Auria, a major aerospace and defense company headquartered in Colorado Springs, unveiled a flagship tool it has developed to properly train satellite operators. The tool fills a gap identified by a congressional committee as equally critical as the U.S. grapples with increasing competition and possible threats from China.
Space is a crucial part of daily life, although many are unaware of this fact, said Damien DiPippa, CEO of Auria. Many aspects of the final frontier are vulnerable.
“Everyone from Walmart to Amazon cannot do what they do today from a logistics perspective without space resources available,” he said.
This leads to two considerations, one positive and one negative, DiPippa added.
“The positive side is that it opens up so many opportunities across the board. … The flip side is realizing how much risk we face if we don’t protect these space resources,” he said.
People’s lives, finances and national power grids are all tied to the space ecosystem in some way, he said.
Overall, the Space Foundation estimates the space economy is worth about $613 billion, up 7.8% from 2024. But much of that is vulnerable. This was evident in 2007 when China fired an anti-satellite missile and destroyed one of its satellites.
Auria’s BORG (Battlespace Operational Readiness Game) will be on display at a company demonstration day on Thursday, July 9, 2026. The company created the game to simplify training for Space Force Guardians and other space operators who grew up playing video games. (Alex Edwards, The Gazette).
In 2021, the International Space Station had to avoid a debris field created by the Chinese test. Chief of space operations Gen. Chance Saltzman called the test a “pivot point” in China’s space policy, and the country now views space as a belligerent domain.
For China’s military, space superiority is important to establishing information dominance that “would allow it to control the battlefield and gain an operational advantage in wartime,” says the 2025 annual report of the nonpartisan US China Economic and Security Review.
“China’s development and expansion of its space and counterspace strategies and capabilities reflect how the (People’s Liberation Army) can conduct multi-domain precision warfare and target U.S. space assets as a means to deter and counter U.S. military intervention during a regional military conflict,” the report said.
Because of the threats from China, the commission recommended that the Defense Department increase the Space Force’s “capacity to conduct space war games” and find ways to improve the training of Guardians.
Auria has a collection of solutions. One of those is called the Battlespace Operational Readiness Game and was demonstrated during an event on Thursday that showcased several of the capabilities available to commercial and military partners. The company calls it BORG and, according to the company, it is one of three gamified training platforms it has created to improve the skills and decision-making of satellite operators.
Auria’s BORG and the larger ForgePoint training system are “very familiar to our future space warfighters who grew up in a gaming environment,” DiPippa said. “Instead of the previous 300-page manuals, it’s very intuitive. You can pick it up, go through the menus, operate the controllers (and) just operate the system.”
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2026/07/13/colorado-springs-auria-showcases-borg-training-software-meant-to-defend-american-space-interests/
