The war in Ukraine has not been confined to land, sea and air.
There's also a secretive and important war effort in space.
Intel gathered from satellites has been an important part of
how Ukraine has been able to fight back against Russian
invaders
Space has always been militarized. The dynamic that's
shifting is the weaponization of
space, as our political and military leadership are telling
us it is a warfighting domain.
Private companies have released imagery from their satellites,
which has shown Russian operations and even likely war
crimes all seen from space. And at the forefront of all of this
is the US Space Force.
We've been collaborating with private private industry, you
know, for years now, and certainly we increase that
activity, as the presence of commercial industry increases in
space. Keep in
mind, that's what really provides us for having the edge
over any other country in the world, we really have a great
partnership between our Department of Defense and those
companies who make their own personal investments
private companies like maxar technologies, which takes images
from orbit and SpaceX, which has provided its Starlink space
based broadband system, the future of warfare is in space,
and the Space Force is going to play a big role in how it
unfolds.
The importance of space based assets to Ukraine's preparedness
may have helped tip the balance in favor of Kyiv. In the early
days of the war,
the United States government continues to be a really
critical customer for the space industry, specifically for
different national security services. Beyond providing
rocket launchers for government customers, whether they're
classified or not
any conflict involves space. You know, we use space for satellite
communications and for precision navigation and timing,
certainly, in a conflict that that the United States was
involved in, we would be critical to the joint force
operations,
we now have the ability to with our satellites in our space
capabilities, to identify all the activities that are going on
on the ground. The
space industry also has been increasingly providing other
services such as satellite imagery. A good recent example
is the conflict in Ukraine and a lot of the imagery that we're
seeing out of what's happening on the ground in Ukraine,
whether that's Russian movement troop movement, or that's
Ukrainian military advances.
For example, also, Russia, has said that they have not been
committing war crimes, but yet our satellites, were able to
pick up all the carnage in the actual bodies stone on the side
of the streets that they claimed they had no part of. But yet, we
now are able to see it
different US companies have been providing imagery, sometimes on
an hour by hour basis of situations of interest in
Ukraine.
For decades, there's been a steady drumbeat calling for a
specific US military branch dedicated to space. Until
recently, it was a job for the Air Force,
the creation of the Space Force was not without controversy, as
the United States Air Force already had the US Space Command
underneath it. The Space
Force has around 16,000 Personnel assigned in a budget
of 24 point 5 billion. Compare this to the Air Force which has
over 300,000 airmen on active duty and a budget of 194
billion. We want to maintain
you know, maintain that advantage maintain that free use
of space for US companies to go and operate in the domain safely.
The space Force's main mission is to organize, train and equip
our military forces to be able to deal with our national
security assets in space. So this means both acquiring
satellites, you know, contracting for them to be
designed, built and launched into space, then operating those
satellites, receiving that data and processing it. It's the
ground infrastructure that matters a lot right now, people
might be disappointed that there's not going to be at least
in the moment, a bunch of armed astronauts in weaponized
spacecraft or near around tenting enemies like they might
see in Star Wars or something. But it's really important that
we have the right you know, sensing capabilities,
communications capabilities, anything that goes up and down
from the earth.
As the Space Force mission expands. There have been calls
for a space National Guard as well.
I think really making sure that we have a separate standalone
National Guard Space Force. Section A really allows us to
make sure we deal with the intersection between our
domestic train National Guard and the support they provide for
the warfighters.
The explosion In private space access has been rapid.
One of the primary ways that companies across the space
ecosystem interact with the US Space Force is through different
types of services. One of the most well known ones in high
profile is that of launch services through a variety of
different programs, typically launching different types of
government satellites of all shapes and sizes, whether
they're small satellites that are riding along with rockets,
such as virgin orbit, or Astra or they're much larger
satellites on very expensive missions. For the United Launch
Alliance, which is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed
Martin, or with SpaceX, which are the two main large heavy
rocket Builders here in the United States, at least Space
Systems Command out in Los Angeles as part of the Space
Force really is the front runner in this so there is a
opportunity for new starts and small business mentoring gap and
for example, in my region, commercial space is scheduled to
to grow dramatically over the next decade. And so again, it's
not only good for the economy, and providing jobs, jobs, jobs,
but it's good all the way around for our national defense as
well.
Besides the big household names, as are companies like maxar, and
Hawkeye360, among others are providing important services to
the US government.
These companies continue to both develop their products, as well
as demonstrate to the United States government how they can
provide different services that the government would like to
purchase.
Much like how the Navy keeps Ocean trade lanes open, the
Space Force will help commercial operation storage space junk,
keep track of potential space pitfalls, and provide
information as the use of space becomes even bigger.
The United States government continues to be a really
critical customer for the space industry, specifically for
different national security services beyond providing rocket
launchers for government customers, whether they're
classified or not.
We need to establish international norms where we get
as many countries as possible to sign up to adhere to those
standards and norms like we did with the Geneva Convention. For
conflicts, we need to do that for space. Because there are
there's real implications for the debris, the proliferation of
debris in space,
Russia and China remain a key concern as competitors in the
field of space, space militarization,
China probably has more sophisticated and kind of space
weaponry, or, and they also have more sophisticated space assets.
Generally, they have a lot more at stake in space, they're
investing a lot, but we cannot ignore Russia, obviously. I
mean, they've demonstrated that they are willing to use some
counter space weapons in conflict in Ukraine. These are
weapons that we've tracked for years we knew they had and so
you can't fully ignore Russia in favor of China, you kind of have
to be able to, you know, to deter both
US Space Force is also involved in looking at newer technologies
and how they could fit into the future of the US is national
security apparatus in space. US Space
Force continues to look at different ways that can see the
industry's development, either through different contracts to
small rocket launch companies that are really starting to come
into the fore in terms of providing services to deliver
payloads to orbit or through experimental kind of next
generation programs. One such example would be the rocket
cargo program. That's an idea of using rockets to deliver
payloads and other services from one point on the earth to
another point on the earth and back those different types of
systems offer a capability in which something that would maybe
traditionally fly via very large cargo aircraft, over several
hours or days could be delivered within an hour from one point in
United States to anywhere in the world.
Although new, the Space Force is dedicated to producing its own
culture that furthers warfighting capability in space,
as we separate and we become, you know, not not air minded
airmen like we were in the Air Force, but really thinking about
space power and thinking about the space domain and how to
operate. That's absolutely the culture that we're building
right now.