SPACECOM's releases today characterize Operation Olympic Defender as "a multinational effort that focuses to optimize space operations, improve mission assurance, enhance resilience of space-based systems, synchronize efforts to strengthen deterrence against hostile actors and reduce the spread of debris orbiting the Earth."
The proposed framework is based on adapting the risk-based approach the international air traffic control system uses to manage airspace to prevent planes from colliding, said Kevin Toner, vice president of MITRE's Center for Government Effectiveness and Modernization.
It's been a whirlwind of a year — and the defense establishment has plenty of thoughts on how it's unfolded and what might come next.
The SPACECOM list includes almost $704 million for three unnamed classified programs, as well as $90 million to fund a trio of classified Navy electronic warfare-based "counterspace" capabilities.
"It's not going to be like a 'boom' milestone delivery where one day there's nothing and the next day, there's a finished system," Richard DalBello, director of the Office of Space Commerce, said of the swap from DoD to Commerce.
"This oversight regime will balance economic competitiveness together with safety, security, sustainability, and responsibility," states the new United States Novel Space Activities Authorization and Supervision Framework.
The Biden administration's plan came, in part, in response to a different congressional proposal about how to divvy up heavenly authorities, sources told Breaking Defense.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
"Big software developments fail," said Air Force space acquisition czar Frank Calvelli. "You have to go to smaller systems."
"Commercial data, commercial processing is not classified. It does not matter that the DoD wishes it were," said Barbara Golf, special advisor to Space Systems Command.
"Each nation possesses unique advantages, technological capacities, and strategic geographic positions that, when combined, have the potential to significantly advance humanity's understanding of what's going on in space," the paper says.
There is growing concern about what happens when different countries' predictions of an on-orbit collision do not match, said Matt Hejduk, of The Aerospace Corporation. "A man with two watches never knows what time it is," he quipped.
Cyber resilience has become a frontline mission for the US military. Breaking Defense’s new eBook rounds up key reporting from the 2025 Alamo ACE conference with the latest developments in cyber offense and defense.
"Providing space operators with relevant, timely data can help to prevent operational surprise and support efforts to protect and defend space assets," a recent report to Congress on Pentagon space policy and strategy says.
The EU move, which comes in the run up to the final meeting of the UN working group to prevent space threats at the end of the month, brings the number of countries supporting the limited ASAT testing ban up to 35.
IARPA hopes to transition the results of its debris detection and tracking research to the Space Force, NASA and other Defense Department and intelligence agencies.
Russian and Chinese anti-satellite tests are responsible for "pretty much 20 percent" of "conjunction" warnings, that is predictions that two space objects are likely to collide, in 2022, said the State Department's Eric Desautels.