Space warfare gets a formal definition thanks to a new strategic document. The U.S. Space Force released “Space Warfighting – A Framework for Planners,” which outlines possible offensive and defensive actions, respectively, such as destroying an adversary’s satellites or “escorting” satellites to protect them, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports. The goal is to give officials a clear idea of how the Space Force, which has previously avoided publicly discussing offensive and defensive space operations, would approach conflict.
The document debuts “a common framework, common lexicon that we can use in our training and in our education programs, and really write down things that then guardians can argue about and debate and think about and use as a tool in their planning that really is about fighting in the domain,” said Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, Space Force deputy chief of space operations, strategy, plans, programs, and requirements. “It’s not just we’re going to fight in space and see who wins the space fight,” he said. “We’re going to fight in space to make sure the aircraft carrier doesn’t get struck and 5,000 sailors don’t go to the bottom of the ocean.” Get the full story here.
New: Elon Musk’s SpaceX along with Palantir and Anduril are alleged “frontrunners” for Trump’s ambitious, sprawling “Golden Dome” missile defense project, Reuters reported Wednesday citing a half dozen people familiar with the talks.
The gist: “The three companies met with top officials in the Trump administration and the Pentagon in recent weeks to pitch their plan, which would build and launch 400 to more than 1,000 satellites circling the globe to sense missiles and track their movement, sources said. A separate fleet of 200 attack satellites armed with missiles or lasers would then bring enemy missiles down,” at least in theory, according to Reuters.
Background: The idea for an elaborate, space-based missile defense system was first publicly floated in the early- to mid-1980s, but scientists and physicists at the time—including former Defense Secretary Ash Carter—collectively determined it was neither technologically nor financially feasible, as Carter himself explained to your D Brief-er back in 2019.
One thing is fairly certain about this “Golden Dome” project: It’s such a network of capabilities—at least as it’s been most recently conceived, insofar as the concepts have been explained publicly—that it has the potential to be an unprecedented cash cow for defense contractors. Components could include solid rocket motors to power interceptors; it could include satellite buses for detection and tracking payloads; high-powered microwave counter-drone technology could be a component; computing and connectivity firms could require a slice of the financial pie, too, as well as synthetic aperture radar satellites. And that is hardly an exhaustive list. Indeed, more than 180 companies have already reached out to the Pentagon in the hopes of playing at least some part in the project.
It could also be a pay-to-play service available to whomever has the money, Reuters reports: “In an unusual twist, SpaceX has proposed setting up its role in Golden Dome as a ‘subscription service’ in which the government would pay for access to the technology, rather than own the system outright.” The wire service notes, “Such an arrangement would be unusual for such a large and critical defense program.”
In the meantime, skeptics are not hard to find. One source familiar with ongoing talks told Reuters, “It remains to be seen whether SpaceX and these tech companies will be able to pull any of this off. They’ve never had to deliver on an entire system that the nation will need to rely on for its defense.” Read on, here.
Related reading: “The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers,” via the Wall Street Journal reporting Tuesday.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Lauren C. Williams. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1961, the U.S. launched its Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, which failed three days later.
Emerging tech
The Pentagon wants to build small nuclear reactors at defense installations, which could open the door for increased intersection between AI and power generation. The Defense Innovation Unit chose several companies, including General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, Kairos Power, X-Energy, that would be eligible to build these small, “microreactors,” Defense One’s Patrick Tucker writes. The companies are not yet on contract but later could be invited to submit proposals.
“That AI boom that we’re seeing has really reinvigorated the entire industry of micro and small reactors, and more than that, it’s catalyzed the industry to start investing private capital into this technology,” said Andrew Higier, director of the energy portfolio at DIU. “I felt compelled that DIU had to be involved here. Because of the AI boom—with big companies out there, Apple, Google, Meta, Facebook—they’re all looking at AI data centers” that run on nuclear energy, he said. Read more here.
Related reading:
Trump 2.0
After renewed harassment from President Trump, former CISA chief Chris Krebs says he’s leaving his private-sector job at SentinelOne to fight back against what the Wall Street Journal describes as an “unprecedented campaign by the government to punish dissent.”
Rewind: Krebs made headlines at the end of his government tenure for contradicting unproven claims that the 2020 election was stolen from the president. Trump signed an executive order last Wednesday night directing the Justice Department to investigate the former top cybersecurity official and ordered the head of every relevant federal agency revoke his security clearance.
“It’s about the government pulling its levers to punish dissent, to go after corporate interests and corporate relationships,” Krebs told the Journal. “It’s the same thing we’ve seen with the law firms, they’ve gone after clearances, they’ve gone after contracts. It’s a novel and expansive strategy they are taking on and it should concern everyone.”
Second opinion: “They will try to do this to other people. We know that with near certainty,” former U.S. official Miles Taylor said. “How we respond will set the tone inevitably for how others targeted by these EOs decide to respond,” he added. Nextgov has more.
And lastly: A federal whistleblower was harassed by what seems to have been a drone, NPR reported Tuesday.
The whistleblower, who was on the National Labor Relations Board’s IT team, gave a detailed account to Congress about how the White House’s DOGE team, led by tech billionaire Elon Musk, siphoned an undisclosed amount of sensitive labor data from the agency, while also raising concerns internally. That data typically never leaves the agency and possibly “included sensitive information on unions, ongoing legal cases and corporate secrets,” Jenna McLaughlin of NPR writes.
But there was also reported backlash, including “physically taping a threatening note” to his door with personal information and “overhead photos of him walking his dog that appeared to be taken with a drone,” according to a disclosure filed by the whistleblower’s attorney. More, here.
Additional reading:
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