Air Force Space Command plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Midcourse Space Experiment satellite on April 24 at Peterson AFB, Colo., and locations around the country that have participated in the delivery and operation of the MSX satellite—the Missile Defense Agency, Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, and Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Lab. Originally a Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (now called MDA) project with a design life of five years, AFSPC took it over in October 2000 after realizing it had space surveillance capabilities. The program is now AFSPC’s only space based surveillance asset that provides full metric and space object identification coverage of the geosynchronous belt, regardless of weather conditions.
In the face of Chinese war plans to disrupt U.S. command-and-control networks in the event of a conflict, the Air Force needs to focus less on its “connect everything” efforts and prepare its combat aviators to fight without a constant connection to higher-ups, according to a new report from AFA’s…
