DIU got a bucket of cash. Now what?

In a year marked by budget atrophy at NASA, NOAA-OSC, and the Space Force, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) was a notable outlier. The organization, tasked by the Pentagon to accelerate commercial tech adoption across the U.S. military, received a 9x FY24 budget increase from $104M to $946M.

DIU has six core focus areas, one of which is space. In a recent Q&A, DIU Space Portfolio Director Steve “Bucky” Butow emphasized a greater need for scalable commercial solutions and less “exquisite” hardware. DIU has helped to foster tech that went into the Space Development Agency’s pLEO constellation, and has a strong interest in projects that already have private backing.

We suspect that a meaningful portion of DIU’s newfound funding will go towards bolstering existing areas of interest. Some key areas to watch include:

• OTV and fuel depots. Three companies (Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceBilt, formerly Skycorp), received DIU contracts in March to advance Orbital Transfer Vehicles (OTVs) and in-space refueling technologies that can serve commercial and military customers. Notably, DIU expressed a desire for an orbiting fuel depot with chemical and/or electric propellant that was apparently not awarded in that round. We would not be surprised to see a fuel depot program follow these three orders.

• Hypersonic test platforms. Rocket Lab, in partnership with Australian startup Hypersonix, and Fenix Space, a California startup, are developing low-cost hypersonic test platforms for DIU’s Hypersonic and High-Cadence Airborne Testing Capabilities (HyCAT) program. Last year DIU expanded HyCAT to include experimental cruise flight systems from Hermeus and Innoveering, a GE Aerospace company. Given DoD concern about a paucity of U.S. hypersonics capabilities, this area is likely to see increased attention.

• Responsive launch. In February, Firefly completed DIU’s Victus Nox mission by launching a Millennium Space satellite within 24 hours’ notice. DIU’s next responsive space mission, Victus Haze, sets up a more audacious test of rendezvous and proximity operations by Rocket Lab and True Anomaly. With a larger budget, will DIU go for a hat trick?

• Satcom networking. DoD already uses a lot of connectivity, but much of the gear is specialized, requiring lots of disparate radios and hardware. DIU has been striving to advance a connected battlespace, where comms are seamless across systems (government and commercial). Tighter integration between these networks, and between orbits, is a probable focus of continued investment.

SOURCE: https://spacenews.com/diu-helps-orchestrate-pentagon-innovation-enterprise/