The U.S. military is looking to the future of combat, which, of course, will entail space wars.
SPACE-WAR CENTER
The impending need to deal with real-life star wars has the Pentagon rushing to open its space wars center.
Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work discussed the operations center on Tuesday, June 23 at the GEOINT intelligence conference in Washington, DC. The center will receive data from U.S. satellites, both military and government. By tracking all these satellites, the hope is to be better prepared for collaborative efforts in determining the best response to attacks on any satellite.
The military already tracks its satellites at the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. But the new space wars center will compliment its efforts.
Pentagon and U.S. intelligence officials are reportedly finalizing the details of this ops center that Work says will be operational within six months.
SPOTTING THREATS ON THE GROUND
The space wars center will obviously focus on threats to its space-based assets. But it will also use data from the satellite nexus to spot threats on the ground. Providing an example, Work stated, “If, all of a sudden, a lot of cars show up in a parking lot of an adversary’s missile plant, we want to know about it and we want to know about it quickly.” He continued, “If, suddenly, small boats are swarming in the Gulf or pirates are starting to congregate off Aden, we want to know.”
A TACTICAL POSITION IN SPACE
With the developments in technology, and with more countries having an increased presence in space, Work suggests that space must “be considered a contested operational domain in ways that we haven’t had to think about in the past.”
The new ops center is just one element in the United States’ objective to ramp up its preparations for space wars. Existing budgets include tens of millions of dollars for communications satellites, space-based reconnaissance tools, and funding for “space situational awareness.”
The Air Force’s mysterious X-37b spaceplane has launched on four separate missions, each containing secret payloads. Many suspect that this spaceplane has been deploying secret spy satellites or even space-based weapons.
It’s all speculation for now. But the military is focused on gaining a military advantage, and they see space as the way to gain it.
