Author Archives: Crawford Thompson

York Space Systems and SpaceX, two companies building satellites for the Space Development Agency’s megaconstellation, recently demonstrated the ability to connect two of their on-orbit spacecraft through a laser link.

During the demonstration, York linked one of the communication satellites it built for the first iteration of SDA’s constellation with a SpaceX missile tracking satellite. The laser communication links the companies used allow the satellites to transmit information quickly and securely.

The Pentagon’s strategic capital office will focus its 2025 investments on 15 industry segments it thinks could most support U.S. national security needs, including spacecraft, microelectronics materials and manufacturing and biochemicals.

The office released its fiscal 2025 investment strategy Thursday, offering a snapshot of its priorities for the coming year.

“Investments will be prioritized based on their national security impacts, defined as those that provide the United States and/or its allies and partners with robust competitive advantage relative to strategic competitors,” the document states.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin established the Office of Strategic Capital in 2022 to help direct private sector capital to defense technologies. The following year, Congress gave the organization authority to offer loans and loan guarantees to companies.

Rising tensions with China are prompting Washington to revisit America’s roots as a trading nation of the seas.

Protecting merchant sailors and their cargo was what compelled Congress to commission the U.S. Navy’s first new warships. That was in 1794, targeting North African Barbary pirates. The young republic’s seaborne traders, a linchpin of economic growth, were vital to national security.

The Navy became a mighty global fighting force. America’s commercial cargo fleet has withered almost to nonexistence.

Now politicians are once again linking national security to a vibrant maritime sector—nonmilitary aspects of the seas—and the benefits it brings to everything from shipbuilding to logistics chains. Washington is seeking ways to reverse its collapse by tapping examples from other industries, encouraging links with shipbuilding allies and plumbing the writings of America’s greatest sea strategist.

The Air Force will set a new path for how it will fight air wars during the first year of the next Donald Trump presidency, which will have ramifications for decades to come.

The Air Force struggled for much of 2024 to figure out how — and even whether — to proceed with its planned sixth-generation fighter, known as Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD.

But NGAD’s original anticipated cost — which came in at about three times as much as an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, or in the neighborhood of $250 million to $300 million — derailed the Air Force’s plans to proceed. This summer, the service put the program’s planned contract award on hold and launched a review of NGAD, and its air superiority strategy as a whole, to find out if there is a way to achieve its goals more affordably.

ORLANDO, Fla. — U.S. Space Command is updating its approach to integrating commercial systems into operations as the broader national security space community takes a more forward-leaning posture toward working with the private sector.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, who leads the command, said the new strategy, which was signed out in November, focuses on SPACECOM’s core tasks and how commercial space capabilities fit within those areas. The update follows the release of two high-level commercial integration strategies earlier this year — the first from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the second from the Space Force.

The leader of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday the Space Force needs to grow in size to overcome increasing threats from China and Russia.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., was a key player in establishing the Space Force five years ago. At the time, he and others in Congress advocated for a small, agile force that could quickly establish the processes and organizations needed to get the service up and running.

Drones have revolutionized modern warfare in the sky. Now defense companies and navies are betting they can do the same underwater.

The new underwater drones, with names such as Ghost Shark, Herne and Manta Ray, can typically dive thousands of feet below the surface and operate largely without human interaction for days on end. That ability makes them ideally suited to gather intelligence, protect undersea infrastructure and counter potential threats in the Pacific, advocates say.

“This is an opportune moment for these vehicles,” said Cynthia Cook, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “Submarines are fantastic, but they are expensive.”

A record share of Americans support higher defense spending, according to the annual Reagan National Defense Survey released Thursday.

Just under 80% of respondents said they would prefer a larger military budget, with 49% saying they are strongly in favor of one. The 79% share is two points higher than last year’s survey, as a super majority often expresses support on the question. It also outpaces some of America’s other foreign policy priorities, such as aid (43%) and “promoting freedom abroad” (61%).

A U.S. Navy destroyer can fire dozens of cruise missiles within minutes. Reloading the deadly warship back in port can take two months. In a war against China, that could be a fatal weakness.

To overcome the delay, Navy engineers pulled a 30-year-old crane out of storage, wired it up to computers, and used it to build a new prototype reloading system called the Transferrable Reload At-sea Method. TRAM, as it is known, promises to slash the time needed for missile reloading, potentially to just days.

“The ability to rearm at sea will be critical to any future conflict in the Pacific,” said Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro after a recent test of TRAM off the California coast, to which The Wall Street Journal was granted exclusive access.

Constrained for funds and facing rapidly improving potential adversaries, the US Air Force (USAF) is grappling with how to ensure control of the air in the 2030s.

One proposal — leaning heavily on standoff forces to provide “affordable” mass without traditional air superiority — has a problem: even with long-range kill chains, exquisite smart weapons, and low-cost swarms, no one has specifically described how such novel ideas would lead to victory. As the USAF considers difficult standoff versus stand-in decisions and what future control of the air might entail, the debate must return to a critical focus: how to produce effective mass.

Arguments over whether air superiority is necessary overlook a critical point: In a hypothetical defense against an invading adversary, the USAF might win with standoff-centric theories of victory, if they solve the effective mass calculus. However, with air superiority, the odds of victory increase drastically.