HUNTSVILLE, Ala.—There are less than four months left in the year, but defense and aerospace company Arcfield’s plans seem to just be getting started, as they prepare for an upcoming satellite launch and explore manufacturing a highly specialized component key for optical sensors and laser communications.
“There's a lot going on at Arcfield. And what we're really focused on is bringing the government a fully-baked solution,” Dan Knight, Arcfield’s vice president for Golden Dome initiatives and strategy, told Defense One at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala., last week. “Instead of saying, ‘Hey, I'm the one-trick wonder that just does sensors,’ or ‘I'm the one-trick wonder that just does architecture,’ we leverage all of our expertise across our organization to bring something that can be easily integrated and operationalized.”
Arcfield is planning to test several sensors in the coming months, and its subsidiary, Orion Space Solutions, expects to launch a very low earth orbit, or VLEO, satellite in September.
“You launch it up to the International Space Station. One of the astronauts up there takes it out, puts it in like a little Pez dispenser, and drops it down into very low Earth orbit,” Knight said. “There's a lot of sensing that happens in the ionosphere with this particular satellite—and some communications packages and other things.”
Knight said the company is forging geostationary orbit satellite plans for 2027 on top of supporting Golden Dome with mission engineering.
“We have a long history of [low-Earth orbit] satellites. We're building a GEO refueler so that the Space Force can maneuver without regret…and then we do optical and [high frequency] sensors,” Knight said, speaking about missile warning and tracking.
The company also wants to scale its manufacturing ability for a very special type of glass.
“We want to get into the manufacturing business of something called an etalon. And you're like, I've never heard the word etalon in my life!” Knight said with a laugh. “It's a highly polished piece of glass. And it's needed for a variety of optical applications—so laser communications, very precise telescopes, and very, very sophisticated optical sensors like the ones we build.”
The move comes as the U.S. military increasingly relies on sensors to garner intel, improve navigation, and fuel autonomy, all while the White House pushes for domestic manufacturing of national security technologies.
“There's a backlog based on our foreign suppliers. We really want to get that investment from the government, which is what they've said they want to do, and get that online so that we can provide etalons for the defense industrial base,” Knight said, referring to working with the Pentagon’s Manufacturing Technology, or ManTech, program.
Arcfield already makes etalons for its products but expansion would support internal growth and the industrial base overall, Knight said. The company has conducted demos and submitted a white paper to start the process with hopes of getting government funding to help build out its manufacturing capacity for a larger scale.
“We want to expand our manufacturing line for our optical sensor…and within that, that's going to require a fairly significant expansion of the etalon production. We can't [rely] on a company in Canada that produces it,” he said.
A space-age name change. The German air force, Luftwaffe, officially changed its English name translation to the German Air and Space Force, said Maj. Gen. Michael Traut, who leads Germany’s Space Command.
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Bonus round: NORTHCOM keeps eye on security needs for power generation and increasingly electrified military systems and command and control centers, said Lt. Gen. Joseph Jarrard, the command’s deputy commander.