Star Wars? Not quite, Pentagon says, but Space Force vision includes weapons – By Abraham Mahshie (Washington Examiner) / Feb 6 2020
Manned spacecraft firing at adversaries beyond Earth’s orbit may not be the mission of the Space Force, but staying one step ahead of aggression, including by deploying space-based weapons, falls within its national security scope, a Pentagon official said today.
“We have the most to lose,” Stephen L. Kitay, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy at the Pentagon, said Thursday morning at an event organized by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
Historically, the Department of Defense has put satellites in space for communication and GPS needs without regard for assuring their capabilities throughout a conflict, Kitay said. The Space Force’s job will be to assure their protection in a contested space. “We put them up there and … assumed it was a sanctuary, but we were not as concerned about the threats that we see today.”
War fighter support from space has long been an integral part of the Pentagon’s national security strategy, but the new Space Force will seek creative ways to protect space architecture better and defend it with offensive measures.
“We have also progressed from seeing space purely as a support function to recognizing it is a war-fighting domain in its own right,” Kitay said.
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