“Deterrence only works if can communicate our capabilities, and we must tell our adversaries what we have waiting if they choose to cross a red line,” says Maj. Gen. Rick Evans.

Maj. Gen. Rick Evans says STRATCOM will have a difficult challenge in identifying which headquarters personnel should transfer to the new SPACECOM when it stands up.

Japan plans to host an American Space Situational Awareness (SSA) sensor payload on their QZSS satellites. American and Japanese officials are expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding by the end of the year.

LinQuest in April began work under a $9.2 million, sole-source contract to “hold the planks for the stand-up” of SPACECOM, working directly with Gen. Raymond and its joint staff directorates.

“We anticipate that adversary nations are unlikely to discriminate between U.S. military satellites and commercial satellites providing services to the U.S. Government, in the event of a conflict,” Defense Secretary nominee Mark Esper told the Senate during his confirmation hearing.

Senate language on the Space Force leaves open the chance that a new administration could walk it back to merely changing the name of Air Force Space Command, says CSIS’s Kaitlyn Johnson.

If the Senate has its way, Gen. John Raymond will lead the new joint US Space Command, the existing Air Force Space Command, and the new Space Force. If this sounds both confusing and daunting, that’s because it is.

SASC wants the Air Force and DoD “to come back to the oversight committee every single month” to explain how they are standing up the new Space Force — if it is finally approved by Congress.

JMS was supposed to revolutionize how the US tracks objects in space. Its billion-dollar bust means the Air Force must revive SPADOC, a widely reviled vestige of the 1980s.

Some 21 years ago I started work at Defense News, working for their brand new editor. Today, the redoubtable Theresa Hitchens, space pundit, NATO and nuclear war expert, former UN diplomat, and my longtime colleague joins Breaking Defense to report on space. Theresa will add the rest of Air Force under her wing over the… Keep reading →