‘Congress has bought the systems. Now it must fund the people, the infrastructure, and the training pipeline to operate them’
By Peter Garretson, Real Clear Wire
Big changes are coming to America’s space forces.
For decades, military space has been defined by mission stagnation. Early mission sets like launch, missile warning, nuclear detonation detection, nuclear command and control, weather, and military satellite communications were put in place in the 1960s and have been operational since before 1970. In the last three decades, only one new mission was added: global positioning.
But since the creation of the United States Space Force in 2019, Congress has been funding the development of fundamentally new capabilities. That hardware is now nearly ready, positioning Space Force on the cusp of a surge.
These include Air Moving Target Indications (AMTI), a kind of global space radar able to track aircraft and missiles that move through the air; Ground Moving Target Indications (GMTI), a kind of global space radar that can track mobile threats on the ground; missile warning, a capability to track hypersonic, ballistic and cruise missiles from space; and space-based missile defense, part of President Trump’s “Golden Dome” to protect Americans and the homeland from nuclear and hypersonic missile threats. Functions like Cislunar space domain awareness and mobility, meanwhile, are intended to serve as insurance that the Space Force will be there to defend America’s emerging vital economic interests, and a long-term investment in America’s prosperity and economic advantage.