The US Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and a consortium of tech firms led by Raytheon are modernizing and simplifying the legacy Space Defense Operations Center, a 1990s-era system that tracks and monitors space debris. The SPADOC system has reached the end of its planned service life. The US Air Force is planning to replace it with modern systems that will simplify operations and provide greater space situational awareness and collision avoidance capabilities.

Raytheon and AFLCMC decided to emulate SPADOC’s capabilities with modern computer hardware. The new emulated environment, SPADOC Emulation Analysis Risk Reduction, known as SPEARR, is designed to provide a more sustainable system that requires less maintenance. The new hardware will provide the same functionality as today’s system, making it easy to learn and operate. Additional benefits are significant reductions in power and cooling consumption. Most of these reductions are because all of SPADOC’s capabilities are now integrated into two small server racks instead of spread over 1,000 square feet of an aging, analog computer system.