We must ensure the next war is won, not lost, in space. That starts with acquisition.

During the first two decades of my career as a special operations helicopter pilot, I flew close to the ground keeping a close watch on the enemy and on our forces below. But my successors will need to focus on what’s above them.

Space is now the ultimate high ground in warfighting. Whoever dominates space has a decisive advantage over our adversaries. The recent combat operations in Iran, Ukraine, and Venezuela, where space operations were vital to each and every movement of military forces, have shattered any remaining illusions about space having a secondary role in modern conflict.

Our ability to maintain our advantages in space while denying them to a sophisticated adversary has become a baseline requirement for everything we do in the maritime, air, ground, and cyber domains. But even as America’s space capabilities play a vital role in modern operations, that advantage is not guaranteed, and our comfortable and familiar bureaucratic behaviors are actively putting it at risk. 

As the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, I came to appreciate that my job, and that of my counterparts from the other services, was not to build the world’s best Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Space Force, but rather to build the world’s best joint force. And the single biggest imperative to doing that was securing space superiority. To stay ahead of potential adversaries, the Department of War must accelerate its embrace of a new class of agile, commercially-developed space systems built for speed, resilience, and active orbital operations.

For decades, the national security enterprise relied on “exquisite” space systems: massive, multi-billion-dollar satellites that take years to design and build but are expected to survive passively in orbit for 15 years or more. In the world we face today, these platforms are exceptionally soft targets. If an adversary jams a legacy communications node or destroys a critical observation asset today, replacing that capability takes years. This is a systemic vulnerability we cannot afford.

China understands this vulnerability and is aggressively exploiting it through rapidly proliferated, commercially-derived technologies designed to bypass our traditional advantages. In 2024, the Space Force publicly confirmed five Chinese satellites conducted coordinated proximity maneuvers in low-Earth orbit, described by Space Force Gen. Mike Guetlein as satellite “dogfighting.” Beijing has since demonstrated on-orbit satellite refueling in geostationary orbit, extending the operational life of assets we cannot currently match.

To counter this, the Department of War must urgently pivot. We must normalize a new tier of space capabilities built upon highly resilient, rapid, and mass-proliferated orbital architectures.

True space superiority requires systems capable of active orbital mobility that can maneuver on demand, inspect anomalies in real time, and actively service or physically safeguard our critical infrastructure under fire by firing back. If an adversary disrupts an asset, three more should be ready to launch or reposition immediately. If a satellite loses its maneuvering capability or requires an adjustment, a responsive orbital vehicle must be capable of rendezvous to sustain the mission.

Achieving this level of resilience requires looking beyond the traditional defense industrial base. The legacy prime contractors are masters of the exquisite, but their business models are unsuited for the rapid, iterative hardware production and software-driven agility required for modern space warfighting. The true engine of America’s space advantage lies within the emergent, non-traditional space sector.

A new crop of firms, consisting mostly of venture-backed tech startups populated with the best engineering talent available, view space not as a static laboratory, but as a dynamic and largely untouched canvas for innovation. I’ve been lucky since leaving the Pentagon to get to work with firms like Turion Space and Eutelsat Network Solutions; but there are many out there investing in the infrastructure of situational awareness, rapid response, and orbital mobility we desperately require. 

They operate on commercial timelines and take their cues from broadly-stated operational requirements rather than detailed specifications. They are eager to do business on a fixed-price contracting basis, take technical risks traditional contractors avoid, and are often pursuing commercial advantage alongside the imperatives of national security requirements. Most importantly, they’re leveraging and coupling America’s two greatest competitive advantages: the world’s deepest and most fluid capital markets and the world’s most vibrant innovation culture.

Regrettably, from my vantage point at the Pentagon, I saw the pull of institutional muscle memory towards the familiar and established prime contractors, despite cautionary tales of the last several decades. 

The Space-Based Infrared System, fielded to detect and warn of missile launches around the globe, launched nearly a decade late with a five-fold cost growth. The Advanced Extremely High Frequency constellation was delivered years late, with two Nunn-McCurdy cost breaches along the way. The GPS ground control system program, OCX, was ultimately cancelled after $6.3 billion was spent without ever delivering its core capabilities. Finally, our GPS modernization efforts have stumbled in recent years due to a mismatch between fielding timelines between the satellites themselves and the user terminals intended to leverage the satellites’ advanced capabilities. 

Congress has given acquisition leaders the legislative cover needed to move quickly and take non-traditional contracting paths in the name of speed. Further, the Department of War’s senior leaders have made clear their expectation that “business as usual” is no longer acceptable and a commercial-first approach with its attendant risks is the order of the day. But it takes courage for an acquisition leader to risk their program’s cost, schedule, and performance on a firm other than a traditional supplier with decades of experience and successful (if costly and frequently-delayed) programs under their belts.

This administration deserves great credit for proposing a budget to Congress that provides for the greatest investment growth in space capabilities since the creation of the Space Force. However, if program managers and portfolio acquisition executives don’t take the uncomfortable step of investing in this emergent sector of the space industrial base, private capital will flow elsewhere, the engineering talent resident in these startup firms will disperse, and we’ll lose a generational opportunity to extend our dominance as a joint force.

It’s a management truism that “you get what you inspect, not what you expect.” If program managers are expected to leverage commercially-developed hardware and software through acquisitions tools such as Commercial Solutions Openings and contracts awarded via Other Transactions Authorities, then establishing policies that make these the norm and require justification for more traditional contract pathways could be a mechanism to drive the desired behavioral change. While you never want a one-size-fits-all rule, Congress and the department could work together to find a legal expectation that the newer, too-often-ignored tools, are the first choice, not the last. 

While there will continue to be a need for traditional defense contractors and the expertise they bring to bear, the way to access that expertise simply must change. They have to operate at the speed and with the same incentive models as the emerging defense technology sector. We can no longer afford the status quo when our space superiority is at risk.

I still believe building the world’s best joint force requires resilient fleets of agile, commercially-developed space assets capable of generating active domain awareness and executing responsive operations. The technology exists right now, built and ready in the hands of America’s most innovative companies, waiting only for the Department of War to clear the bureaucratic path and write the contracts. For the sake of the joint force, it is time to get out of their way.

Gen. (Ret) Jim Slife was the 41st Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. He is now an Operating Partner at both Scout Ventures and FTG & Co. Investment Bank, a Senior Principal at Pallas Advisors, and a board member and strategic advisor for a number of defense technology and aerospace firms.