"We're trying to monitor the space environment — actively monitoring, actively looking, always on, if you like — through space to pick up activity, to pick up changes in plan, behaviors or patterns of life," explained Stewart Bain, CEO of North Star Earth & Space.
"This is a full-on disaster," said one senior industry executive close to the effort. "It means no change from the status quo, which will ultimately harm US leadership in space."
Explore how networked warfare, AI, and 3D-printed drones are reshaping US Indo-Pacific strategy.
"It's mostly a bunch of backward-looking colonels at DoD" causing the problems, said one industry source, "not the IC."
House appropriators rejected Trump's plan to put satellite regulation under the Commerce Department and chide Secretary Wilbur Ross for his refusal to testify on the 2020 budget request.
The Air Force can't regulate civilian satellites. The White House wants the Commerce Department to do it. But Democrats say FAA.
Industry officials say there remain strong pockets of resistance to any new regulations, especially among aggressive space startups.
As aircraft shrink, threats expand, and technology accelerates, aircraft engines must iterate along with the threats.