08/25/2026

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Trump's space policy puts military launch resilience on the agenda

President Donald Trump’s new space transportation policy is drawing praise from the industry for laying out a government-wide framework to expand launch capacity and make greater use of commercial providers. For the U.S. Space Force, meanwhile, some of the most consequential provisions are about what happens when access to space becomes a military readiness problem.

The National Space Transportation Policy, signed Aug. 20, sets a goal of having U.S. ranges support more than 1,000 launches and reentries annually by 2030, a dramatic increase from today’s pace. Getting there will require more infrastructure, more automation and a less cumbersome system for allocating already crowded federal ranges.

The policy gives agencies a series of deadlines to start addressing those bottlenecks.

Within 180 days, the Pentagon, working with NASA and other agencies, must establish federal range scheduling criteria intended to make more efficient use of range resources while protecting government launch requirements.

The Pentagon and NASA also are directed to regularly publish range schedules, while the Transportation Department must identify potential locations for additional launch facilities and infrastructure improvements.

These measures track with what the Space Force is already trying to do at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg, where commercial and national security launch demand is putting growing pressure on infrastructure and personnel.

Beyond launch cadence

One provision requires the Pentagon to evaluate what stands in the way of “prompt, responsive and resilient access to space,” specifically including the ability to launch within 48 hours of need and operate from expeditionary locations. The department also must examine how to better protect launch infrastructure on federal property.

That gives White House backing to a direction the Space Force has already laid out in its Objective Force plan. The service wants to move away from depending on a small number of fixed launch nodes and toward a more distributed network of federal, commercial and eventually allied spaceports. Its “Spaceport of the Future” concept calls for launch sites and providers to function as interchangeable nodes.

The White House policy also takes a broader view of what “space transportation” means for the military. It directs the Pentagon to pursue commercial in-space transportation services, including on-orbit servicing and logistics, and to consider those capabilities when designing military architectures and force structures. The department is also told to explore responsive launch concepts using relocatable equipment and infrastructure capable of supporting different transportation systems, including spaceplanes.

How payloads get to orbit

Agencies are directed to maintain multiple ways of launching government spacecraft, make certification requirements for new launch providers more consistent and develop standardized spacecraft interfaces that would make it easier to move a payload from one rocket to another.

Industry groups have welcomed the commercial emphasis. The Satellite Industry Association said Aug. 21 it supports the administration’s plans. The Commercial Space Federation also praised the policy Aug. 24, saying it provides a clearer framework for how the government can support an industry that will need infrastructure capable of handling hundreds and eventually thousands of launches a year.

For the Space Force, these ideas are not new. Higher launch cadence, commercial range services, distributed spaceports, responsive launch and on-orbit logistics already appear in the service’s long-term plans. What the new memorandum does is elevate them into government-wide policy, assign agencies responsibility for carrying them out and set deadlines.

Golden Dome expanding Space Force’s missile defense role

Gen. Michael Guetlein took the Pentagon’s case for Golden Dome to North Dakota last week. His progress report also highlighted the Space Force’s increased role in missile defense.

The service already supplies missile warning from space, but Golden Dome is broadening that role. The Space Force is developing the Space Data Network that would move tracking and targeting information around the architecture, overseeing competitions for space-based interceptors and adding new generations of satellites designed to provide fire-control-quality tracks of advanced missiles.

Now another piece is moving its way. The Missile Defense Agency has transferred its Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor prototypes to the Space Force after completing demonstration operations in May. MDA Director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins said earlier this month that his agency would prove out the technology and the Space Force would operationalize it, with HBTSS serving as a foundation for tracking hypersonic weapons.

MDA developed HBTSS to demonstrate whether satellites in low Earth orbit could produce the precise tracking data needed to support an interceptor engagement against maneuvering hypersonic and ballistic missiles. MDA has said the eventual fire-control capability is intended to become part of the Space Force’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

The Space Development Agency last month awarded L3Harris about $955 million for 18 HBTSS-like missile-defense satellites as part of an accelerated 36-satellite Tracking Layer procurement supporting Golden Dome. The Space Force will ultimately be responsible for operating and sustaining those satellites.

The bigger picture

Golden Dome is the Trump administration’s proposed layered defense against ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, drones and other aerial threats. At the North Dakota event with Guetlein, Sen. Kevin Cramer said one misconception he is trying to dispel is that the architecture is “all new stuff.” Much of the effort involves connecting and expanding capabilities that already exist or are under development, he said, with new systems filling gaps.

For the Space Force, that means its missile warning and tracking satellites will be components of an operational missile-defense architecture. The Space Data Network would move that information between sensors and shooters, while the space-based interceptor program would take the service another step further by putting potential missile defense weapons in orbit.

Guetlein’s description of Golden Dome’s threat set helps explain the emphasis on space. He said the architecture is being designed not only against nuclear-armed ICBMs but also conventionally armed ICBMs, ballistic missiles launched from aircraft and submarines, larger drones, low-flying cruise missiles, maneuvering hypersonic weapons and fractional orbital bombardment systems.

Those threats place a premium on persistent tracking from space, particularly for weapons that maneuver or approach the United States from directions not well covered by traditional warning systems.

AFRL invests in ‘trusted autonomy’ for satellites

Two recent contract awards by the Air Force Research Laboratory put a spotlight on a longstanding challenge for military space: how to let satellites do more on their own without giving up confidence that they will do the right thing.

AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate awarded Trusted Space, a Leesburg, Virginia-based space engineering and software firm, a contract with a $14.8 million ceiling to develop and eventually demonstrate in orbit autonomy software for multi-satellite systems. The contract, awarded Aug. 18, calls for research, software maturation and testing aimed at building “trust, safety and resilience” into autonomous spacecraft operations.

A day later, AFRL announced another award to Toyon Research Corp. a $13.1 million expansion of a contract dating to 2020 for resilient onboard image-processing algorithms. The modification brings the Goleta, California-based defense research firm’s contract to $21.7 million.

Different parts of the autonomy problem

Toyon is working on algorithms that allow more processing of sensor data to happen aboard a satellite. Trusted Space’s Resilient and Autonomous Satellite Experimental Research program goes further into autonomous decision-making, with software designed for multiple spacecraft and an eventual on-orbit demonstration. Both projects are managed by AFRL at Kirtland Air Force Base, home to its Space Vehicles Directorate.

Some of that technology is already making its way into orbit.

Shield AI, Sedaro and NOVI Space said Aug. 24 that Shield AI’s Hivemind autonomy software operated aboard a NOVI satellite in low Earth orbit for the first time. During a 24-hour experiment, the spacecraft executed commands generated by Hivemind and approved by Sedaro software that provides a layer for checking autonomous actions.

The experiment gets at the trust problem AFRL identified. Sedaro’s software uses models of a spacecraft and its environment to assess proposed autonomous actions before they are executed. The technology was developed under a SpaceWERX Phase 2 Small Business Innovation Research award led by a team involving SpaceWERX, AFRL and Space Systems Command.

The technology is still experimental but the direction of travel is becoming clearer. The question is shifting from whether AI can process data in orbit to how much authority military operators will ultimately be comfortable handing over to software.

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