“The volume of threats, the diversity of threats that [China] is presenting is a particular challenge,” he said. “But Russia is a very capable space-faring nation, and they’ve invested heavily in counterspace as well.”
Both Beijing and Moscow are working together on a moon station, and have recruited countries such as Egypt, South Africa, Thailand and Pakistan into an initiative that is a direct rival to the U.S. Artemis lunar program.
The Space Force was set up in 2019 to treat space as a military theater alongside the traditional branches of air, sea, land and cyber. However, building a new branch of the military isn’t easy, Saltzman said. “We underestimated what it was going to take to build a service level organization.”
The Space Force is developing systems to protect expensive satellites and to deter rival states from using any space-based systems in case of a conflict. One example of such a threat is a laser that can be used to dazzle optical satellite sensors with light. Snooping on satellite comms is also a big problem, while GPS-signal jamming has caused disruption in the Baltics.
This year, the U.S. Space Force has a budget of $29 billion on top of NASA’s $27.2 billion. That means U.S. government-funded space programs are far ahead of what Europe is able to do among the various spending programs of national governments, the European Space Agency and the European Union.
Some European countries, such as France, the U.K. and Germany, are also setting up space branches of their militaries — but on a much smaller scale than Washington’s effort.