Space Force to field sensors for tracking air, ground targets in 2030s

The Space Force expects to start fielding satellites designed to track moving targets on the ground and in the air by the early 2030s, according to the service’s vice chief.

“I see it always being a layered set of capabilities to increase survivability, first and foremost,” Gen. Michael Guetlein said Wednesday at the annual Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “I would say you’re looking at probably the early 2030s for some of that capability to start coming online.”

The service has been working with the intelligence community to develop satellites that can perform the ground moving target indication, or GMTI, mission from space. In fact, the Space Force cleared the program to enter formal development late last month, according to a report from Breaking Defense.

However, efforts to use satellites for the air moving target indication, or AMTI, mission are more nascent. Guetlein told Defense News in an interview earlier this summer that as the Space Force builds out its MTI architecture , integrating the various sensors with new and existing command and control networks will likely be its biggest challenge.

“That requires us to now start thinking about artificial intelligence, it starts you thinking about machine learning, it starts you thinking about new communication pathways,” he said. “I now have to have processing on orbit on the sensor rather than processing on the ground. That’s a new set of technologies.”

The Space Force has started to invest in early studies of the capability, but Guetlein declined to confirm at the conference whether a program would be funded in the fiscal 2026 budget request.

“We are having those conversations about, [with the] scarcity of resources, how much can I invest in ‘26 in some of these emerging areas,” he said.

Balancing the demand for new capabilities with a budget that is projected to stay relatively flat for the next several years is a larger challenge for the service. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Defense News in a recent interview that the Space Force’s budget, which sits around $30 billion in FY25, needs to double or triple to meet the military’s need for on-orbit support.

With no increase of that magnitude in sight, the service is working to make sure it has its priorities in order, focusing on areas like readiness, satellite communications and improving the resilience of its systems.

“We are definitely sacrificing some because there’s not enough resources to go around,” he said. “We know we can’t buy everything we need, so we are ruthlessly prioritizing all the kit that we’re buying to make sure that it’s the biggest bang for the buck, if you will, during times of crisis or conflict.”

The service is looking for ways to take advantage of partnerships with international partners and commercial companies who are also spending on the capabilities the Space Force needs, Guetlein noted.

“In the past, DOD felt like we needed to own all of our own kit, operate all of our own kit. That way we could guarantee during times of crisis or conflict that that kit was built,” he said. “When you start pivoting towards a great power competition, it becomes all of the nation and all of the world that needs to come together in partnerships, and that’s really where we are investing heavily.”