Military Space
All articles →-
Military Space
The Air Force Wants to Launch and Catch Rockets from Old Oil Platforms at Sea
A new Air Force initiative would transform decommissioned offshore oil rigs into sea-based rocket recovery stations — extending Space Force launch flexibility and reducing dependence on a handful of fixed land-based pads.
-
Military Space
Combat Surgeon, Record-Setter, Next: Army's Col. Rubio Named to Artemis III Earth Orbit Test Crew
Col. Frank Rubio — who shattered the U.S. record for longest single spaceflight — has been named to the 2027 Artemis III crew alongside ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano, in a mission that will test lunar lander docking in Earth orbit as the final dress rehearsal before the Moon.
-
Military Space
One Outage Stopped Navy Drone Tests. The Pentagon's SpaceX Problem Is Bigger Than That.
When a Starlink outage last August left Navy unmanned surface vessels bobbing uselessly off the California coast, it crystallized a strategic anxiety the Pentagon had been managing quietly: the U.S. military is profoundly dependent on a commercial satellite network it does not own or control.
-
Military Space
The SDA's Transport Layer: America's Proliferated Military Satellite Constellation
The Space Development Agency is building a mesh network of hundreds of small military satellites in low Earth orbit — a fundamentally different approach to space-based command and control than anything the US has operated before.
-
Military Space
Anti-satellite weapons are real, tested, and leaving debris clouds that threaten everyone
China, Russia, the US, and India have all tested direct-ascent anti-satellite missiles. The debris those tests create persists for decades. The tension between military necessity and orbital sustainability is becoming one of the defining strategic problems of the 2020s.
-
Military Space
GPS jamming and spoofing: the quiet threat that's getting louder
GPS signals are extraordinarily weak and easy to jam. Military and civilian aircraft across the Middle East, Baltic, and Black Sea regions are routinely encountering jamming and spoofing that sends their navigation systems to completely wrong locations. The problem is growing.
-
Military Space
Space is already a battlefield. Ukraine showed us what that looks like.
The war in Ukraine has been the first large-scale test of satellite capabilities in peer conflict. GPS jamming, Starlink dependence, reconnaissance satellites, and Russian anti-satellite threats have all featured — and the lessons are reshaping military space doctrine worldwide.
-
Military Space
The Space Force is quietly replacing its aging satellite backbone. Here's what's new.
GPS III, Next Gen OPIR missile warning satellites, and the Evolved Strategic SATCOM program are replacing Cold War-era systems that have been showing their age. The upgrades are designed to survive a contested space environment that didn't exist when the original satellites were built.
-
Military Space
What the Space Force actually does — and why it matters more than most people realize
The US Space Force is the world's first independent space military branch. Its missions — protecting GPS satellites, tracking debris, watching for missile launches — are largely invisible but underpin nearly every aspect of modern warfare and daily civilian life.
