Wrapping up the speaker panel at the Air Warfare Symposium, Air Force Space Command Commander Gen. Lance Lord today gave his take on the role of Air Force spacepower in the operations of an interdependent force. From taking the “’search’ out of search and rescue,” to using space assets to overcome the problem of great distances, space is critical to the Joint Force, he said. He noted that there is a need to get more Army and Navy personnel into Air Force Space Command’s Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles AFB, Calif., to help generate useful, “Joint” space systems from the ground up. He added that today’s military staffing practices do not encourage military personnel to take such a step, though it should.
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.
