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WASHINGTON — The top Space Force general delivered a stark warning: America’s ability to track threats in space is dangerously outdated for an era where adversaries can launch surprise attacks on U.S. satellites.
Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, speaking Sept. 17 at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) Conference, said the military’s space surveillance systems — built for a more peaceful orbital environment — are struggling to keep pace with the explosive growth in satellites and space debris, as well as the deployment of anti-satellite weapons by rivals like China and Russia.
“We cannot be satisfied if it takes us hours to detect on-orbit activity, and we definitely cannot be satisfied if full characterization of on-orbit events takes weeks and months,” he said. “The longer it takes to update the catalog, the more problematic the issue, the less domain awareness we have.”
The general’s comments underscore growing Pentagon concerns about what military officials call “space domain awareness” — the comprehensive tracking and understanding of all objects and activities in Earth’s orbit. This capability, which encompasses monitoring satellites, debris, and potential threats, has become critical as space transforms from a largely benign environment into a contested warfighting domain.
Saltzman’s urgency reflects the rapidly changing nature of the space environment where the number of active satellites has grown dramatically, while China and Russia develop and test weapons capable of destroying or disabling satellites, creating new categories of threats that existing tracking systems weren’t designed to handle.
The Space Force maintains what’s known as a space catalog — a comprehensive database of all known objects orbiting Earth, from active satellites to tiny pieces of debris. But this system, largely built during the Cold War era when space was less crowded and less contested, faces growing challenges.
“Much of our SDA mission set was built for a different era, an era where space was not a warfighting domain,” Saltzman noted. Military and civilian Space Force personnel “are expertly working hard to maintain our awareness of the space domain every single day,” but “we need to increase our manpower, update our training, enhance our tools, rewrite our policies and procedures and do a better job of leveraging our domain data.”
Saltzman’s take echoes concerns from other senior military officials who argue that current space surveillance capabilities remain stuck in basic cataloging functions rather than providing the predictive and analytical intelligence needed for modern space operations. Former deputy commander of U.S. Space Command Lt. Gen. John Shaw has previously pointed out these same shortcomings.
“We need a more comprehensive program to avoid operational surprise, not just enhance ongoing efforts incrementally,” Saltzman said. “We need to solve SDA problems, not just improve SDA processes.”
The stakes are high as modern military operations depend heavily on space-based assets for communications, navigation, intelligence, and precision weapons guidance. A successful surprise attack on these systems could cripple U.S. military capabilities worldwide.
“Space is becoming exponentially more congested each day,” Saltzman noted, “and our SDA capabilities are struggling to keep pace. And without operationally relevant SDA, contesting the space domain to maintain our strategic advantages will be nearly impossible.”
Speaking at the AMOS conference in Hawaii provided Saltzman with an opportunity to highlight one of the military’s most important space surveillance assets. The U.S. Space Force 15th Space Surveillance Squadron operates at the Maui Space Surveillance Complex, perched atop the Haleakalā volcano.
The Maui facility hosts one of only three operational GEODSS (Ground-Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance) systems worldwide, alongside installations in Socorro, New Mexico, and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. These sophisticated telescopes can track objects in deep space, providing critical data for the military’s space catalog.
“The Maui complex has been a gem of the space community for decades, and is one that the U.S. Space Force does not take for granted,” Saltzman said, emphasizing the service’s commitment to “respecting the mountain’s cultural and spiritual significance and moving forward only in complete partnership with the community.”
The Space Force is modernizing the Hawaiian site through programs like the Ground-Based Optical Sensor System (GBOSS), which represents a significant upgrade to the existing GEODSS infrastructure. The service also established a Space Domain Awareness Tools, Applications, and Processing (SDA TAP) Lab in Maui earlier this year, joining a similar facility in Colorado. These labs are designed to accelerate the development and deployment of new surveillance technologies through partnerships with industry and academia.
Central to Saltzman’s message was a call for deeper collaboration with the private sector, an area where the Space Force has faced criticism for being slow to embrace privately funded innovations. Commercial startups, for example, have argued that the military prefers government-owned capabilities over potentially faster and cheaper commercial alternatives.
“We need you, everyone in this room today, to help us turn commercial innovations into warfighting advantage,” Saltzman told the AMOS audience. “I believe, as does all the Space Force leadership, that we need to shift from a largely transactional relationship with industry to a much more collaborative partnership, and we know that this will require increased trust on both sides.”
This reflects an evolution in Saltzman’s own thinking since he last spoke at the AMOS conference in 2023, when he addressed industry concerns about the service’s reluctance to embrace commercial space domain awareness services. At that time, he said the military needed to better define which capabilities could be acquired from private companies versus those that were “inherently governmental.”
The Space Force published its commercial space strategy in April 2024, providing the framework Saltzman said was necessary before moving forward with expanded industry partnerships.
“We now have a commercial space strategy. Now have an international partnership strategy. These will help,” Saltzman said. “They will help structure conversations and point us in a common direction.”
The general acknowledged he had been hesitant to accelerate commercial partnerships before the strategy was in place. “What I felt is that it was necessary to make sure we’re all on the same page, make sure we describe mission areas the same way. Make sure we understand requirement sets.”
Looking ahead, Saltzman emphasized that incremental improvements won’t be sufficient. The Space Force needs what he called “decision quality understanding” rather than just “a potpourri of sensors and data.”
“Our goal is to speed up adoption of commercial technology for our most critical military space missions and space domain awareness is at the top of that list,” he said.
This push for faster, more comprehensive space surveillance capabilities comes as the Pentagon prepares for potential conflicts where space assets could be primary targets. Military planners increasingly view space as a domain where wars could be won or lost in the opening hours of a conflict, driving the need for fast threat detection.
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