The satellites will need to be defended "not only from adversary kinetic or local orbital issues, but also from cyber attacks, electronic jamming and laser attacks," said Patrick Binning, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering.
Building dynamic space operations concepts will be necessary to force "flexibility," and provide capabilities for "maneuver and surprise" on orbit, the new report by the Mitchell Institute says.
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 US and France recently conducted our first ever bilateral rendezvous and proximity operation to demonstrate combined capabilities in space in the vicinity of a strategic competitor spacecraft," SPACECOM head Gen. Stephen Whiting said today.
On the eve of the third annual Space Mobility Conference here, supporters of Defense Department investment in technologies to enable what SPACECOM calls "dynamic space operations" are facing a recent cooling of near-term interest from senior Space Force officials.
The BRIDGES project is Scout's first with DARPA, but the company's SDA-related software and hardware — including its "plug and play" optical sensor packages designed as hosted payloads — already have caught the eye of Space Force officials.
"I think the US national security community is going to shape commercial space for the foreseeable future," Carissa Bryce Christensen, CEO of BryceTech, told Breaking Defense.
Standoff capability means warfighters stay connected and remain remotely located in a safer environment while making it harder for adversaries to target them.
The Space Force is rushing to meet SPACECOM's demand, developing a new acquisition plan for space "mobility and logistics" — including on-orbit servicing and repair, satellite refueling and space junk cleanup — a plan that will lean heavily on use of commercial capabilities, said SSC's Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy.
"When people like to question the validity or usefulness of this engine, I point them to Wernher von Braun," said Tabitha Dodson, DRACO program manager at DARPA, "because this was more or less his idea."