Defense leaders make renewed push for operationally responsive space.

• Author: Kilmer, Graham

* The Defense Department is eyeing small satellites and new launch systems as potential ways to maintain U.S. space resilience.

Tom Webber, director of the space and strategic systems directorate at U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said technological advances in electronics and computers have allowed for the development of small, low-cost satellites. These spacecraft are designed with a shorter life span, allowing the technology to be updated on a more frequent basis to keep up with rapidly increasing computer power, he said. "Small satellites deployed in large numbers in low-Earth orbit offer resiliency and some key advantage for some future military operations," Webber said at the GEOINT symposium in Washington, D.C.

In 2007, the Defense Department created the Operationally Responsive Space Office under the Air Force as an active step to adapt space capabilities and changing national security requirements, documents said. The concept called for inexpensive launch systems that could quickly loft small satellites with payloads that could replenish a critical capability lost because of conflict, malfunction or natural disaster. The ORS office successfully launched two small satellites, one in 2011 and the other in 2013. However, the architecture to build such a system never emerged.

Officials at the symposium embraced the idea again although without evoking the words "operationally responsive space." Instead, "resilient space" are the new buzzwords.

Webber said deploying dozens or hundreds of small satellites in a constellation creates fewer appetizing targets for an adversary wishing to eliminate U.S. space capabilities with anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons.

Maj. Gen. Roger Teague, director of space programs at the Air Force office of the assistant secretary for acquisition said, "Today's U.S. military and global economic dependence on space make it an attractive target for our adversaries." Space capabilities are an intrinsic part of the country's national security strategy, said Teague. There has been "explosive growth" in the number of nations capable of launching vehicles into space, he said. Some of the 11 space-capable countries have developed and tested ASATs, making the US military examine the resilience of its own space capabilities in the event of a direct attack, he said.

"If there was another nation that was going to go against the United States... they would have to take out our space assets," said Gordon Roesler...