WASHINGTON: After two years of major upheaval and reorganization in America’s military space apparatus, how’s everyone feeling?
That was the simple, central question we set out to answer when we launched the Breaking Defense Space Survey in late summer. We asked a collection of related questions, trying to gather a sense of where experts are on topics such as the greatest threats to America’s space ambitions, the growing role of the Space Force, and what space capabilities need the most investment going forward.
All told, almost 500 space professionals responded to the poll. A third of the respondents identified themselves as being in military or government, while two-thirds identified themselves as defense/space industry or government contractors. Thirty-five percent identified themselves as an “Executive, Senior Management, Director, or equivalent,” with another 27% identifying themselves as “Manager, Program Manager, Technical Manager or equivalent.”
To top it all off, we convened a roundtable of four experts — Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation, Makena Young of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Rosalind Lewis of Aerospace Corp and Breaking Defense’s own space expert, Theresa Hitchens — to help us sum up the findings and weigh in with their own observations.
The following is the full, hour-length discussion, which unsurprisingly covered a wide variety of topics — although it was recorded before Russia launched a highly-publicized anti-satellite test that, we expect, may upend the results for the 2022 edition. To see articles, breakout clips and special graphics related to the findings, please click here.