AND THE WINNERS ARE: SSC Announces Space Projects to Receive Funding from Fight Tonight Competition

Published Nov. 18, 2024
By Lisa Sodders SSC PA

El Segundo, Calif -- After a stiff competition of more than forty innovative ideas submitted through this year’s Fight Tonight competition, three have been officially selected for funding. U.S. Space Force Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, Commander, Space Systems Command, announced the results during the Space Force Ball in Los Angeles on Nov. 15, 2024.

“We are focused on delivering three lines of effort to establish a warfighting mindset, driven to achieve technical, operational, and acquisitions excellence,” said Garrant. “I can think of no better example of how we’re executing that than through the Fight Tonight competition.”

SSC’s annual Fight Tonight competition was launched three years ago, seeking to empower solutions in alignment with the critical Space Force mission of ensuring a secure space domain for all.

The competition was open to all SSC government employees, and all ideas were required to have an operational sponsor from USSF’s Space Operations Command to validate that the proposals were operationally relevant.

“In collaboration with our program executive offices and sustainers, we allocated $12 million to fund Fight Tonight,” Garrant said. “Not only were we able to fund the winning proposal, but we are able to fund the two runners up.”

The three funded submissions were selected from the seven finalist teams, following their presentations to a panel of SSC senior leadership and judges in early October.

The winning proposal was sponsored by SSC’s Space Base Delta 2, developed through a team effort led by USSF Maj. Sean Allen, director of SSC’s Space Domain Awareness TAP Lab; and called Dungeons and Dragons: Countering Space-Domain Camouflage, Concealment and Detection.

“This winning concept fuses Space Domain Awareness data from multiple sources and at multiple classification levels to counter space domain camouflage, concealment, and deception,” Garrant said. “The fusion of commercial and U.S. government data sources improves our ability to discover otherwise unknown threats to space systems.”

The competition’s first runner-up was sponsored by SSC’s Assured Access to Space program executive office and led by Mr. Derek Eichin, chief data officer for the Digital Transformation Office at Space Launch Delta 30, and USSF Maj. Donovan Hutchins, director of AATS Command, Control, Communications, and Computers for Launch Operations and Integration. This team developed a concept they call LEAPS, which stand for Launch Logistics, Execution and Programmatic System.

“This concept involves funding an integrated and secure end-to-end data collection, data analysis, logistics management, and command and control visualization system to enable efficient and effective operations for space launches,” Garrant noted. “This capability will integrate data from authoritative sources, streamline current processes, shorten the launch decision making and test validation process, and provide timely situational awareness.”

The competition’s second runner-up and final funded concept was sponsored by SSC’s Joint Commercial Operations (JCO) Cell and led by USSF Capt. McKenna Medina, Tactical Surveillance Reconnaissance and Tracking (TacSRT) cell director under SSC’s Space Sensing Persistent Tactical Surveillance Branch. In keeping with a tradition rich in acronyms, Medina’s team calls this concept PRIMER, which stands for Precursor Refinement & Investigative Mapping for Exploration Recommendations.

“This concept involves funding an automated tool that will take advantage of publicly available data to narrow the scope of combatant command queries, increasing speed and consistency, while decreasing the cost of deliverable operational planning products,” Garrant said. “PRIMER will tip and cue precision collects for real-time situational awareness, narrowing the scope to focus our assets on suspicious activity - especially useful in the 2026 fight.”

During his Fight Tonight remarks, Garrant also spoke of the importance of SSC’s focus as it carries forward the recently published command plan, and how important innovation is within SSC’s lines of effort.

“To be positioned for success against modern threats, we must rely on the innovation of not only our industry partners but of our allies and the ingenuity of our workforce,” he said, noting that every individual in SSC can – and does – make a difference. He stressed that every Fight Tonight submission presented value and added that the remaining concepts have been forwarded to SSC’s program executive offices.

“Many of those concepts should still seek further opportunities for integration into our programs,” Garrant said.

FROM THE WINNING PERSPECTIVES

According to Allen, the driving force behind this year’s winning proposal is rooted in the foundational importance of Space Domain Awareness within the USSF, and the key role it plays for capabilities within the domain.

“Having incomplete Space Domain Awareness is like having an unstable foundation upon which the rest of USSF capabilities are matured and presented to combatant commands,” Allen said. “The ‘heart’ of USSF is domain awareness, and our winning submission is enabling capabilities which provide a more holistic understanding of the domain and what must be accomplished to win the joint fight.”

Commenting on the competition itself, Allen noted that the portion of budget set aside to enable innovative ideas “sets a great tone for SSC and the USSF.”

For Hutchins, the driving force was connected to the growing importance and tempo of launch operations, specifically when it comes to national security.

“When I was a lieutenant at Cape Canaveral in 2012, there were a total of 17 launches at both the Eastern and Western Ranges,” Hutchins said. “Now we are projecting more than 120 launches, but many of our processes need to evolve to meet this increasing capacity. The most enticing thing about this innovation opportunity is to see us transition into a digital force and utilize technology to become more efficient and effective at our day to day so we can focus on the threat and how to conduct launch operations in a contested, degraded, and operationally limited environment to be a combat-ready force.”

About the competition itself, Hutchins said, “When leaders ask you to be innovative, and then they are willing to invest in your ideas with their time and funding, an innovative culture begins to spread.”

From Medina’s perspective, PRIMER’s creation was focused on improving an operator’s ability to request TacSRT support, which plays a role in supporting the transition of the program’s operational mission threads under USSF-Space’s JCO as announced by the cell’s lead, Ms. Barbara Golf, in late September.

“The TacSRT process has manual components, so we wanted to find ways to move that process faster and make it easier for future operators and warfighters,” Medina said. “We are currently transitioning TacSRT to the JCO and handing them this process, and it requires a high level of information for the operators to understand. If we can automate it that will help them hit the ground running and do things faster, and more efficiently.”

Reflecting on the competition, Medina shared how innovation efforts like Fight Tonight provide an ability to take action and make solutions a reality.

“We spend a lot of time talking about how manual our processes are, and how they could be more efficient,” Medina said. “When I saw the call come out for Fight Tonight, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do something about it instead of just wishing for better. It really promotes a culture of innovation to try and push the limits, and doing things faster and better, which is what the Space Force is all about.”

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SSC Announces Space Projects to Receive Funding from Fight Tonight Competition