Aviation Week Network:

Four years ago, Gen. John Hyten, then head of the missile warning satellite community’s largest customer, U.S. Strategic Command, said he no longer supported “buying big satellites that make juicy targets.”

Instead, he advocated buying a more distributed set of satellites with the ability to survive kinetic or cyberattacks or other emerging threats. After years of study, a multitiered system of satellite constellations with multiple methods of withstanding attacks is beginning to take shape.

“The increasingly contested nature of space demands we augment the resiliency of our space-based capabilities, just as Gen. Hyten said a few years ago,” says Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center. In describing the Pentagon’s pursuit of missile warning capabilities, Thompson includes…

Click here to read the full article.