By Sandra Erwin

Welcome to this week's edition of SpaceNews' Military Space, your source for the latest developments at the intersection of space and national security. In this edition: a new request for information on Golden Dome, Space RCO is planning future missions to demonstrate maneuverable satellites and what's in NATO's commercial space strategy

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The U.S. Missile Defense Agency, the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Northern Command conducted a flight test on June 23 in which the Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) at Clear Space Force Station, Alaska, successfully acquired, tracked and reported missile target data. This was the radar's first test tracking a live intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) representative target. The target was air launched over the northern Pacific Ocean, and flew over 2,000 kilometers off the southern coast of Alaska where it was tracked by LRDR. Credit: MDA

Industry input sought on space-based interceptors

The U.S. Space Force is seeking information on how industry could develop space-based interceptors, a critical component of the Trump administration's proposed "Golden Dome for America" missile defense system. The move comes as the ambitious program awaits congressional funding and clearer strategic direction.

On Friday, the Space Force's Program Executive Office for Space Combat Power issued a request for information (RFI) aimed at assessing the industry's ability to develop and deploy space-based interceptors (SBIs). These are missile-killing weapons stationed in space, intended to shoot down hostile rockets before they reach their targets.

The RFI calls for industry responses by July 11 and outlines interest in a proliferated constellation of interceptors capable of knocking down ballistic and hypersonic missiles in multiple flight phases — including boost, mid-course, and glide.
The Space Force wants both exoatmospheric SBIs (targeting threats outside Earth's atmosphere) and endoatmospheric SBIs (for interceptions within the atmosphere). The document also highlights a need for "terminal guidance" capabilities — meaning interceptors must autonomously track and destroy targets during the final seconds before impact.
This marks the second major inquiry on SBIs this year. In February, the Missile Defense Agency launched its own RFI.

As envisioned, Golden Dome would shield the U.S. homeland from long-range missile threats, including hypersonics. The idea of using SBIs dates back to President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program. Then, the vision collapsed under the weight of technological and cost barriers. Today, with breakthroughs in satellite tech, sensors and launch systems, the Pentagon is revisiting the approach.

Big vision, bigger hurdles

While the strategy might look promising on paper, defense experts warn the U.S. faces a serious industrial base challenge. At last week's Defense One Tech Summit, analysts warned the U.S. is lagging behind China and Russia in the pace and scale of weapons development — particularly in hypersonics.

"The terrifying thing isn't just the systems they have, it's the industrial engine behind them," said Masao Dahlgren, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. China, he said, tests hypersonics far more rapidly than the U.S., aided by an agile, consumer-scale manufacturing ecosystem. By contrast, U.S. hypersonic testing is bottlenecked — "a two-year wait to build a factory, another two just to get on a test range," Dahlgren said.

The disparity is especially stark in infrared technology, a key enabler for missile tracking. The U.S. has only a few suppliers of infrared focal plane arrays; China mass-produces them for both consumer and government markets, giving it a substantial cost and volume edge.

Command and control: Who's in charge?

Even if the U.S. builds the technology, operationalizing the Golden Dome poses its own labyrinth of challenges. "Who decides when and how to intercept a missile?" asked Maj. Gen. Mark Piper, deputy director of operations at NORAD.

In what's described as a globally distributed threat scenario — say, a missile launched in the Pacific, arcing through space, and re-entering over North America — coordination across multiple combatant commands and authorities becomes critical. Piper warned of "seams across geography, domains and decision-makers" that could jeopardize response time without clear, rehearsed protocols.

Meanwhile, there needs to be a process for dealing with a data deluge, said Doug Loverro, a former Pentagon official now advising in industry. There's going to be a flood of information coming from the Space Force, the Missile Defense Agency and the intelligence community, he said. The challenge is turning that volume into coherent, actionable intelligence for commanders. "One of the hardest things in this project is to figure out how that information is presented to a decision maker."

Space Force pursuing agile satellites

To counter adversaries in orbit, the U.S. Space Force wants to field agile spacecraft that can maneuver unpredictably and respond to threats in real time.

At the heart of this new strategy is a concept known as "dynamic space operations," which aims to make satellites more like fighter jets and less like sitting ducks. Military and commercial satellites for decades have taken up fixed positions in geostationary orbit. That static approach, Space Force officials say, is no longer sustainable in an era of growing threats from China and Russia.

"Maneuver is pretty critical to warfighting," said Kelly Hammett, director of the Space Rapid Capabilities Office (Space RCO).

Hammett's office, based at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, is charged with fast-tracking new technologies into orbit — and dynamic operations are at the top of the list.
That includes a planned GEO satellite that will serve as a testbed for maneuverability and a new generation of ground infrastructure to enable these tactics.
Space RCO recently issued a request for information to industry for "high thrust, high delta-V" satellites — technical shorthand for spacecraft that can make meaningful changes in speed and direction. Frequent maneuvering demands significant propulsion capability, along with smart software to manage fuel and execute tactics on the fly.

But the spacecraft are only half the story. The Space Force is also building the backbone needed to control them — a cloud-native command-and-control system called R2C2, short for Rapid Resilient Command and Control.

R2C2 is designed to let Space Force operators run constellations from anywhere, not just behind the wire at a base. "Because it's cloud based, it doesn't have to be assigned to a particular building," Hammett said. "You can put ops centers wherever you need."

R2C2 also features tiered security access and can integrate training, simulations and live operations on a single platform — a key feature as the Space Force seeks to train operators and run missions in the same digital environment.

NATO's commercial space push

At its annual summit in The Hague last week, the NATO alliance released its first-ever Commercial Space Strategy, a five-page framework aimed at weaving the rapidly evolving private space sector into NATO's defense posture.

According to the strategy, the alliance intends to use space not as an arena for bespoke military assets, but as a collaborative domain where commercial innovation can be leveraged for strategic advantage.

The document, which NATO defense ministers approved in February, represents the alliance's most concrete effort yet to systematically integrate commercial space capabilities into its defense planning. NATO is positioning itself as a central coordinator to align member investments, share data and promote interoperability across military applications of commercial space technologies.
The strategy builds on NATO's 2019 Overarching Space Policy, which recognized space as an operational domain, and its 2021 declaration that space-based attacks could trigger Article 5 collective defense provisions. The release comes as conflicts such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine have underscored the strategic value and vulnerabilities of space-based assets in warfare.

EU space vision

The strategy's release directly coincides with a major surge in European efforts to boost commercial space investment and reduce dependence on foreign providers.

Just one day after NATO unveiled its space strategy, the European Commission unveiled the EU Space Act and Vision for the European Space Economy.

The EU Space Act "aims to ensure safety, resilience, and environmental sustainability, while boosting the competitiveness of the EU space sector" by creating a single market for space activities across the 27-member bloc. The legislation addresses Europe's current fragmented regulatory landscape, where different national approaches "increase complexity and costs for businesses."

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