There's also a secretive and important war effort in space.

Intel gathered from satellites has been an important part of

how Ukraine has been able to fight back against Russian

invaders

Space has always been militarized. The dynamic that's

shifting is the weaponization of

space, as our political and military leadership are telling

us it is a warfighting domain.

Private companies have released imagery from their satellites,

which has shown Russian operations and even likely war

crimes all seen from space. And at the forefront of all of this

is the US Space Force.

We've been collaborating with private private industry, you

know, for years now, and certainly we increase that

activity, as the presence of commercial industry increases in

space. Keep in

mind, that's what really provides us for having the edge

over any other country in the world, we really have a great

partnership between our Department of Defense and those

companies who make their own personal investments

private companies like maxar technologies, which takes images

from orbit and SpaceX, which has provided its Starlink space

based broadband system, the future of warfare is in space,

and the Space Force is going to play a big role in how it

unfolds.

The importance of space based assets to Ukraine's preparedness

may have helped tip the balance in favor of Kyiv. In the early

days of the war,

the United States government continues to be a really

critical customer for the space industry, specifically for

different national security services. Beyond providing

rocket launchers for government customers, whether they're

classified or not

any conflict involves space. You know, we use space for satellite

communications and for precision navigation and timing,

certainly, in a conflict that that the United States was

involved in, we would be critical to the joint force

operations,

we now have the ability to with our satellites in our space

capabilities, to identify all the activities that are going on

on the ground. The

space industry also has been increasingly providing other

services such as satellite imagery. A good recent example

is the conflict in Ukraine and a lot of the imagery that we're

seeing out of what's happening on the ground in Ukraine,

whether that's Russian movement troop movement, or that's

Ukrainian military advances.

For example, also, Russia, has said that they have not been

committing war crimes, but yet our satellites, were able to

pick up all the carnage in the actual bodies stone on the side

of the streets that they claimed they had no part of. But yet, we

now are able to see it

different US companies have been providing imagery, sometimes on

an hour by hour basis of situations of interest in

Ukraine.

For decades, there's been a steady drumbeat calling for a

specific US military branch dedicated to space. Until

recently, it was a job for the Air Force,

the creation of the Space Force was not without controversy, as

the United States Air Force already had the US Space Command

underneath it. The Space

Force has around 16,000 Personnel assigned in a budget

of 24 point 5 billion. Compare this to the Air Force which has

over 300,000 airmen on active duty and a budget of 194

billion. We want to maintain

you know, maintain that advantage maintain that free use

of space for US companies to go and operate in the domain safely.

The space Force's main mission is to organize, train and equip

our military forces to be able to deal with our national

security assets in space. So this means both acquiring

satellites, you know, contracting for them to be

designed, built and launched into space, then operating those

satellites, receiving that data and processing it. It's the

ground infrastructure that matters a lot right now, people

might be disappointed that there's not going to be at least

in the moment, a bunch of armed astronauts in weaponized

spacecraft or near around tenting enemies like they might

see in Star Wars or something. But it's really important that

we have the right you know, sensing capabilities,

communications capabilities, anything that goes up and down

from the earth.

As the Space Force mission expands. There have been calls

for a space National Guard as well.

I think really making sure that we have a separate standalone

National Guard Space Force. Section A really allows us to

make sure we deal with the intersection between our

domestic train National Guard and the support they provide for

the warfighters.

The explosion In private space access has been rapid.

One of the primary ways that companies across the space

ecosystem interact with the US Space Force is through different

types of services. One of the most well known ones in high

profile is that of launch services through a variety of

different programs, typically launching different types of

government satellites of all shapes and sizes, whether

they're small satellites that are riding along with rockets,

such as virgin orbit, or Astra or they're much larger

satellites on very expensive missions. For the United Launch

Alliance, which is a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed

Martin, or with SpaceX, which are the two main large heavy

rocket Builders here in the United States, at least Space

Systems Command out in Los Angeles as part of the Space

Force really is the front runner in this so there is a

opportunity for new starts and small business mentoring gap and

for example, in my region, commercial space is scheduled to

to grow dramatically over the next decade. And so again, it's

not only good for the economy, and providing jobs, jobs, jobs,

but it's good all the way around for our national defense as

well.

Besides the big household names, as are companies like maxar, and

Hawkeye360, among others are providing important services to

the US government.

These companies continue to both develop their products, as well

as demonstrate to the United States government how they can

provide different services that the government would like to

purchase.

Much like how the Navy keeps Ocean trade lanes open, the

Space Force will help commercial operation storage space junk,

keep track of potential space pitfalls, and provide

information as the use of space becomes even bigger.

The United States government continues to be a really

critical customer for the space industry, specifically for

different national security services beyond providing rocket

launchers for government customers, whether they're

classified or not.

We need to establish international norms where we get

as many countries as possible to sign up to adhere to those

standards and norms like we did with the Geneva Convention. For

conflicts, we need to do that for space. Because there are

there's real implications for the debris, the proliferation of

debris in space,

Russia and China remain a key concern as competitors in the

field of space, space militarization,

China probably has more sophisticated and kind of space

weaponry, or, and they also have more sophisticated space assets.

Generally, they have a lot more at stake in space, they're

investing a lot, but we cannot ignore Russia, obviously. I

mean, they've demonstrated that they are willing to use some

counter space weapons in conflict in Ukraine. These are

weapons that we've tracked for years we knew they had and so

you can't fully ignore Russia in favor of China, you kind of have

to be able to, you know, to deter both

US Space Force is also involved in looking at newer technologies

and how they could fit into the future of the US is national

security apparatus in space. US Space

Force continues to look at different ways that can see the

industry's development, either through different contracts to

small rocket launch companies that are really starting to come

into the fore in terms of providing services to deliver

payloads to orbit or through experimental kind of next

generation programs. One such example would be the rocket

cargo program. That's an idea of using rockets to deliver

payloads and other services from one point on the earth to

another point on the earth and back those different types of

systems offer a capability in which something that would maybe

traditionally fly via very large cargo aircraft, over several

hours or days could be delivered within an hour from one point in

United States to anywhere in the world.

Although new, the Space Force is dedicated to producing its own

culture that furthers warfighting capability in space,

as we separate and we become, you know, not not air minded

airmen like we were in the Air Force, but really thinking about

space power and thinking about the space domain and how to

operate. That's absolutely the culture that we're building

right now.