Space Operations: Through The Looking Glass (Global Area Strike System)

Americas capability to operate in space is increasing with every passing day. Space operations are already recognized as a crucial part of all American military operations. Military space operations may be indirect, through such staples as navigation, communications, and surveillancereconnaissance support to the war fighter, or direct, through development and fielding of a range of responsive directed energy and kinetic energy weapons. A modest fleet of flexible, mission tailored transatmospheric vehicles TAVs has an important place in any thoughtful space operations architecture, providing the only conceivable way to insert human presence rapidly into the fast breaking crises of 2025. Space represents the future a future in which aerospace power will increasingly be projected through space systems. This paper advocates a system of systems architecture for an American global space strike capability in 2025. This architecture recognizes the importance of the global information network surveillance and reconnaissance combined with the intelligence system, the military command and control system, the perennial space utilities communications, navigation, and weather, and a robust readiness and sustainment system to enable the fielding of space based or space borne weapon systems. The weapon system itself is described as a smaller system of systems composed of the weapon, its platform, and a primarily off board surveillance, acquisition, and trackingbattle damage assessment capability provided through the global information network.