Space Force Capability Structure in North America

Space Force Capability Structure in North America

The post-Cold War global liberation order—backed by Western leadership—has been challenged by the rise of political multipolarity. Wars in South and West Asia, the financial crisis of 2008, the annexation of Crimea, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and rising tensions across the Taiwan Strait have exposed global economic interdependence and the balance of power.

The development of new axes and mechanisms of cooperation, coupled with the global competition Russia, China, and secondary powers like North Korea and Iran, through the pursuit of force-multiplier technology and asymmetric capabilities have tested Western force projection strategies in Taiwan, Korea, and the Baltics. Growing investments in kinetic physical, and non-kinetic physical capabilities—with the recent use case of GPS jamming capabilities by Russia in the Russo-Ukrainian War—have accentuated the strategic importance of the space domain.

Consolidation within the 5 theaters of battle—land, air, naval, digital, and space—into a singular battlesphere, through human-machine interactions, is expeditiously evolving the military command and control (C2) structure and threat spectrum for military operations. Increased competition within contested spectrum environments, caused by the democratization of the space domain, has disrupted space regimes and defined the NewSpace sector. As national interests in space adopt a more data-driven role, with several exogenous and endogenous factors driving space as a distinct warfighting domain, the convergence and consolidation of technologies, functions, and stakeholders will predicate future military space operations, force generation, and capability-building programs.