by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
The Pentagon will soon send its robotic space drone beyond the earth’s atmosphere yet again in a new test designed to push the boundaries of possibility and better prepare the US to deter and defend itself against rapidly advancing space weapons being developed by Russia and China.
The US Air Force and its partner US Space Force will soon launch its X-37B Mission 7 emerging space drone, an evolving platform beginning with NASA and now being adapted for military use. The Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Force and the Space Force, will launch an X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle Dec. 7, 2023, from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
An interesting essay from the US Space Force quotes Gen. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations, describing the upcoming experiments as “groundbreaking” and suggesting that the platform define the “art-of-the-possible.”
“These tests include operating the reusable spaceplane in new orbital regimes, experimenting with future space domain awareness technologies, and investigating the radiation effects on materials provided by NASA,” the essay says. “The X-37B Mission 7 will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, designated USSF-52, with a wide range of test and experimentation objectives.”
This upcoming test will build upon a previous successful X-37B “de-orbit” in 2022, following a flight into space beyond the boundaries of the earth’s atmosphere.
Details of Russian or Chinese space weapons are likely not available or easy to obtain, yet both countries write in their respective newspapers about fast-developing space technologies and, in the case of China, advanced Anti-Satellite, or ASAT weapons.
X-37B As an Armed Space Drone
Beginning with a “drop test” in 2006, the Orbital Test Vehicle has been boosted beyond the earth’s atmosphere and returned several times, recently reaching a total of 908 days in orbit during a mission from 2020 to 2022.
In purely scientific terms, researchers have used the X-37 to conduct experiments with solar energy and “reusable” space technologies able to perform a wider range of missions than a missile interceptor of some kind. A data sheet on the OTV from the U.S. Air Force says the X-37 uses Gallium Arsenide Solar Cells with Lithium Ion batteries.
X-37B: A Weapon?
The possibilities with this kind of progress seem limitless when it comes to military use, given the rapid advances in autonomy, AI-enabled data collection and analysis, and multi-domain networking.
Unmanned spacecraft would network with satellites as a mobile “node” beyond the earth’s atmosphere in a “meshed” system to perform surveillance, ICBM, and hypersonic missile defense, and even launch offensive strikes if directed by a human.
Specifics regarding the X-37B’s test missions and military capabilities are likely unavailable for security reasons. Yet, indeed, one cannot help but wonder about its potential lethality and military mission ability based on the successful duration of its most recent flight.
What the Future May Hold
The proliferation of Medium and Low-Earth Orbit satellites is intended to increase throughput, build in redundancy, and better enable hypersonic missiles defenses to establish a continuous “track” of an enemy threat as it quickly transits from one radar aperture field of regard to another. A mobile spacecraft would of course immeasurably help this effort, particularly if it could use various kinds of datalinks, GPS signals, or even optical communication to send real-time information to human decision-makers exponentially faster.
An evolved X-37B could, for instance, potentially defend satellite assets from enemy ASAT or anti-satellite weapons
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
