I believe we are in a window of vulnerability right now relative to China [because] they moved faster into the counter-space weapons than we have. And so, it’s vital for us, and for our acquisition professionals in particular, that the programs that we are funding now to make us more resilient against those threats and to give us capabilities that we need —those must deliver.
“Do we want to expend the limited fuel that that satellite was launched with in order to move it?” We want to be able to drive a satellite around to execute the missions we need, just like you would drive a tank or a ship or an aircraft. But today we’re very limited. And so, we want to think about on-orbit refueling, for example, where we can maneuver that satellite without regret be- cause we know we can get back to a refueling point. Or different kinds of propulsion techniques that would allow us to move across orbital regimes. Today, if we launch something into low-Earth orbit, there’s no way you can get to geosynchronous orbit or vice versa, and we would love to have capabilities that can maneuver between all the orbital regimes. So that’s one bucket of technology classes that we need. The second would be artificial intelligence and machine learning [AI/ML]. Some of our mission areas are very data rich, such as space domain awareness. That’s what we call tracking the 46,000 objects that are on orbit. And, by the way, that number has grown almost 90 percent since Space Command was created just over five years ago. How do we use AI/ML to keep custody of the real objects of concern? We’ve made some progress there, but there’s a lot more we could do. And then the third area would also be cyber defenses. Cyber is the soft underbelly of our space enterprise be- cause, yes, given the threats I highlighted a moment ago, countries can take us on in the domain with things like direct ascent ASAT weapons, but they would rather attack us through cyber because it’s cheaper for them and harder for us to attribute. We still have work to do to harden our cyber defenses so that these global networks that extend out to geosynchronous orbit and beyond are secure from potential cyberattacks. There’s a lot more we could poten- tially talk about regarding technology needs, but those are three I would highlight. Q Shifting gears a little bit, what do you see as SPACE- COM’s priorities in terms of bolstering international and commercial partnerships? A. We like to say that space is a team sport, and by that we mean that no one Command, Service, agency, department,
company, or country can do all that needs to be done in space. So, we have to have these robust partnerships with commercial and international actors as you noted. We actually have various tiers at which we can partner with international organizations and countries and com- mercial agencies. And based on their level of maturity and how robust our relationship is, we can increase that amount of partnership. For international partners, the high- est level of partnership that we have is something called Operation Olympic Defender. This is a named operation that the United States leads with our closest allies in space. And we are working together each and every day in space to ensure that we all can maintain custody of all those objects that I talked about earlier, but also to under- stand the threats that are there and to drive down risks to each of our countries. We just brought on two new coun- tries in the last month or so. France and Germany have now joined the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. And New Zealand is in the process of joining, following their public acceptance of their member- ship invitation in September 2024. So we want to continue to drive that forward and operationalize that for the benefit of all of our countries. On the commercial side, there are multiple ways that we take advantage of our relationships with commercial companies, but at the top of that pyramid would be our Commercial Integration Cell. We as the Department of Defense, or the intelligence community, contract with 15 companies for services—things like satellite communica- tions, launch services, or intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance from space. It’s our job at U.S. Space Command to share threat information at the classified level with these companies so that they know what the threats are in the domain in which they’re operating. And then, conversely, they give us insights into what’s happening to their constellations. There have been instances where the first time we’ve been aware of electromagnetic interference, for example, that is propagating into the domain from the surface of the Earth, comes from one of those companies letting us know. So it’s a wonderful two-way exchange of information that helps us all to operate more effectively in space.
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