Following his speech (see above) at the 23rd National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo., Thursday, Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of Air Force Space Command, told reporters via telephone conference call that the nation mustn’t be overly focused on satellite capability as the sole or primary consideration in preserving the ability to utilize the space domain. Elements such as ground infrastructure, satellite dishes, and links between the dishes and satellites as well as between the satellites and warfighters are important, too. He said that we cannot focus on any one element of space systems at the expense of the others. “We have to be thinking about … an entire spectrum of capability when we think about defending our capabilities of the future,” cautioned Chilton.
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.
