The Mitchell Institute is advocating that from now on Congress bolster the Space Force's budget by "about $250M a year" and "increase end strength by approximately 200 personnel for the new responsibilities associated with emerging national interests on the moon and the cislunar region."
Germany is not the first European country to join, but as a political and economic center of the continent, Berlin's move could convince several others to follow suit.
Government can’t stop to update systems, so modernization has to happen without interruptions.
"More than 100 lunar missions are planned for this decade alone, including many that are commercial," said Jessica West, of Canada's Project Ploughshares.
The ongoing White House-level review of what is often called "mission authorization and supervision" responsibilities has not been simple, according to several government officials involved, with the key agencies with current legal say over space regulations jockeying for a piece of the regulatory pie.
The White House announcement comes after the FCC indicated it was wading into the murky regulatory waters of space-space services like satellite repair and refueling.
"The space industry is evolving, expanding at an extremely fast pace. As new players come on board the number of risk rises but so does the number of opportunities," said French Ambassador Philippe Étienne.
Breaking Defense Europe will launch May 4 with Tim Martin and Elisabeth Gosselin-Malo as co-editors.
Brig. Gen. John Olson, who advises CSO Gen. Jay Raymond on space logistics issues, believes the US must rapidly act to take the "first mover advantage" for itself to block Chinese ambitions, which could include territorial claims in space.
"As you surely know, there is a lot of emotion in this on both sides of the argument, making it as much political as it is legal," said attorney Henry Hertzfeld of the DARPA plans.
"I just think it's a little too late for trying to have a stamp on something. It is just trying to say that they did something," said veteran space policy wonk Erin Neal.
"The United States Space Force is not going to be sending humans into space for national security purposes anytime soon," Maj. Gen. John Shaw said today.
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.
The RAND report points out that China is second only to the US in the number of military and commercial imagery satellites it operates.
"Military bases and maneuvers are not allowed on the Moon or other celestial bodies, so the ability of the Space Force to defend US commercial activities on the Moon or asteroids is also questionable," said Brian Weeden, director of program planning at Secure World Foundation.