As the U.S. military expands its capabilities for space operations, the department will be looking at not just weapons, but also how space can be used for logistics and support.
Military logistics is the practice of maintaining, supplying, and moving U.S. forces and equipment all over the globe. U.S. Transportation Command leads the military’s logistics practices, and doing it amid enemy threats, or in a contested environment, adds to the complexities of the mission.
“In our lifetimes, we will do space-based logistics. We’ll do space resupply. I mean, that is not that far away, where we’re launching from somewhere in the U.S. to resupply forward forces,” Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Monday at the National Defense Transportation Association fall meeting in Grapevine, Texas.
The effort to establish U.S. military logistics in space could range from refueling satellites while in space to facilitating the delivery of weapons or other supplies. Developing the capability to refuel satellites while they are in orbit would allow the department to extend their lifespan.
More broadly, logistics will be a major factor in a conflict with a peer adversary, which will contest the U.S. military’s ability to resupply its front-line forces.
“The character of war is changing really, really fast, and ubiquitous autonomy, the ability to do long-range strikes, both from an adversary or from us, is key and essential,” Caine said. “Moving out in the future, the days of historical logistics where we had time and space to carefully consider, build combat power, distribute that combat power from known points of distribution are probably changing.”
“We’re going to need to disaggregate our structures to make sure that we can arm and supply those members of the joint force who are out there at the tactical edge of America’s work and make sure that they’re sustainable over time, and so I think we need to change our assumptions that underpin how we’re going to do our work, and be prepared for that fight that could come at us in the future,” he continued.
The Space Force is planning to hold two demonstrations next year for on-orbit logistics — one focusing on refueling in space and another on augmented maneuver, according to DefenseScoop. Astroscale’s Provisioner space vehicle was chosen to participate in the former and will refuel a satellite developed by Tetra-5 and itself from a space-based depot from Orbit Fab.
The U.S. military is far from the only one that is looking toward space as an unestablished environment that can provide a decisive advantage in a conflict in the future given the technology of the era. Both Russia and China are trying to field space weapons, possibly with the intent to disrupt U.S. capabilities.
HOW HEAD OF ARMY’S SPACE COMMAND BECAME A ‘HUGE BELIEVER’ ON HIGH-ALTITUDE SURVEILLANCE BALLOONS
Last month, the secretary of the Air Force, Troy Meink, publicly confirmed at the Air and Space Conference that the United States has “on-orbit space control” weapons, which marked a departure from the service’s traditional stance of ambiguity. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess, the chief of space operations, said at the same conference that Guardians “operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the Joint Force against space-enabled attacks.”
Caine, who also appeared, said at the time, “Our task, my friends, is to adapt right now, so the joint force is prepared to fight, endure, and win in global contested environments, from the seabed to cislunar space.”
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
