The Air Force is Preparing for Space War – Here’s How

Video Interview: The Militarization of Space

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

The Air Force’s intense and vigorous push to prepare for high-tech space war is focused on architecting the weapons needed to destroy incoming enemy ICBMs, build new generations of lower-orbit, faster-moving networked satellites and exploring a new generation of weapons to function beyond the earth’s atmosphere.

This includes the prospect of some yet-to-exist systems such as space drones, lasers for missile defense or perhaps satellite fired weapons. Of course much of the space focus is rightly focused on entirely new, paradigm-changing methods of “sensing” and “seeing” both within and beyond the earth’s atmosphere to include land, sea, air and space domains. 

Space warfare technologies have as much if not more impact upon land, sea and air dimensions within the earth’s atmosphere as well as space-specific technologies such as elements of missile defense or satellite hardening.

Speaking recently at the Air Force Association symposium, service Secretary Frank Kendall emphasized the need to “battle harden” space war systems to ensure sustained operational functionality in high-threat space warfare circumstances.

“The simple fact is that the U.S. cannot project power successfully unless our space-based services are resilient enough to endure while under attack,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in an Air Force report. “Equally true, our terrestrial forces, Joint and Combined, cannot survive and perform their missions if our adversary’s space-based operational support systems, especially targeting systems, are allowed to operate with impunity.”