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Military leaders warn US space dominance could be lost without action

With U.S. adversaries making steady gains in space capabilities in the decades following the first Gulf War, military leaders called for swifter action to secure U.S. space dominance and for reforms to procurement processes on Saturday.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Air Force Gen. John Hyten warned that U.S. space dominance has eroded at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California on Saturday. Meanwhile, China and Russia have developed capabilities to jam information transmissions from U.S. platforms and to shoot down satellites with lasers or missiles, the military leaders warned.

“They have built these capabilities to challenge the United States, to challenge our allies and to change the balance of power in the world,” Hyten said. “(We) can’t let that happen.”

Assured access to space as a priority, Wilson said. With the authority to develop space capabilities shifted from the Department of Defense to the Air Force, Wilson said she’s pushed the decision-making process down to the lowest level possible.

“We need to move quickly, we need to accelerate acquisition, (we) need to innovate and prototype new systems faster,” Wilson said.

Although many view space as a demilitarized zone, Wilson said, U.S. satellites were developed at a time when they were immune from ground attacks and have no defense capabilities.

“The U.S. built a glass house before the invention of stones,” Wilson said. “The shifting of space (from) being a benign environment to being a warfighting environment requires different capabilities.”

The idea of space as a domain for war is new, Hyten said, but any domain that humans move into will be subject to conflict.

“Conflict will move into space. If it does move into space, our job will be the same as it is in any other domain: to deter that conflict to make sure that conflict never happens, but if it does happen, to figure out how to fight it, and win,” Hyten said.

Both military leaders identified reforming the acquisition process as a key strategy to secure U.S. space dominance in the years ahead.

“Where we need most focus is how do we continue to reform defense-wide acquisition processes in order to move quickly and take advantage of experimentation and prototyping and to push authority down to the lowest level and to tighten up schedules to move faster than the adversary,” Wilson said.

Hyten, meanwhile, said the country had “lost the ability to go fast.” The United States’ space advantage will be lost in five or 10 years unless changes are made, he warned.

“We need to integrate space and elevate space as part of a joint warfighting force,” Wilson said. “Anything that separates space from the joint fight is moving us in the wrong direction.”

Aaron Martin

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