, called Maru, “will provide the means to replace legacy applications and to integrate modernized exploitation capabilities for the IC, DoD and our international partners,” the NGA spokesperson told Breaking Defense.

The Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared constellation’s first satellite may see its launch pushed back by a year to 2026.

Besides tracking adversary satellites, said Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, “sometimes I want to be looking at my own object to see if anything’s going on, right?”