Douglas A. Macgregor's Blog, page 7

SPACECOM discussing expansion of joint space monitoring missions with allies

AFA 2025 — US Space Command (SPACECOM) is planning a second space domain awareness mission with France, after recently completing a similar mission with the United Kingdom, according to a senior Space Force official.

It also is in early discussions about similar missions with other allied partners in the Multinational Force Operation Olympic Defender, Lt. Gen. Douglas Schiess, who is dual-hatted as head of Space Forces-Space command and SPACECOM’s Combined Joint Forces Space Component Command, said today.

“We’re not in the planning phase for [any new missions beyond that with France], but I can see that that there will be others,” he said.

Operation Olympic Defender largely serves as a combined space operations planning cell, involving six US allies: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Its focus is to “optimize space operations, improve mission assurance, enhance resilience of space-based systems, synchronize efforts to strengthen deterrence against hostile actors and reduce the spread of debris orbiting the Earth,” according to a SPACECOM fact sheet.

However, Schiess told reporters during the annual Air and Space Forces Association conference in National Harbor, Md., that SPACECOM Commander Gen. Stephen Whiting has been pushing to move “beyond just planning and working together” into actual “operations” — starting with keeping collective eyes on the heavens.

The first bilateral mission was held with France and involved a rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO) in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), he said.

A Space Force spokesperson said the joint operation happened during “the last quarter of 2024.”

SPACECOM announced on Sept. 18 that it had successfully completed a similar RPO mission with UK Space Command. That demonstration “repositioned a U.S. satellite to examine a U.K. satellite and assure our ally of its nominal operation in orbit,” the release said.

Schiess would not elaborate on the US satellites used in either operation.

That said, the Space Force operates the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) constellation for keeping eyes on adversary satellites in GEO, and also has orbited experimental RPO satellites in low Earth orbit under its Tactically Responsive Space (TacRS) program series of Victus satellites.

The exact nature of the follow-up mission with France and its timing are still up in the air as the two sides work out planning, Schiess said.

France has been working on development of small satellites for GEO surveillance through the experimental Yoda program. In August, France’s Space Command signed an agreement worth 50 million Euro (about $58 million) with Infinite Orbits for a micro-satellite mission in GEO, called Paladin, for launch in 2027.

Back to Key West: The Army must own air base defense, not chase Air Force missions

The 1948 Key West Agreement resolved postwar interservice rivalries by assigning clear roles: The Army is responsible for land combat, including ground-based air defense to protect troops and bases, while the Air Force handles air superiority, strategic bombing, and deep strikes. Refined by the 1956 Wilson Memorandum, this framework aimed to eliminate redundancy and boost efficiency.

With the Army kicking off its “Army Transformation Initiative” with big changes, now is the perfect time for an updated version of the Key West Agreement to be hashed out. And among other key issues, such as who controls space assets, a final decision should result in the Army abandoning its push for long-range strike systems, such as the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), and the vague, undefined in joint doctrine “Air Littoral” concept, which directly encroaches on Air Force functions.

Instead, the Army must prioritize its critical air base defense mission to ensure joint readiness against hypersonic missiles and small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), thereby freeing the underfunded Air Force to secure air dominance.

The Army’s Long-Range Precision Fires program, developing hypersonic weapons and LRHW, targets enemy air defenses and command nodes —missions the Air Force has executed since 1948. Former Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville pitched these types of capabilities as cost-effective, citing Gulf War Apache strikes as historic evidence. Yet this overlooks the Air Force’s decisive F-117 missions and the extensive employment of Navy Tomahawk missiles, which, combined with other air campaign elements, crushed Iraqi defenses and defeated Saddam’s military.

Prior to the mid-2000s, the US Army integrated short-range air defense (SHORAD) to protect maneuver forces from low-altitude threats. However, as US Army Air Defense Artillery Capt. Leopoldo Negrete explained two years ago, the absence of significant fixed-wing or rotary-wing threats during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq shifted the Army’s focus to point-defense systems like the Patriot, reducing air defense support for mobile ground units.

The Army’s encroachment on Air Force missions at the expense of air defense is a strategic error that wastes money, particularly against China’s DF-26 missiles, which have a 4,000-kilometer range and are capable of targeting Guam. Further, China’s 2024 exercises showcased drone swarms threatening airfields, underscoring the need for a robust Army air defense presence to protect bases like Andersen Air Force Base. Beyond China, the conflict in Ukraine highlights the potential threat posed by Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and Orlan-10 drones, which have been used in Ukraine for swarm attacks. Ukraine’s 10,000 drone types and thousands lost monthly highlight the scale of modern air threats.

The Army’s Patriot and THAAD systems are critical for joint base protection, but funding lags as deep-strike programs dominate. Shifting air defense to the Air Force would strain its budget, which has been below 25 percent of the Department of Defense total since 1992, with over $50 billion in annual pass-throughs for programs completely outside the Air Force budget. As David Deptula and Mark Gunzinger note, adding ground defense would divert funds from B-21 bombers, F-35 fighters, and E-7 aircraft, all of which are needed to recapitalize the Air Force and secure future air superiority for joint force operations.

This is not to say that long-range strike systems like LRHW do not have a role to play in layered deterrence, complementing the Air Force’s and Navy’s capabilities. LRHW 400-mile range enables rapid, land-based strikes in contested areas, such as the Pacific, supporting joint operations without relying solely on air or sea platforms that could be employed elsewhere to exploit their inherent mobility and flexibility.

However, Army deep-strike systems lack the Air Force’s stealth and flexibility, and fixed-site missiles are vulnerable to preemptive strikes. The Army should continue to explore these long-range strike capabilities, but should not pursue them at the expense of its core Key West air base defense mission.

Underfunding base defense capabilities such as Patriot, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), and other emerging air defense systems risks leaving joint bases vulnerable, undermining the platforms—Air Force jets and Navy ships—that LRHW purports to complement. Nor should these programs be transferred to the Air Force, as such programs would overburden the Air Force’s already-strained budget and dilute its rightful focus on air superiority.

Anti-Doctrinal Distraction: The Air Littoral

Another aspect that needs to be sorted out between the services is the Army’s “Air Littoral” concept, which aims to achieve dominance in low-altitude airspace (from the surface to several thousand feet) for Army aviation and small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS). This redundant, fabricated “subdomain,” supposedly dominated by “drones,” blurs lines with Air Force roles like air superiority and close air support, risking confusion with naval “littoral” terminology. Lacking doctrinal clarity—and not an approved term in the U.S. military—it diverts resources from air defense.

Proponents argue that it reflects the complexity of multi-domain warfare, as seen in Ukraine’s frustrating air and ground operations. However, air superiority, accomplished through defended airfields, solves the stalemate unfolding between Ukraine and Russia. Desert Storm showcased joint strength through specialization: Army ground forces, Air Force air dominance, and Navy sea control. Unnecessary overlap fosters friction, not synergy.

The Army’s cancellation of a $2 billion reconnaissance helicopter and rapid buy of 600 Coyote counter-UAS systems show it’s learning from Ukraine, as George noted in 2024: “Aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed.” The air littoral notion, while acknowledging UAS threats, is entirely unnecessary, as established doctrine already addresses the issue of control over low-altitude airspace. The Army would be better served focusing on securing air bases in the Pacific, and allowing codified airspace management procedures to counter sUAS threats in the air, by exception.

Some argue that deep-strike and air littoral roles enhance Army relevance in multi-domain warfare. However, that overlooks the fact that the Army excels in several key missions it undertakes — indeed, the service is vital to how the US conducts integrated operations. No one doubts that the US Army is ready to stand up and defend its country in any way possible. 

But not duplicating missions already assigned to other services will allow the Army to focus on its important core competencies. The Army’s strength lies in ground-based defense, complemented by new long-range strike capabilities, such as the LRHW. Programs like Directed Energy Maneuver-SHORAD lasers and Patriot can counter evolving aerial threats, protecting both maneuver forces and airbases. By focusing on service-specific discrete roles rather than pursuing duplicative new capabilities, the Army can remain relevant as a critical enabler to the joint force of the future.

The Army must return to its Key West roots: prioritize air base defense while sustaining long-range strike development as a complementary capability. By fully funding Patriot, THAAD, SHORAD, and other emerging air defense and counter-UAS capabilities, the Army could shield joint forces, thereby allowing the Air Force to focus on its core competency — air dominance.

As stated in Congressional testimony by David Deptula, Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, “A dollar spent on duplicative capability comes at the expense of essential capacity or capability elsewhere.”

Congress and the Pentagon should redirect funds from Army long-range fires to air defense, codify roles (Army for primarily ground-based air defense and some complementary long-range strike capability, Air Force for aerial dominance), and stop the redundancies inherent in Army mission overreach that undermine the entire concept of jointness. The strength of joint operations resides in the separateness of the service capabilities.

With China and Russia advancing, an updated Key West roles and missions agreement optimizes joint force operations in the Pacific.

Lt. Col. Grant “SWAT” Georgulis, USAF, is a Master Air Battle Manager and currently assigned as the Deputy Chief of C2 Inspections as part of the Headquarters NORAD and U.S. NORTHCOM Inspector General team. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States Air Force.

Maritime tech startup Blue Water Autonomy, Conrad Shipyard sign deal for USV production

WASHINGTON — Blue Water Autonomy, a maritime tech startup, announced it is partnering with Louisiana-based Conrad Shipyard to assemble the new company’s first class of autonomous ships.

“Conrad is a world-class shipbuilder with proven capability, and this partnership puts us in a position to deliver ships quickly, while demonstrating the expertise and scale of existing U.S. shipbuilding capacity,” said Rylan Hamilton, cofounder of Blue Water Autonomy.

The Boston-based startup, launched earlier this year, was founded by Navy veterans in 2024 and is focused on designing and building unmanned surface vessels en masse.

RELATED: ‘Be uncomfortable’: Navy wants new USV to challenge the ‘status quo’

To date, Blue Water has raised $61 million in Series A funding and recruited senior executives from General Dynamics and Serco.

Conrad Shipyard, which has five facilities along the Gulf Coast, specializes in building steel and aluminum auxiliary ships such as offshore support vessels, tugs, ferries and barges.

“Blue Water Autonomy’s design reflects the kind of forward-looking innovation that U.S. shipbuilders are ready to deliver,” said Cecil Hernandez, president and CEO of Conrad Shipyard. “We’re proud to support this program and help bring autonomous naval capabilities to life with the speed, precision, and craftsmanship we’ve been trusted to deliver for over 75 years across commercial and military shipbuilding.”

Blue Water’s partnership is one in a series of fresh announcements from unmanned surface vessel producers since the Navy hosted industry earlier this year to discuss its new Modular Attack Surface Craft program. That program aims to outfit the service’s future fleet with easy-to-produce autonomous surface vessels that can be equipped with a variety of payloads.

Since that industry day, companies such as Senesco Marine, BlackSea Technologies and shipbuilding giant HII have all unveiled new unmanned vessels and partnership agreements, either ostensibly or explicitly aimed at capturing a piece of the Navy’s pending program of record.

About that ‘tension’ with Qatar, and refueling on orbit: AFA day 3 [Video]

As the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference comes to a close, Breaking Defense’s Lee Ferran and Michael Marrow dive into new details about Israel’s strike targeting Hamas in Doha and another bit of news that could change the way satellites move in space.

Make sure to check out our full conference coverage and our multimedia page for daily video roundups and photos from the show.

Day 3 of AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference [Photos]

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

The Air and Space Forces Association wound down its 2025 Air, Space & Cyber Conference on Wednesday with several more panels on air and space superiority, missiles (and missile defense), military families and more.

Check out scenes from the third day of the AFA trade show, and catch up on the rest of our conference coverage here.

Attendees traverse the show floor on the final day of the conference, Sept. 24, 2025. (Daniel Woolfolk/Breaking Defense)Embraer aims to convince the Air Force that its C-390, shown in miniature on Sept. 24, 2025, could be a boon to the service’s airlift fleet. (Daniel Woolfolk/Breaking Defense) Could you fly Embraer’s C-390? (Daniel Woolfolk/Breaking Defense)J.P. Nauseef, president and chief executive officer of JobsOhio, speaks during the conference, Sept. 24, 2025. (Jud McCrehin/Air & Space Forces Association)The Tactical Combat Training System Increment II connects live aircraft to a simulator in training, allowing remote troops to practice in real-world conditions. (Rachel Cohen/Breaking Defense)An L3Harris graphic at AFA 2025 explains how overlapping satellite- and terrestrial-based capabilities can be used for next-gen C2. (Breaking Defense)

CCA update: Air Force expects early contracts for second iteration in ‘months’

AFA 2025 — The US Air Force is aiming to award “concept refinement” contracts for the second iteration of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program in early fiscal 2026, an Air Force official said today.

Over 20 different vendors were solicited for the early stage in the second round of the service’s drone wingman program, Col. Timothy Helfrich, who directs the Air Force’s Agile Development Office, told a small group of reporters on the sidelines of the Air and Space Forces Association conference.

The service intends to winnow that pool down to a smaller number of vendors, Helfrich said, with the intent to put “several” on contract. “The exact number will be dependent on several factors,” he added, with contracts expected “within the next few months.”

Questions have lingered around the second CCA round, or “increment,” following a plan announced by Air Force officials under the Biden administration to kick off work in FY25. Helfrich said today that like with Increment 1, the second increment will start with concept refinement, which is roughly equivalent to the technology maturation and risk reduction phase. 

Some Air Force leaders have said that while previous expectations revolved around more exquisite, high-end drones, the forthcoming increment could come in on the “low end” — broadly meaning cheaper and more expendable systems. Helfrich said analysis is still ongoing, leaving the possibility of both low-end and high-end designs. 

Brig. Gen. Jason Voorheis, the Air Force’s program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said that international partnerships could play a role in determining what the service asks of industry for the upcoming increment. 

“With the dynamic of our international partnerships, there could be two separate use cases that drive two separate designs that go forward, maybe not for the USAF, but for USAF and a partner,” he said, speaking alongside Helfrich.

Some requirements for Increment 2 have also firmed up, at least on the propulsion side. Helfrich acknowledged the Air Force recently issued a request for proposals on lower thrust range engine solutions, but he cautioned that shouldn’t be taken as an indication of where the second CCA increment will go. Instead, Helfrich pointed out that the RFP was targeted at a segment of the engine market that doesn’t readily have offerings off the shelf.

“We saw that there was an area we needed to make investment together in the small area. So that’s where we’re making that investment,” he said.

The Air Force’s first CCA increment is currently underway, where General Atomics’s YFQ-42A and Anduril’s YFQ-44A are facing off for the rights to supply the drone platform.

RELATED: ‘I don’t see it’: Before their CCA drones even take to the air, Anduril and General Atomics trade shots

A parallel effort is working in tandem to field the autonomous software for the unmanned wingmen, which will now pair an autonomy suite developed by RTX with the YFQ-42A and another developed by Shield AI that will fly the YFQ-44A, sources told Breaking Defense earlier this week. 

When the Air Force awarded the two companies in April 2024 to build and fly CCA prototypes, senior officials stated at the time that the service could end up awarding CCA production contracts to one or both vendors, or potential additional entrants. Helfrich said a production decision for Increment 1 is still planned for next year, and that the service has “the ability to take multiple vendors into production.”

Autonomy development will essentially continue in parallel, Helfrich said, and isn’t necessarily tied to a specific increment or airframe. 

General Atomics’s YFQ42A made its first flight last month, while Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Monday that Anduril’s YFQ-44A will likely take to the skies for the first time in mid-October.  

Dave Alexander, president of General Atomics’ aeronautics division, told Breaking Defense in an interview that the “Longshot” drone it’s developing under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract could be a “great fit” for Increment 2 depending on how the Air Force’s requirements ultimately shake out.

Lockheed Martin’s secretive Skunk Works unit revealed a new stealth CCA prototype known as Vectis earlier this week, which the company plans to fly by 2027. Although not developed specifically for increment 2, Skunk Works head OJ Sanchez said it could be a “great candidate” if the Air Force needs a highly survivable drone.

Valerie Insinna contributed to this report from a train.

US had ‘no indications’ of surprise Israeli strike on Qatar: Official

AFA 2025 — Air Force officials in the Middle East had “no indications” ahead of time of Israel’s strike against Hamas targets in Qatar, but Washington’s strong military-to-military relationship with Doha moderated some “tension” in the strike’s aftermath, according to a senior Air Force official.

Air Force Central (AFCENT) Commander Lt. Gen. Derek France told reporters that the US didn’t have early technical warnings of the Israeli strike on Sept. 9 because “our surveillance and all our attention was not put on something [like that] that would happen. It wasn’t something that we expected.”

While the US hosts thousands of troops at Al Udeid Air Base and has a range of sophisticated sensing capabilities in the region, “those things are typically focused on Iran and other things where we expect an attack to come from,” he said at the Air and Space Forces Association conference here in National Harbor, Md. (In the aftermath of the strike, President Donald Trump said Israel informed the US of the attack too late to stop it.)

The strike, he added, underscored the “importance of indications and warnings and having the right systems” from space-based to non-traditional sources that can “understand those attacks as they’re happening,” along with the need to communicate and coordinate with Qatari and other US partners in the Gulf. 

France also acknowledged “some tension” between US and Qatari officials in the wake of the strike by America’s closest ally in the Middle East, but said he was “not concerned” it would affect the US military’s ability to access and operate from Qatar.

“Largely speaking, and I’ve seen this throughout my military career, that when you have strong [military-to-military] relationships all the way down through the ranks, that really is an insurance piece against when political tensions go sideways,” Frank said.

Immediately after the attack, Frank said US officials connected with their Qatari counterparts to “talk through” the strike in a way where they could “understand each other, even if there’s tensions there.”

Fewer Russians In Syria

Elsewhere in his talk, France discussed another geopolitical hotspot in the region: Syria. Following the collapse of the Assad regime, France said Russia still has an interest in retaining a foothold in the country, though Moscow’s presence has waned considerably.

“Previously, the Russian presence was robust, and it was one of our concerns, both on the ground, in the air, how they influenced the regime,” he said.

But following the surprising and rapid fall of former President Bashar al-Assad in December and rise of new governance in Syria, Moscow has “really ratcheted down to just their naval base and their air base there, and we don’t see a large amount of activity out of the Russians,” he added.

Russia directly intervened in the Syrian civil war in 2015 to prop up the Assad regime, leading to frequent encounters with US forces who were in the region to carry out strikes against the terror group ISIS. In 2023 US officials alleged, for example, that a Russian fighter jet damaged a US MQ-9 Reaper drone after firing flares at it, which a previous AFCENT commander called “reckless, unprovoked, and unprofessional behavior.” 

France said today that those encounters with the Russians have substantially subsided, which are lower than the height of activity in years like 2018 and 2019, before some Russian forces had to be pulled to bolster Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It’s a really, really limited footprint right now,” he said.

Despite Assad’s ouster, Russia still has a tenuous connection to its Hmeimim air base in northwest Syria and the Tartus naval base, both on the Mediterranean coast. Frank said today that Russia is “still very interested in keeping some sort of foothold in a warm water port for their own geopolitical, geostrategic interests in doing that, but we don’t see a lot of activity. I think they have an uphill battle certainly with the new regime in doing that.”

Joint Fires Network will complete transition from R&D to acquisition program Oct. 1

AFA 2025 — A key part of the Pentagon’s nascent AI-enhanced command system for future wars, the interservice Joint Fires Network, will complete its evolution from an R&D experiment to a formal acquisition program office on Oct. 1, Maj. Gen. Luke Cropsey told reporters here at the annual Air Force Association conference.

Cropsey heads the Air Force’s Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications, and Battle Management (PEO-C3BM). In its three short years in existence, PEO-C3BM has already taken over more than 50 disparate programs that the Air and Space Forces want to fuse into a single Department of the Air Force Battle Network. As part of that process, the PEO’s Chief of Architecture and Engineering, Bryan Tipton, is studying how to consolidate disjointed, obsolescent or outright redundant systems into a more manageable number of more modern “end-to-end capabilities,” Cropsey said.

“In three months, I should have a draft of our enterprise-wide strategies about how we’re going to converge those stacks,” he added.

These reforms don’t just affect the Air and Space Forces, however, because many of the systems Cropsey manages also carry vital data for the Army, Navy, and Marines as well. That means his PEO has come to play a central role in connecting all the services into a worldwide meta-network known as CJADC2 — and that role is now expanding even further with the PEO’s takeover of the Joint Fires Network project.

Joint Fires Network began in 2019 as an interservice effort to manage the bewildering variety of potential targets and available weapons in a future US-China war. As one official put it, JFN tries to apply AI to the battle planning problem of “who should shoot who?”

To date, JFN’s been run by US Indo-Pacific Command — with extensive input from other commands, armed services, and agencies — under supervision from the Pentagon’s undersecretary of research and engineering (R&E). But, last year, Cropsey announced JFN would transition to a formal acquisition Program of Record (POR) under his program office, moving from R&E’s supervision to the undersecretary of acquisition and sustainment (A&S).

Specifically, Cropsey is standing up “what we’re calling an integrated program office” to run JFN, he said, combining personnel from the Air Force, Navy, Defense Information Systems Agency, and, to a lesser extent, the Army.

“I put a senior colonel out in San Diego as the senior guy out there representing me [at the JFN office],” Cropsey said. “He showed up this past summer, and we formally take the stick in a week. So 1 October, that program will transition over the Integrated Program Office, and we’ll be off.”

It’s worth noting that the traditional division between R&E and A&S is increasingly blurred, especially when it comes to software-heavy systems like CJADC2. The Pentagon can deploy prototype code (sometimes called a Minimum Viable Capability) during the ostensible “research” phase and seeks to constantly refine and rapidly update already-deployed code during what’s supposedly “sustainment.”

Cropsey emphasized that he’s not cutting anyone out of the interservice collaboration on Joint Fires Network. “We’ve maintained that that joint/OSD-level flavor to how the program is being operated,” he said. “There’s a governance process for JFN that will stay just the way that it is, that ensures that the COCOMs, the related OSD offices, and the related services all have a voice into what that looks like and how we do it. That’s not changing.”

An Air Force staffer explained that the Integrated Program Office will still fall under an interservice Executive Steering Group of generals, admirals and equivalent senior civilians.

Likewise, Cropsey said he’s not kicking out any of the contractors currently working on JFN tech. “The other thing that’s not changing is the current performers,” he said. “They’re going to keep rowing.”

Instead, the goal of the new structure is to reinforce success with more personnel.

“What we’re doing is we’re adding additional capability, people-wise,” Cropsey said, “and we’re going to build out that program office so that we’re addressing integration aspects beyond what they’re currently capable of doing, with the added manpower.”

Mobilizing for the ‘invisible war’

In his recent confirmation hearing, Gen. Chris Mahoney, the nominee for vice chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, set electronic warfare as one of his top priorities if he is approved by the Senate. This was welcome news after more than a decade of dire assessments regarding the US military’s eroding proficiency and capacity for fighting in the spectrum.

But to turn bold statements into operational impact, the Pentagon will need to update its approach for the information age. Electronic warfare is no longer just jammers and decoys. It is a battle for sensemaking itself.

For Mahoney to make good on this opportunity will require more than replacing or updating aging EW aircraft like the EC-130 Compass Call, EA-18G Growler, or RC-135 Rivet Joint. Those are tactical improvements that might help once combat begins. The more important investments will be those that set the battlefield before the first shot — or prevent any shooting at all.

In 2025, intelligence sources are highly distributed, span military and commercial systems, and are of widely varying quality. Enemy forces can use publicly available data to target US troops, ships, or aircraft and exploit social media to gather intelligence on US servicemembers and operations. Paradoxically, disrupting, overwhelming, or deceiving this flood of information may be getting easier. Today nearly all information at some point moves through the airwaves, including to and from space. Electronic warfare and cyber operations are merging as the fastest way to get into an opponent’s network becomes an antenna.

With military and commercial sensors ubiquitous, an opponent like China can build a comprehensive picture during peacetime of US forces’ positions, identity, and habits, building a “pattern of life” akin to the approach used during counterinsurgency operations. When combat begins, People’s Liberation Army targeteers can quickly implement fire plans against US bases, ships, and ground units.

But this cuts both ways. US forces could mount a multi-dimensional campaign to undermine the confidence of Chinese planners and commanders. Jamming and decoys are just the start. The campaign should also include elements like radiofrequency-enabled cyber operations against PLA networks, deception operations using new force compositions and tactics, and false communications and messages.

If this sounds like events leading up to D-Day in 1945, that’s because it is. The difference today is US and allied forces will need to keep up the deception effort for months or years without a clear end state in mind. Otherwise, leaders in Beijing will assume they can target US forces at will and feel emboldened.

And the Department of War cannot sustain a campaign against China’s sensing and sensemaking apparatus with tactical EW systems and a few exquisite cyber attacks. These capabilities are best reserved for combat when they can defeat weapons or take out enemy networks.

To win the counter-sensemaking campaign the US military needs a deep magazine of “good enough” cyber and EW effects. Since each specific zero-day exploit, decoy, or back-door attack will likely be burned after use, they should not be exquisite game-changers. They just need to be good enough to make the opponent doubt its sensors or decision-support systems and force it to pursue a countermeasure.

But because they are perishable, the DoW will need a supply chain that creates new cyber and EW effects at a high tempo and integrates them into delivery systems like EW drones, radars, or other emitters. The US military is making progress on accelerating EW reprogramming, but still develops new cyber tools or EW techniques one at a time, using acquisition and contracting approaches the Pentagon is abandoning in its other programs.

The US military needs a new way to build and field cyber and EW effects.

During World War II the US military established a whole ecosystem to make decoys, posture and move them, and transmit signals simulating their invasion preparations. Today US forces cannot mount this kind of preparation out in the open where space-based sensors can quickly enlighten an adversary.

Luckily, 21st century counter-sensing and sensemaking capabilities and operations can be developed and planned entirely in a virtual space. The DoW can build digital emulations of potential targets, virtual models of EW and cyber effects, and assess various schemes for getting the effect into the target.

The US military and its industry partners already operate environments that could be used for developing some effects, but they are often dedicated to a specific delivery platform or mission and are rarely made available to new entrants like startups with creative ideas on how to disrupt enemy decision-making.

As one of his first actions, Mahoney should mobilize the department’s and industry’s existing resources to establish a federated environment for developing and testing new EW and cyber effects. This virtual sandbox could become the digital arsenal the Pentagon needs to fill its non-kinetic magazine and force Chinese planners and commanders to remain unsure of their prospects against Taiwan or other US allies.

The alternative, and the default approach of US services, is to continue building tactical systems and cyber silver bullets for the fight. Instead, they should be building the tools to ensure the fight never comes.

Bryan Clark is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and Director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology.

In a first, Space Force to require refueling capability for next-gen neighborhood watch sats

AFA 2025 — The Space Force’s next-generation space domain awareness satellites will be equipped with a capability to be refueled on orbit — the first time the service has put such a requirement in an official acquisition program.

“I mandated that, and was very militant about that,” Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, acting Air Force assistant secretary for acquisition and integration, said today.

Space Systems Command is gearing up a draft request for proposal for the RG-XX program to replace the current Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) constellation, in hopes of issuing it by the end of the year. While the plan is for there to be multiple providers, the Space Force intends to own and operate the new satellites.

While the GSSAP birds have some capability to maneuver, they are constrained in how far and how fast they can move by the fact that them carry a limited amount of fuel. Being equipped to allow refueling will give the Space Force more freedom to undertake what is known as rendezvous and proximity operations to keep tabs on adversary satellites.

“To be blunt, US Space Command has been very open about that desire [for] on-orbit servicing and mobility. Given our funding situation, it’s been difficult to stand up an … actual program. So, we’re looking at this one to kind of get our foot in the door,” Purdy told reporters during the annual Air and Space Forces Association conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

He noted that one complication is that the Space Force intends to make multiple contract awards for the RG-XX constellation, there is a strong likelihood that satellites from different vendors will use different fuels.

“And so now we’re thinking through that, okay, what does that mean? Well, I might ask them to bring their own refueler,” Purdy said. On the other hand, he said, the Space Force could simply buy services from “contractor-owned, contractor-operated” re-fueling spacecraft.

The Space Force currently has two contractors working to demonstrate re-fueling capabilities: Northrop Grumman and Astroscale US.

“So that’s a subject of rapid, active debate that we’re working on right now,” Purdy said.