Government Executive – This was supposed to be a week in which Pentagon leaders would “share our thinking and lay out our unified, whole-of-government plan to ensure U.S. leadership” in space.
But less than an hour after Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan uttered those words, It became clear that deep disagreements remain about how to reorganize the U.S. military’s orbital operations.
In her own speech here, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson warned about new plans to launch clouds of inexpensive satellites to augment larger ones that are more capable, yet ostensibly more vulnerable to jamming, cyber attack, or destruction by China and Russia.
“Launching hundreds of cheap satellites from the Earth as a supplement for the complex architectures where we provide…will result in failure on America’s worst day,” Wilson said.
