Theresa Hitchens is the Senior reporter, Space at Breaking Defense. The former Defense News editor was a senior research associate at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). Before that, she spent six years in Geneva, Switzerland as director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).
A sci-fi geek, voracious reader, enthusiastic cook, dabbler in poetry, Theresa is also the proud mom of a wonderful young man by the name of Nicholas.
Space Systems Command's new Commercial Space Marketplace for Innovation and Collaboration (COSMIC) facility in Chantilly, Virg., will serve as the "physical headquarters" for the SSC Commercial Space Office.
Of military to military relations with China, the US is "ready to talk when you're ready to talk," White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said today in a speech to the Arms Control Association.
As threats rapidly evolve, digital engineering, manufacturing capacity and robust supply chains are critical to meeting challenges.
Gen. Daniel Hokanson said his "best military advice" is instead "to transfer the current Air National Guard units doing the space mission into a National Guard component for the Space Force, so they can continue everything they're doing today tomorrow."
The Space Force's newest operational unit, Delta 15 stood up in March and that supports Space Command's "protect and defend" mission, will be based at Schriever SFB in Colorado Springs.
By bringing the three mission areas of missile warning, missile defense and space domain awareness under one command as the Global Sensor Manager, USSPACECOM can more effectively integrate and fuse the sensor data for rapid detection, characterization, tracking and dissemination to ensure theaters can defeat any threat,” said Gen. Jim Dickinson, SPACECOM commander.
"Despite the focus on diplomacy and governance and references to 'humanity,' it’s not a warm and fuzzy policy," Jessica West, of Canada's Project Ploughshares, explained. "It is firmly rooted in national interest — which is fair."
The Sixth Domain is not defined by geography. It’s a new kind of conflict in which autonomy and networked systems allow thousand-dollar consumer electronics to destroy multi-million-dollar conventional weapons systems.
Todd Master, Umbra's chief operating officer and a former DARPA official, told Breaking Defense on May 22 that DRIFT "is a legitimately great example of how government can actually advance capability using commercial investments instead of just saying 'leverage commercial' over and over."
“I would probably even argue that metaverse in itself is overplayed. It's a construct. It really is distracting in many cases from what we're trying to achieve," said Michael Torres, chief of digital infrastructure and SpaceVerse at the Space Force's Chief Technology and Innovation Office
The Space Force in May 2020 awarded Northrop Grumman a $2.37 billion contract for the development of the two satellites, which will travel in a highly elliptical orbit crossing over the Earth's poles.
The NRO is planning to award new contracts for commercial satellite imagery, perhaps including that of other satellites, the spy-sat agency's head of commercial operations, Pete Muend, said today.
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
"And make no mistake, distinguishing friendly from unfriendly behavior and space has become particularly important to us," NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth told the GEOINT 2023 conference today.
Responsive launch is enabled by the fact that Draper's hydrogen peroxide fuel is easily storable, Ursa Major CEO Joe Laurienti told Breaking Defense, which cuts down prelaunch logistics — whereas other highly toxic liquid fuels often used to provide the high thrust needed for a missile to reach hypersonic speeds (Mach 5 and above) require special handling.
While there is no formal agreement, NRO and the Space Force have reached an informal accord to each use commercial imagery the other has acquired, and are in discussions about a potential DoD-IC "marketplace" to ease sharing.
For the past 20 years, GAO finds, "missile threats from foreign adversaries have evolved, and MDA has faced persistent challenges as it attempts to keep pace."