The United States leverages space assets and the services they provide for economic prosperity, weather forecasting, scientific discovery, critical infrastructure, and national security. Conversely, other nations seek to position themselves as leading space powers while undermining the stability and tranquility that allows space to benefit all nations. Some U.S. competitors are implementing a sustained effort to develop a broad range of offensive counterspace capabilities through a variety of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, including direct attacks on satellites, jamming and spoofing of signals, and continued cyberattacks on satellite and ground infrastructure. Use of these weapons could have serious consequences for all nations that benefit from space-based systems. Space is an increasingly contested environment, presenting a multitude of threats to U.S. space assets. Adversarial attacks could impact strategic capabilities such as those that support communications, position navigation and timing (PNT), and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). Therefore, there is a strategic need to be able to quickly respond to disrupted assets and reconstitute degraded space capabilities.
To address this dynamic threat environment, the U.S. Space Force and the Department of War (DoW) have sought the ability to rapidly deploy and operate space-based assets in response to immediate, urgent, and often unforeseen tactical needs. In a milestone toward achieving tactically responsive space (TacRS), the 2023 Victus Nox mission launched its space vehicle a mere 27 hours after the order came, beating the previous record for responsive space launch by more than two weeks. Likewise, Space Systems Command’s (SSC) Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) is augmenting space-based capacity during a crisis or conflict by establishing contracts with commercial space companies. CASR is one of multiple ways the DoW is ensuring that the web of satellites it can draw upon is so great, that attacking or disrupting them would be a wasted and escalatory effort.
