“[A]dversaries could track the movements of U.S. and allied military equipment, detecting patterns of training and operations; hyperspectral imaging can identify chemical compositions; short-wavelength infrared imaging can see through clouds; and SAR sensors can image at night. When determining risks to national security, one can define it as the risk of being seen or detected.”

Innovators who put forward the most promising white papers will be invited to pitch their idea to officials representing not only the Army but the other services, the joint Combatant Commands, and independent organizations like the Missile Defense Agency.

“Deterrence only works if can communicate our capabilities, and we must tell our adversaries what we have waiting if they choose to cross a red line,” says Maj. Gen. Rick Evans.

Such smallsat payloads, hosted on commercial satellites, are an important piece of the Army’s evolving concept of Multi-Domain Operations, which seeks to combine efforts on land, the sea, air, space, and cyberspace to defeat sophisticated adversaries such as Russia and China.

Maj. Gen. Rick Evans says STRATCOM will have a difficult challenge in identifying which headquarters personnel should transfer to the new SPACECOM when it stands up.

“Real-time tasking and receiving data is going to b the future,” Capella CEO Payam Banazadeh says. “Over time every single remote sensing company will go this direction.”