Slingshot’s new AI-enabled tool helps Space Force train for satellite ops
Defense startup Slingshot Aerospace has created an artificial intelligence capability that allows the Space Force to train guardians for real-life satellite tactics and maneuvers, the company announced Tuesday.
The Thinking Agent for Logical Operations and Strategy (TALOS) tool is an AI-powered agent able to study and clone various spacecraft operations into a simulated environment of the space domain, according to a Slingshot news release. Members of the Space Force have already tested and used TALOS during training exercises, and the company is now looking at how the technology can assist the service even more.
“TALOS builds upon years of collaboration with the U.S. Space Force’s Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI) and Slingshot’s proven virtual environments,” Slingshot Aerospace CEO Tim Solms said in a statement. “It embeds AI agents that simulate realistic threats, optimize real-world operations, and support mission command decision-making with unprecedented speed and precision.”
The tool was built leveraging Slingshot’s behavior cloning pipeline, which allows AI agents to learn how to perform a task by directly imitating an example from the real world. According to the company, TALOS is geared towards replicating and simulating satellite tactics, including “representative behaviors, space warfare maneuvers and dogfighting strategies.”
“Once assigned a mission, TALOS evaluates its surroundings, reasons through potential strategies and tactics, and executes its objective within a simulated, physics-accurate orbital environment,” a company news release stated.
Although TALOS is relatively new, the Space Force’s 57th Space Aggressor Squadron — the service’s unit that provides simulations of adversary space systems that can be used during training — recently tested the tool during exercises. Guardians used TALOS to create realistic and adaptive simulations of enemy satellites and their behaviors, as well as during the planning phase of the service’s first Space Flag exercise.
As the Space Force undertakes a large effort to build out its training infrastructure under the Operational Test and Training Infrastructure (OTTI) program, service officials have highlighted capabilities like TALOS as important tools for modernization. OTTI is envisioned as a high-fidelity virtual environment that will rely heavily on AI-enabled capabilities that can automatically simulate threats to critical space systems.
