By Sandra Erwin
Welcome to SpaceNews' Military Space, your source for the latest developments at the intersection of space and national security. In this week's edition: Space Force personnel could double within a decade as space becomes central to combat planning. Plus, launch ranges become the next front in homeland defense.
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Space Force eyes counter-drone defenses for launch ranges
Amid Pentagon plans for a next-generation missile defense system and a new National Defense Strategy that elevates homeland defense to the top priority, the U.S. Space Force is turning its attention to a concerning threat: drones near the nation's busiest launch ranges.
The service is beginning to assess how to defend key spaceports such as Cape Canaveral on the Eastern Range and Vandenberg Space Force Base on the Western Range from potential unmanned aircraft system (UAS) incursions, seen as an asymmetric threats to critical infrastructure.
"We are actively talking about what does counter UAS look like at a launch range?" Col. Eric Zarybnisky, who leads the Space Force's Space Access program office, said last week at the AFCEA Space Industry Days conference.
Zarybnisky cautioned that launch ranges present a different protection problem than a typical military installation. "It doesn't necessarily look like it does at every other Air Force base or Space Force Base," he said. "I've got large rockets that have a lot of fuel on them. I've got satellites that don't like to be hit with radars. How do we do it in the unique environment we need to have at the launch bases?"
A concern is that the surge in commercial and national security launches is straining range infrastructure and narrowing margins for error. Unauthorized aerial activity — whether malicious, negligent or simply recreational — could delay launches, disrupt safety procedures or force costly shutdowns at facilities that support some of the Pentagon's most sensitive missions. The threat is not theoretical. U.S. military leaders have reported a rise in unauthorized drone activity near domestic installations, reflecting how widely available small UAS have become. For launch ranges, the problem is compounded by technical constraints. Many counter-drone systems rely on radio-frequency jamming or navigation interference, tools that risk interfering with rocket telemetry, flight termination systems, GPS signals, and nearby civilian airspace. Recent battlefield experience has also shaped thinking. Conflicts such as the war in Ukraine have highlighted how small, inexpensive drones can generate asymmetric effects against high-value targets, reinforcing the idea that critical infrastructure does not need to be destroyed to be neutralized — it only needs to be disrupted.
That logic aligns with the National Defense Strategy released Jan. 23, which identifies defense of the homeland as the Pentagon's foremost priority. The document emphasizes protecting enabling infrastructure and guarding against low-cost, hard-to-attribute threats that adversaries or non-state actors could exploit below the threshold of armed conflict.
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Space Force plans for growth as mission expands
The U.S. Space Force is preparing for a larger role inside the Pentagon and a bigger workforce to match it.
The military's newest service could double in size within five to 10 years, according to Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Shawn Bratton, as the Defense Department increasingly treats space as a contested warfighting domain rather than a back-office utility. The Space Force has about 10,000 uniformed personnel and roughly 5,000 civilians.
"I do think we will double the size, the number of people in the Space Force," Bratton said last week at an event hosted by Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg Center and SpaceNews. He offered a window into how the service is redefining its mission and its relationship with the rest of the joint force. The push for change isn't coming only from inside the Space Force. Bratton said the Army, Navy, and Air Force are pressing the service to move faster and deliver capabilities for space warfare as U.S. commanders confront how exposed their forces are to surveillance and targeting from space. The Pentagon is now focused not only on defending U.S. space assets from jamming or attack, but also on denying adversaries access to their own space-based systems when required. To support that integration, the Space Force is standing up components inside combatant commands, aiming to embed space operations more deeply into real-world war plans rather than treating them as external support. Longer term, the service is conducting a 15-year internal review known as the Objective Force study, led by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center. One area drawing increased attention is cislunar space, the region between Earth and the moon. As government and commercial actors expand activity beyond low Earth orbit, the Space Force sees strategic implications for missile warning, space domain awareness, and satellite protection far from Earth.
While there are no plans to deploy Space Force personnel in orbit today, Bratton suggested the idea should not be ruled out over the long term. "It would be tragic if that didn't happen someday," he said.
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Space Force soon to select contractors for commercial GEO spy satellite network
The U.S. Space Force is closing in on its first contractor selections for a next-generation geostationary surveillance program that could reshape how the Pentagon buys some of its most sensitive satellites.
Officials said last week that the service plans to select satellite manufacturers as soon as March for the Geosynchronous Reconnaissance & Surveillance (RG-XX) program, an effort to build a new constellation of reconnaissance satellites using commercial technology rather than bespoke military designs.
The disclosures came during AFCEA Space Industry Days, where leaders framed RG-XX as a test case for the Space Force's push toward a "commercial first" acquisition strategy. The program is widely viewed as the likely successor to the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP)—a constellation built by Northrop Grumman.
GSSAP satellites perform some of the military's most demanding space domain awareness missions, tracking and characterizing objects operating near the geostationary orbit (GEO) belt roughly 22,000 miles above Earth. Those spacecraft are often described by officials as "exquisite" systems: highly capable, custom-built, and expensive with only a small number on orbit.
How RG-XX will be bought
Lt. Col. Darren Ng, system program manager for RG-XX at the Space Systems Command, said the program office plans to tap more than one company and expects the constellation to be significantly larger than GSSAP.
The Space Force is setting up an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract vehicle, with vendor selections targeted for March. A task order for the first batch of satellites would follow.
"Just two or three years ago, we wouldn't have been able to kick off something like RGXX," Ng said. "It was incredibly difficult. But I think it's actually a tangible example of some of the support and advocacy from senior leaders, showing that they actually are trying to think differently."
RG-XX, he added, is "really about building a proliferated GEO architecture to deliver surveillance reconnaissance, for space warfighting at scale."
The IDIQ structure is intended to speed contracting and reduce overhead. The framework, Ng said, allows for "rapid acquisitions … and fixed price contracts so we can reduce bureaucracy and program execution overhead, both on the government side and on the industry side."
A request for proposals went out earlier this month, with submissions expected in early February.
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