Too often, a word or phrase becomes the “it” word in Washington, while the issue it speaks to may never actually be addressed. To the chagrin of the rest of us outside the beltway, addressing legitimate concerns too often takes a back seat to emphasis on aiding political elites in their climb up the greasy pole of power and promotion. Much like campaign slogans, these buzzwords symbolize a movement, but when the moment has passed, any accumulated good intentions that could have been translated into action die. In recent years, though, one word emerged out of the space policy milieu – resilience – that has become a remarkable exception to an otherwise frustrating game of virtue signaling.
The seeds of our desire for space resilience in this century were planted many years before the birth of the Space Development Agency (SDA) five years ago, the Space Force’s new purpose-built agency charged with providing it. Beginning as early as 2009, policy leaders have advocated for resiliency as a new and important attribute to consider when confronting an emerging contested, congested, and competitive domain. Even back then, there was an obvious clarion call to do something, but it was unspecified then what exactly should be done. One thing was clear however, resilience needed to be a core value – from the launch services, ground stations, and satellites performing the missions to the very Guardians leading them.
Originating with the earliest settlers, resilience is the ability to operate through crisis or adversity. For over a century, children have been taught the Boy and Girl Scout’s most important virtue: “Be Prepared.” Teddy Roosevelt’s “rugged individual” in his iconic The Strenuous Life, the ideal American citizen, is a close cousin as well. Resilience, broadly speaking, is a uniquely American way of valuing oneself and others.
But the seemingly imminent and lethal space threats posed by China, and as recently as last week with Russia severing telecom cables in the Middle East, have only exacerbated the need for resiliency built into every aspect of vital national systems infrastructure, like GPS, missile warning, and missile defense. That’s why space resilience, first identified as a strategic objective by General John Hyten eight years ago, persists as fundamental to securing our future.
Today, key leaders in the Pentagon have been taking on the sclerotic institutional inertia that prevents the country from going all in, building an enduring resilience in the form of LEO constellations. They are already achieving enormous operational changes on orbit, a feat for years most thought necessary, but many thought impossible.
Even with the recent Space Force successes from SDA and other classified offices, many still fear we are just not going fast enough – and they are right. Budget toplines are the result of politician’s prerogative and compromise, but operational speed is not. Perhaps that’s why SDA chose its motto to be Semper Citius – Always Faster – because continuously improving operational speed, especially for a software defined service, must always be a top priority.
Policymakers should always be reminded that only satellites operating on orbit can deliver both resilience and deter enemy aggression. Space News reported last week that commercial Intelsat satellites actually offered some resilience when Russia decided to sever cables. While we were fortunate they were ready and available this time around, what happens if China decides to cut cables in the Pacific that connect Taiwan? Or the transatlantic fiber optic cables that carry 95 percent of the communications between the US and Europe? The number of viable options in times of peril is one of the best measures of resilience because having no options invariably leads to calamity.
Today, we understand what needs to be done to improve resilience against threats of on orbit denial and end-to-end cyber security. To achieve both, the Space Force must double down on SDA’s motto and make it part of its own creed. Always faster means further accelerating delivery of new satellite configurations to every 18 months from its original goal of two years, not stretching out towards every three. It means delivering software capability updates across its new constellations every three months, not once a year. Rather than reflexively advocating for higher budgets or worrying about adjusted top line decreases, as a community we should demand even more from the new industry that is delivering capabilities faster than ever and at drastically lower prices. Now is the time for the Space Force to shift into fourth gear, not back into second.
Low cost, working satellites based off flight proven designs must be launched more quickly than ever. And mirroring private industry in much the same way Apple delivers iPhone performance and protection enhancements through regular software upgrades, so too should the Space Force expect faster and reliable satellite deliveries to orbit with regular software updates as the norm. Quarterly spiral upgrades is a fine goal for today, but soon we will need to ramp to a monthly cadence to keep pace with our relentless adversaries. The good news? Commercially available satellites are already there, paving the way for the future of satellite performance capabilities.
The highly successful SDA had its fifth birthday this week, and has achieved amazing things since its inception, moving always faster as it was first established. Today, the broader Space Force service must reject the old “good enough” mindset and instead adopt a mindset of speed in acquisition and fielding as a core value. Only then can we catch up and take advantage of enhanced space resilience for our national security leveraging an incredibly capable satellite manufacturing industry built with private capital. It’s time to make the buzzword a service reality – one we don’t just prophesize, but act on.
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