TacSat-5 is a planned fifth satellite in a series of U.S. military reconnaissance satellites. The project will be managed by the Air Force Research Laboratory in cooperation with the Operationally Responsive Space Office of the Department of Defense.^[1] The TacSat satellites are all designed to demonstrate the ability to provide real-time data collected from space to combatant commanders in the field.

In January 2009, AFRL released a Broad Agency Announcement for the development of TacSat-5. At that time, the mission still had not been specified and the bus was to be developed based on AFRL's Plug-and-Play avionics standards.^[2]