Space Force to issue cislunar RFIs and field capabilities by 2029

Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the Space Force portfolio acquisition executive for advanced programs, said Monday at the Space Industry Days conference in Los Angeles that the service wants cislunar capabilities fielded by the end of fiscal 2029 and will soon issue two requests for information for commercially available technology. Purdy announced the two requests at the conference as part of a shift toward buying working kit rather than funding long research and development. The service wants capabilities fielded by the end of fiscal 2029 and is looking for non-development solutions with evidence behind them.

The first request for information, expected soon, will seek commercial technology ready for foundational cislunar missions including space domain awareness and positioning, navigation and timing. The second request for information, expected alongside or shortly after the first, will seek artificial intelligence software for autonomous spacecraft operations between Earth and the Moon and ask industry about advanced AI capabilities.

Purdy said the reason for new urgency is that China is moving out in cislunar while the United States has traditionally not. He made the comment at the Space Industry Days conference in Los Angeles while explaining why senior Defense Department leaders now back a full-court press to advance U.S. military interests in cislunar space and on the Moon. The Office of the Secretary of Defense is launching a series of interagency policy working groups on cislunar issues.

The Space Force wants working kit fielded by the fourth quarter of 2029 and will not pay research and development dollars for the effort. It seeks existing commercial or near-commercial non-development solutions with evidence behind them. Purdy did not disclose the total funding needed or detail the specific requirements on the cislunar unfunded requirements list.

The Space Force is working closely with NASA to coordinate infrastructure plans rather than build separate systems and aims to build a unified architecture across the government. Purdy said his office is looking at where NASA is investing and figuring out what gaps the Space Force can invest in, while the Cislunar Coordination Office gives industry a clearer signal of the military’s needs.

The Space Force’s Cislunar Coordination Office, established in May, gives industry a clearer signal of the military’s needs. Purdy said cislunar had been a particularly onerous and bad area where the military gave no indicator to industry, so industry had not done much except what interested it, and his office helps provide funds and support rather than overseeing all cislunar operations. The Cislunar Coordination Office helps provide funds and support to the wider Space Force effort, while requirements and acquisition teams remain responsible for defining mission needs and procuring capabilities.

The Cislunar Coordination Office is refining a nascent cislunar roadmap with mission area strategies for lunar time, space domain awareness and communications, plus a list of emergency unfunded requirements.

The service aims to move from planning into deployment of initial cislunar space domain awareness sensors by 2028. Ainsworth noted the service is codifying requirements into the Objective Force document, and the Space Force identifies space domain awareness in the cislunar region as a top priority as NASA’s Artemis II crewed mission approaches and commercial lunar lander activity surges.

Thomas Ainsworth, performing duties of Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, said on March 17 at the McAleese Defense Programs Conference that the Space Force needs to begin integrating cislunar capability and will stand up leadership positions and integration points. He said the goal is to be a good partner to NASA and to leverage cislunar capability development happening in pockets throughout the Pentagon’s innovation ecosystem. Ainsworth said the Space Force’s Objective Force roadmap for systems, infrastructure and personnel needed over the next 15 years factors in cislunar capabilities.

The Space Force in January 2026 established two portfolio acquisition executives under an acquisition transformation strategy and announced four more portfolios: Infrastructure, Battle Management Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, satellite communications and PNT, and missile warning and tracking. Ainsworth announced the four portfolio acquisition executives during his McAleese speech, and the service plans to announce at least three more, including one focused on integrating technology from DARPA, the Space Rapid Capabilities Office and the Defense Innovation Unit. Ainsworth said the service has recognized that tech pushes from the innovation ecosystem sometimes lead to brand-new missions or fundamentally change how the service pursues capabilities, and the integration portfolio acquisition executive is looking for a tech push path to bring in new technology as it develops.

A January 2026 executive order named Ensuring American Space Superiority mandated the Defense Department to establish capabilities for detecting and countering threats within the cislunar regime. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said on Feb. 24 that the executive order’s mention of cislunar operations is significant and helps with resources. Saltzman told reporters that as U.S. interests go further into space there will be a need to protect and defend those interests, and he does not want to get caught flat-footed when the service starts to have to protect U.S. interests in cislunar space. The U.S. military’s space responsibilities extend from very low-Earth orbit to cislunar under the order, which calls for more investment in deep-space navigation capabilities.

An Air Force Research Laboratory primer describes cislunar space as extending beyond geosynchronous orbit to the moon and areas influenced by Earth and lunar gravity, spanning hundreds of thousands of kilometers and 1,728 times the volume within geosynchronous orbit.

The Air Force Research Laboratory, SpaceWERX and DARPA have been experimenting with cislunar technologies, albeit in a vacuum. Purdy said those research organizations have been working passionately on the mission area but got no love from the broader community as the military focused on terrestrial support warfighting activity, and that has now changed with senior Defense Department leaders backing a full-court press. The Space Force considered cislunar only a potential future military arena.

Payload reported on Oct. 19 that EraDrive, a Palo Alto startup, won a $13 million Defense Department award under which the Space Force will buy an undisclosed number of Era-Node vision-based autonomy modules. Over the past two years, EraDrive has flown at least seven experiments of its Era-Core autonomous software on NASA’s Starling satellites to identify and track moving targets and cue other satellites.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “[whoever] controls subsea and cislunar is going to destroy and control the next fight.”