The U.S. Space Force confirmed on September 15 that it is letting SpaceX decide how many satellites the $2.29 billion Space Data Network Backbone will carry and how they will be arranged in orbit. The service set high-level performance requirements and handed vehicle design and orbital plane distribution to the contractor. “The SDN Backbone leverages the best of commercial innovation and delivers a strong foundation for the SDN mission set,” said Col. Ryan Frazier, the acting Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Space-Based Sensing and Targeting. The first person to hold the Chief Architect Officer job for the Space Force and the Air Force takes the MilSat Symposium stage at Silicon Valley Space Week in October.
Preston Dunlap is Founder and Managing Partner of Arkenstone Capital. He was the first Chief Architect Officer of the U.S. Space Force and Air Force and its first Chief Technology Officer, a role that carried oversight of $75 billion in products. As a senior Pentagon official he oversaw investment committee strategy across more than $750 billion a year in national security spending, and he initiated over $250 billion in new defense programs under four Secretaries of Defense, among them the B-21 bomber and Joint All-Domain Command and Control. He led the Department of Defense Nuclear Enterprise Review alongside the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. He holds a master’s degree in operations research from George Mason University and bachelor’s degrees in computer science and political science from Duke University, and he was a Harvard National Security Executive Fellow. He moderated a session on multi-domain space operations at the 2024 MilSat Symposium.
The program frames the session around execution and concentration, on the premise that the budget has already made the mesh decision. The terms show the shape of the arrangement. The Backbone, formerly called MILNET, is a proliferated low Earth orbit transport layer of more than 480 satellites built on SpaceX’s Starshield line, owned by the government and operated by the contractor. It was awarded in May under an Other Transaction Authority delivery order and is due as a fully operational prototype by the end of 2027, and it is meant to work alongside the Space Development Agency’s Transport Layer tranches one and two as a hybrid mesh. The Space Force also plans to zero out future Transport Layer funding in fiscal 2027 and to meet the Tranche 3 requirement with the Backbone instead. That is the arrangement the session puts as a question, in the program’s own terms: backbone, or single point of failure. SatNews reported in April that the industry has built roughly a tenth of the optical ground stations it needs, against the Golden Dome program the Backbone is meant to support.
Dunlap moderates “The Space Data Network: Backbone or Single Point of Failure?” on Wednesday, October 28, from 3:15 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Hahn Auditorium at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The other panelists are Michael Geist, Senior Vice President of Strategy, Innovation and Growth at SES Space & Defense; Dr. Rajeev Gopal, Vice President of Advanced Programs in the Defense Division at Hughes Network Systems; Dr. Lucy Hoag, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Violet Labs; John Malsbury, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of AnySignal; and Jim Scott, Chief Strategy Officer at US Electrodynamics. The session follows Col. Timothy Trimailo’s fireside interview on space superiority and the commercial question, and after a break the room turns to buy versus build in the Space Force budget.
Silicon Valley Space Week runs Tuesday, October 27 through Thursday, October 29 at the Computer History Museum, with Satellite Innovation across the first two days and the MilSat Symposium across the last two. Dunlap’s panel comes mid-afternoon on the symposium’s opening day. The delivery order was awarded in May, and the fully operational prototype is due by the end of 2027.
Hughes, AnySignal and US Electrodynamics, whose executives are among the panelists, are sponsors of Silicon Valley Space Week, which SatNews produces.
