Despite the many jokes made at the expense of the first new U.S. military branch in nearly 80 years, industry experts say the Space Force represents a massive — and strategically significant — shift for America’s defense.
Many of modern life’s conveniences depend on the ability to consistently and securely access information provided by thousands of satellites currently orbiting the earth. That ability is now clearly threatened, according to experts from companies like Virgin Galactic, The Aerospace Corporation, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the defense contractor L3Harris and space-focused investment firm Starburst Aerospace.
In a panel discussion earlier this year organized by the Los Angeles Economic Development Council in a nondescript office park in El Segundo — just a few miles away from the Space and Missile Systems Center located at Los Angeles Air Force Base — these experts laid out a case for the importance of the Space Force and the potential it has to reshape both the military and whole industries in states across the country.
Los Angeles, these men said, could potentially be at the heart of this transformation.
According to Steve Isakowitz, president and chief executive of The Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit that operates a federally funded research and development center, the Space Force was a necessity born from the proliferation of threats to America’s previously uncontested dominance of outer space.
While the threats themselves come from nation-states whose interests run contrary to U.S. geopolitical strategy, their ascendance was accelerated by rapid advances in the private sector that dramatically lowered the costs of reaching outer space, he said.
“The game-changing element that is going on is in the commercial sector,” said Isakowitz. “You can get student entrepreneurs who can build their own rockets. If we can do that here, what’s to stop North Korea from doing it there?”
While that threat may be more hypothetical, other countries have already demonstrated their ability to destroy strategic space assets. Last March, India became the fourth nation to destroy a satellite in outer space. At the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indian Space Research Organisation successfully completed Mission Shakti (the Sanskrit word for “power”), which used kinetic kill technology to obliterate one of its own live satellites in low Earth orbit.
In a statement announcing the test’s completion, Modi said:
The importance of space and satellites in the world will continue to grow. Possibly, life will be incomplete without them. In such a condition, defending and securing these valuable assets becomes equally important. From the point of view of India’s security and economic development, today’s ASAT missile will give the country new strength.
Today, I also want to assure the international community that the new capability we have developed is not directed against anyone. India has no intention to threaten anyone. This is an effort to secure a fast-growing India.
India is a U.S. ally, but countries like Russia and China have also been increasingly active in their efforts to militarize space, Isakowitz said, with potentially troubling capabilities the U.S. must be prepared to counter. The development of Russian super weapons and continuing advances in space technology made by China’s People’s Liberation Army are key concerns, said Isakowitz.
“We can no longer assume that we can operate in space and everything will be untouched,” he said.
That the U.S. chose to respond to these threats by creating a new branch of the military speaks to how important space already is to both civilian and defense operations. It’s also a reflection of the increasing militarization of U.S. policy under the Trump administration. Rather than pursue multilateral negotiations and forge an international policy based on coalition building, the U.S. response seems to be to defer to the military when it comes to setting space defense strategy.
Commercial opportunities and public-private partnerships could power American space innovation
The Space Force’s formation has come with a $15 billion request from the Trump administration that represents big dollars for vendors, panelists said.
Commercial opportunities for space startups are plentiful, said Van Espahbodi, co-founder and managing partner of Starburst, an early-stage aerospace accelerator and investor, and they’re likely going to be complemented and buttressed by the needs of the defense industry.
“When you think of how the military buys technology, you think of the oligopolies and the black box,” said Espahbodi. But there’s a realization among military leadership that innovation from companies and countries that have poured billions into research and development now requires them to transform their procurement system.
“The industrial supply chain that has supported the military will dramatically change,” said Espahbodi. “And that will be supported by the Space Force.”
Isakowitz echoed this sentiment, noting that “the other services tend to be very people-intensive services and the Space Force is going to be a technology-intensive service. That means there has to be new models and ways to integrate private industry.”
Opportunities for startups
There’s already a growing wish list for the kinds of things that The Aerospace Corporation and the big vendors would like to see from startups and other tech developers. It includes hypersonic propulsion technologies; additive manufacturing applications beyond earth’s orbit; new propulsion systems for small satellites and other payloads; and greater computing power and software capabilities for satellites and other space hardware.
“We are going to have sentient satellites,” said Isakowitz. And while that may evoke visions of Cyberdyne systems and Skynet, Isakowitz believes increasing computational capacity will enable terrestrial applications that can benefit society — not destroy it.
From Espahbodi’s perspective, entrepreneurs need to think more about enabling technologies that will speed up commercialization.
“The bottleneck is no longer launch,” Espahbodi said. “It tends to be the ground segment. How do you optimize that downlink. [It’s the] AI sensors and energy management to allow this process to become more efficient,” he said.