According to base officials, Hurricane Katrina took a big bite out of Keesler, USAF’s major technical training facility near Biloxi, Miss. Water surged over the base, sometimes at depths of up to six feet, nearly destroying many base houses and crippling industrial areas. There is no power and base officials expected to keep base residents in central shelters at least through Thursday. The base’s runway was damaged, but C-17s and C-130s have been able to land to deliver supplies.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.