The Department of Defense is trying to make satellites that can move out of the way of incoming fire, Defense One reports.
Last week, the Defense Intelligence Agency announced that Russia and China are both working on lasers and other weapons targeting satellites.
“Both states are developing jamming and cyberspace capabilities, directed energy weapons, on-orbit capabilities, and ground-based anti satellite missiles that can achieve a range of reversible to nonreversible effects,” the agency said in its report.
“We have to give our mission systems an opportunity to participate in their own defense, give them a fighting chance,” Michael Dickey, head of Air Force Space Command’s Enterprise Strategy and Architectures Office, said last Friday at an event on Capitol Hill for the Mitchell Institute. “We’ve begun to introduce changes.”
“We are doing a lot of work in that area,” said Col. Russell Teehan, who is the Portfolio Architect of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center.
“It’s not hard to imagine, if someone is shooting at you, you would maybe like to get out the line of fire and so creating some agility with our space systems becomes very important,” Dickey added. “Maneuverability takes fuel and thrusters and all of that. You’ll start to see that in the next round of modernization.”
“A lot of this is: who else is watching what’s going on?” Teehan said. “And can I synchronize forces? Because if Johnny goes to the right, and Sally goes to the left, if we work just at the tactical level, you will not synchronize forces. It’s not just on board, it’s synchronizing the sensors and data flows to operate as an enterprise organization.”
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