Silent Barker launch
By Theressa Hitchens,
Published by Breaking Defense, 15 December 2025
Interested firms have until Jan. 9 to respond to a Space Force request for information about new wide-field-of-view cameras for a SILENTBARKER replacement constellation.
SPACEPOWER 2025 — The Space Force intends to go solo in developing a follow-on to the classified SILENTBARKER space surveillance constellation currently operated in tandem with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), according to a senior service official.
“The partnership with the NRO today is great and strong, [but we are] working to fully transition that [mission] to the Space Force for the future acquisition,” Col. Brendan Hochstein, commander of Space System Command’s new(ish) Combat Power System Delta (Delta 89), said last week.
“We’re going to leverage what’s on orbit today, lessons learned there, but also what we’re doing on the reconnaissance mission with RG-XX,” he told reporters on the margins of the Space Force Association’s Spacepower 2025 conference.
RG-XX is the Space Force’s moniker for a planned constellation to replace the current Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) neighborhood watch birds. Under the service’s current acquisition strategy, RG-XX satellites will be bought from commercial providers but owned and operated by the Space Force. A draft request for proposals is expected to be released by the end of the year.
Hochstein explained that the Space Force now sees the surveillance and reconnaissance missions as requiring separate assets: surveillance as “scanning the environment;” reconnaissance as “closer in” viewing of specific objects with the aim of “informing the kill chain.”
“So, GSSAP and RG-XX are in that reconnaissance bucket, SILENTBARKER, and whatever follows on SILENTBARKER, is in that surveillance area,” he said.
The two missions, and constellations, are related in that the surveillance birds are used to “tip and cue” the reconnaissance satellites, Hochstein added.
The service on Nov. 26 issued a request for information (RFI) to industry for a “wide field of view” optical sensor that would equip the SILENTBARKER follow-on satellites, giving interested vendors until Jan. 9 to respond.
Neither Hochstein nor the RFI provided details about the planned constellation, like how many satellites are envisioned. The number of SILENTBARKER birds stationed in geosynchronous Earth orbit is classified, although the NRO has acknowledged that there is more than one.
However, the RFI did reveal that the new cameras should be capable of “detecting resident space objects at 14.5 visual magnitude with special interest in sensors capable of detection at 16+ visual magnitude.”
Somewhat confusingly, the higher a visual magnitude, the dimmer the object. Dimmer objects are harder for telescopes to spot — and experimentation by Russia and China with reducing satellite magnitude has been worrying Space Force leaders.
Indeed, in what may or may not be a coincidence, Russia on Sept. 13 lofted a new experimental satellite, called Mozhayets-6, with a 16.5 magnitude that Slingshot Aerospace said remained elusive to the Space Force’s network for about five weeks until it was found by private space monitoring firm.
See: Original Article
