U.S. Air Force Official Talks About Space Protection of Civil and Military Space Capabilities at Future Space Leaders Foundation Conference
The Future Space Leaders Foundation is "a tax exempt 501 c 3 non-profit organization dedicated to the career development of young space and satellite industry professionals." Education of space professionals is one of the main focus of the Foundation. The Foundation collaborates with and supports a number of other space focused non-profit and commercial space organizations. The Foundation holds annual educational events and dispenses grants to young professionals to enable them to attend conferences of other space related organizations.
The mission of the Foundation is:
"To advance learning and professional enrichment of young space professionals and future leaders pursuing careers in the fields of space and satellites.
To stimulate the professional growth and enhancement of future space professionals and to foster cooperation and interaction among current leaders in the space field with graduate students and young professionals seeking to pursue careers in the fields of space and satellites.
To assist graduate students and young professionals in attending space and satellite industry conferences and events through grants covering legitimate travel and registration related expenses."
At the Future Space 2016 conference held by the Foundation in July of 2016, Lt. Gen. Jay Raymond, a senior space official of the U.S. Air Force spoke about the importance of advanced space capabilities to the all facets of the mission of the Air Force.
For the next six years, the U.S. Department of Defense has budgeted six billion six hundred million dollars for space protection which includes both commercial satellites and ground systems as well as military satellites and ground systems that protect the U.S. from a variety of threats from hostile groups and nations. Raymond referred to this budgeting as a "renaissance." The U.S. has steadily developed and deployed new space technologies and systems that are important to the economy of the U.S. as well as defense of the country. While the new systems give us new capabilities, they also represent new vulnerabilities. This requires even more new technologies and systems to protect our civilian and military space resources.
One of the new ideas being investigated for increasing the resilience of our space resources is called "disaggregation." The basic concept is to distribute capabilities across smaller, simpler and cheaper satellites. This will make expansion of our civil and military space resources easier, more affordable and more resilient in the face of natural and man-made problems. The Air Force is considering disaggregation of both the missile warning defense system called the Space Based Infrared System satellite network and the critical military communication Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite network.
Raymond emphasized that as the U.S. has steadily built up the range and sophistication of our civil and military space capabilities, major nations which may be enemies in the future has also been building up their space capabilities. There have been recent demonstrations of the ability of such nations to disable or destroy satellites either from ground based lasers or space based attacks. This danger can be partially mitigated by the expansion of our fleet of civil and military satellites with cheaper and simpler satellites creating many more targets for any adversary.
