The United States Space Force has awarded a contract worth $27 million to Slingshot Aerospace to enhance the training of its personnel, known as Guardians. This initiative leverages Slingshot’s TALOS AI technology, which is designed to simulate adversarial actions during orbital warfare exercises. The AI will respond dynamically to the actions of trainees, creating a more realistic training environment.
Advanced Training Tools for Space Warfare
According to Slingshot Aerospace, the TALOS AI is trained on a comprehensive library of real-world orbital data. This allows the AI to adapt to various scenarios without relying on a fixed script, offering a more flexible training tool. Tim Solms, CEO of Slingshot, described the AI’s capabilities as essential for evolving training needs, stating that it can integrate new algorithms and tools as they become available.
The contract, spanning 18 months, was secured through a Space Force Commercial Solutions Opening (CSO), a procurement method favored by the Defense Innovation Unit for its efficiency. This latest agreement builds on a previous $25 million award from 2022, which allowed the Space Training and Readiness Command to explore TALOS’s potential.
Solms emphasized the importance of this contract, explaining that it serves as a system-of-systems integration program supporting the Space Force Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI). Slingshot will coordinate a team of subcontractors to create a consolidated, classified training environment. The goal is to merge proven tools for Red, White, and Blue cell training into a unified solution, enabling Guardians to engage in realistic scenarios.
Innovative AI for Realistic Simulation
TALOS, launched in July 2025, aims to replicate satellite behavior in orbit for training and simulation purposes. It is designed to learn and adapt to real-world operations, reflecting changes in the orbital environment. Slingshot claims that TALOS’s effectiveness is enhanced by its access to a vast amount of real-world data. The company tracks approximately 95% of all payload-sized objects across various orbital regimes, from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to extended Geostationary Orbit (xGEO), operating continuously throughout the year.
Solms noted that this extensive tracking capability provides the largest corpus of commercially available astrometric and photometric data. Furthermore, the data set is enriched by numerous derived products, including event detections and photometric fingerprints, which contribute to the AI’s operational realism.
This contract marks a significant step in modernizing military training for space operations, reflecting the growing importance of advanced technology in defense strategies. As space becomes increasingly contested, innovative training solutions like TALOS will be crucial for preparing the next generation of space guardians.
