Sirotin Intelligence Briefing: October 5–11, 2026: NASA and DOE Sign the Space Nuclear Pact, Raytheon and Boeing Book $21 Billion in Interceptor Work, and the Army Fields Its First 600 Space Soldiers as Hormuz Attacks Hit a Wartime High

by Angelica Sirotin

This week's Sirotin Intelligence analysis covers the October 8 NASA–Department of Energy memorandum that puts Space Reactor-1 Freedom (a fission-electric spacecraft to Mars in late 2028) and Lunar Reactor-1 (launch-ready by 2030) under a single framework, alongside roughly $21 billion in interceptor production commitments as the Missile Defense Agency signed Raytheon to an up-to-$6.3 billion SM-3 Block IB multiyear and Boeing took a $14.7 billion, seven-year order from Lockheed Martin to triple PAC-3 seeker output, and the Army's first class of more than 600 enlisted 40D Tactical Space Operations Specialists reporting for duty after nearly 3,000 applied. We also cover the Pentagon's selection of four directed-energy systems for a homeland counter-drone pilot, Project Meridian's 120-day mandate with Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich on the panel, the Space Development Agency's launch of 21 Northrop Grumman Transport Layer satellites, the CBO's $734 billion line for a space-based interceptor layer that Golden Dome's director says will not be the 2028 priority, and Musk's word that Starship Flight 15 and its first ship catch will wait until just before Thanksgiving. Rounding out the week: a dozen ships attacked in and around Hormuz in a single week with crude transits down 40%, the Ukrainian delegation leaving Miami early after Trump's diesel deal with Putin, Josef Aschbacher's "Europe does not deploy weapons in space" as all 27 EU states adopt an orbital threat framework, Crew-12 home after 237 days, two counterspace startups raising $54 million in a week, and Christophe Bosquillon's column on CSIS's "Blurred Orbits" and what China's commercial space push is for.

🛡️ Defense Highlights

• Interceptor week – MDA signs Raytheon to an up-to-$6.3 billion SM-3 Block IB multiyear and Boeing takes $14.7 billion from Lockheed to triple PAC-3 seeker output: The Missile Defense Agency awarded Raytheon a five-year, $4.4 billion base contract for SM-3 Block IB interceptors, with two option years that would take the total to about $6.3 billion; the Pentagon did not disclose quantities. The SM-3 IB is the Aegis midcourse interceptor fielded on destroyers and at the Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland, and a modified SM-3 was the weapon that destroyed the failing USA-193 satellite in 2008. Separately, Boeing announced a $14.7 billion, seven-year contract from Lockheed Martin for PAC-3 MSE active radar seekers, formalizing an April framework that ties Boeing's seeker output to Lockheed's commitment to grow finished-missile production from 600 to 2,000 a year. Steve Parker, head of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, said the company will "deliver seekers at unprecedented levels in the near-term"; the work supports 7,200 jobs across 400 suppliers in 37 states. The numbers behind both awards come from a July 27 CSIS estimate that put the PAC-3 inventory at roughly 1,030, down from about 2,330 before February 28, and from Operation Epic Fury's $22.3 billion munitions bill. With last week's up-to-$20.7 billion AMRAAM multiyear, the department has now committed more than $40 billion in air and missile defense production in a fortnight, almost all of it under undefinitized or framework terms that still need appropriations behind them. Boeing, which also won the Navy's F/A-XX fighter development contract (worth more than $20 billion) and a $2.38 billion order for 22 F-15EX jets at the end of September, has booked more than $37 billion in new defense awards in two weeks.
• The Army's first 600 space soldiers report – 40D Tactical Space Operations Specialists, 1,500 by 2032, trained in counter-satcom and navigation warfare: The first class of 40D soldiers began reporting on October 1, more than 600 selected from nearly 3,000 applicants, as the enlisted counterpart to the 40A space operations officers the Army has fielded since 1999. The Army projects an initial force of 1,000, growing to as many as 1,500 by 2032, assigned to the 1st Space Brigade and to Army commands in the Indo-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Training at the Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence in Colorado Springs covers space integration and interdiction: counter-satcom, navigation warfare, counter-sensing, and stratospheric operations. Command Sgt. Maj. Rickey Jackson of Army Space and Missile Defense Command said the service picked "over 600 of its most capable soldiers"; Brig. Gen. Donald Brooks said Army space officers have spent 27 years working to normalize the mission and the new branch, established in June, carries that forward. Until now the Army borrowed soldiers from other specialties for space billets and lost the expertise when they rotated home. The same week, the Army awarded nine companies $93.6 million in one-year software contracts under Next Generation Command and Control, with I Corps in the Pacific first in line; the applications run on a common data layer led by Anduril with Palantir and Raft. The Space Force operates the satellites; the Army's new field is for the soldiers who will jam, spoof, and deny an adversary's from the ground, and 600 of them now have a permanent career path.
• Project Meridian gets 120 days and a panel of Musk, Luckey, and Gingrich – Hegseth's September 30 memo also sets an October 2027 target for a four-star Autonomous Warfare Command: Secretary Hegseth announced Project Meridian at Quantico on September 30 and released the memo the same day. Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael is directed to stand it up; its charge is to map the trajectory of future warfare "from under the Earth to beyond the Moon," identify critical capability gaps, and propose solutions aligned with the 2026 National Security Science and Technology Strategy, with a final report due within 120 days, by January 28, 2027. Hegseth named Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich as key members and said the work would proceed "without any creative limitations or restrictions." The memo's language, which Christophe quotes below, is that "to maintain global dominance, the United States must anticipate future operational environments and act decisively to develop the tools to dominate in them." The same event laid out a tentatively named Autonomous Warfare Command, a four-star combatant command with service-like authorities to define joint autonomy requirements and test force designs, with an October 1, 2027 target that depends on Congress. Project Agincourt, led by the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems with DIU's Owen West as CEO and Navy SEAL Senior Chief Max Strasiser as COO, does the groundwork. Two of Meridian's three named members run companies with major Pentagon contracts, and the memo does not address how conflicts of interest will be handled. That question will follow the report to Congress in January.
• Pentagon picks four directed-energy systems for a homeland counter-drone pilot – two lasers, one microwave, one compact laser, under JIATF 401: The department selected AeroVironment's Palletized High-Energy Laser, Epirus's Leonidas high-powered microwave, Kord's Firefly high-energy laser, and Boeing's Compact Laser Weapon for a pilot assessing directed energy in homeland drone defense, announced October 6. Joint Interagency Task Force 401, created to consolidate counter-small-UAS work across federal agencies and allies, oversees the effort with the FAA, U.S. Northern Command, and the services, under a mandate in the FY2026 NDAA. "There is no silver bullet, or one size fits all solution to countering the threat of drones," said JIATF 401 director Brig. Gen. Matt Ross. The selection follows a live-fire demonstration at White Sands and precedes a directed-energy shoot-off at Dugway in December. The Coast Guard, meanwhile, is buying four unarmed MQ-9B SeaGuardians for $247.8 million out of FY25 reconciliation and FY26 funds, crediting a borrowed CBP MQ-9A with 60,700 pounds of drug seizures in FY26. Read with ISW's note that Ukraine downs about 57% of Russia's jet-powered Gerans versus 85 to 90% of conventional drones, the pilot is testing the cost-per-shot answer to a problem the interceptor contracts above cannot solve.
• SDA launches 21 Northrop Grumman Transport Layer satellites – the fourth Tranche 1 mission, five days late, first half of a $692 million order: A Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg at 3:39 a.m. ET on Saturday, October 10, with Tranche 1 Transport Layer A, 21 Northrop Grumman data-relay satellites for the Space Development Agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. The spacecraft carry software-defined communications payloads and standardized Optical Communication Terminals for laser crosslinks with neighbors; they are the first 21 of a 42-satellite order under a $692 million firm-fixed-price award from 2022, with the remainder on later manifests. The launch slipped from October 5 on Falcon 9 technical issues and Vandenberg range conflicts. York and Lockheed Martin have flown earlier Tranche 1 Transport Layer batches. Commissioning and optical link calibration begin now. The same week HawkEye 360 published results from an AFRL Phase II SBIR (about $1.2 million, awarded 2024) showing its RF-sensing satellites can detect and characterize emissions from other spacecraft in LEO, MEO, and GEO; COO Todd Probert said some emissions are hard or impossible to observe from the ground. Transport Layer is the mesh that carries targeting data between sensors and shooters; a commercial RF constellation that can fingerprint satellites from orbit is the kind of sensor SDA did not have to pay to develop.
• Golden Dome by the numbers – CBO's $734 billion space-interceptor layer, Guetlein's two-stage plan, and a Colorado Springs–Huntsville truce: The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget's October 7 breakdown of the CBO estimate that dominated the September 29 hearing shows where the $1.2 trillion sits: $734 billion over 20 years for a LEO interceptor layer of about 7,800 satellites, requiring roughly 30,000 procured and launched to sustain the number; $187 billion for a 35-site regional layer; about $90 billion for a tracking constellation of 108 LEO and 27 MEO satellites; $92 billion for RDT&E; $46 billion and $29 billion for upper and lower wide-area surface layers. CBO's design handles ten simultaneous ICBMs and would be overwhelmed by a Russian or Chinese salvo; the administration's $185 billion over ten years assumes something different, and nobody outside the program has seen the architecture. Gen. Guetlein's own sequencing, reported by Arms Control Today from his September 17 remarks in Ohio, is a Stage 1 by 2028 that integrates existing capabilities against "a coercive decapitation or rogue nation attack against the homeland," and a Stage 2 by 2035 built on directed energy, advanced sensing, and quantum. The space-based interceptor prize competition has 12 contractors past the first milestone, $126 million to each that completes the second, $40 million extra for the first, and $3.2 billion in expected total payouts. On October 5, officials from Colorado Springs and Huntsville, who have fought over Space Command's headquarters since 2021, announced a Golden Dome partnership; Rep. Jeff Crank's version: "We find the threat. Huntsville stops the threat." Congress is in recess until November 9, and the reconciliation tranche that carries $17.1 billion of the FY27 request will not move before the midterms.

Major Contract Awards This Week:

• Raytheon – SM-3 Block IB interceptors: An up-to-$6,300,000,000 multiyear Missile Defense Agency contract with a five-year, $4,400,000,000 base and two option years adding nearly $2 billion, for production of Standard Missile-3 Block IB interceptors; quantities not disclosed.
• Boeing – PAC-3 MSE seekers: A $14,700,000,000, seven-year contract from Lockheed Martin for production of active radar seekers for the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor, formalizing an April framework to match Lockheed's planned increase from 600 to 2,000 missiles a year.
• General Atomics Aeronautical Systems – Coast Guard MQ-9B SeaGuardian: A $247,800,000 Coast Guard order for four unarmed MQ-9B SeaGuardian aircraft with ground stations and support equipment, funded from the FY25 reconciliation package and FY26 appropriations.
• Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems – SEWIP Block 2: A $208,962,712 firm-fixed-price Naval Sea Systems Command contract modification for production of Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program AN/SLQ-32(V)6 systems, through September 2029.
• Collins Aerospace – ATNAVICS: A $95,000,000 ceiling indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity Air Force Life Cycle Management Center contract for the Air Traffic Navigation, Integration, and Coordination System program, through September 2036.
• Nine awardees (General Dynamics Mission Systems, Air Space Intelligence Federal, Immersive Wisdom, LMI Consulting, Mente Systems, Stilman Advanced Strategies, Onebrief, Rune Technologies, and AIR) – Next Generation Command and Control: $93,600,000 in one-year Army software contracts for NGC2 applications across six warfighting functions on a common data layer, with I Corps as the first fielding unit.
• Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. – MQ-4C Triton: A $66,041,453 firm-fixed-price Naval Air Systems Command delivery order for recurring engineering retrofit efforts on MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft systems, through June 2030.

🌐 Policy, Geopolitical & Legal Developments

• Hormuz attacks reach a wartime high – a dozen ships hit in a week, crude transits down 40%, and Vance signals a shift from zero enrichment to a "meaningful" cut: At least a dozen ships were attacked in and around the Strait of Hormuz in the week ending October 5, the highest weekly count since the war began February 28, and the pace held through the weekend. The IRGC Navy said an unnamed crude supertanker struck a naval mine and caught fire after taking an unauthorized route with its navigation systems off, and warned that any tanker that "wishes to ignore the security and rules" of the strait would meet the same fate. UKMTO logged several incidents in the strait and the Gulf of Oman, including ships at anchor off Ras al-Khaimah ordered by radio to leave; the UAE coast guard rescued 22 crew from a burning tanker; on Sunday an unidentified projectile hit an outbound tanker. Kpler put average crude transit for the week ending October 7 at about 8.5 million barrels a day, roughly 40% below normal. CENTCOM says the blockade reimposed in mid-July has disabled four commercial vessels, turned around 135, and destroyed ten Iran-linked tankers, and on Sunday released footage of a fighter disabling a Panama-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman. Iran wants a return to the collapsed June memorandum plus U.S. backing for an Iran–Oman arrangement on coordinated transit routes; Vice President Vance said Iran must make a "meaningful" cut to enrichment capacity, which Al Jazeera read as a step back from the zero-enrichment demand. Nobody expects movement before Israel's October 27 election or the U.S. midterms on November 3. The Theodore Roosevelt and Makin Island groups, announced last week, are still in transit. Transit volume, now 8.5 million barrels a day, is the clearest measure of whose pressure is working.
• Ukraine's delegation leaves Miami early after Trump's diesel deal with Putin – 160 drones in a night, Kyiv's metro and water knocked out, 17 killed in Zaporizhzhia: Talks between Ukrainian and U.S. negotiators in Miami, which NBC reported were meant to discuss a "comprehensive plan" to end the war and which included European and NATO representatives alongside envoys Witkoff and Kushner, ended ahead of schedule on October 9 and the Ukrainian team flew home October 10. The trigger was Trump's October 9 call with Putin, after which he announced a diesel supply arrangement: more than 300,000 tonnes immediately, 500,000 in November, and a million more shortly after, enabled by a temporary OFAC general license for Russian diesel on the global market. Zelensky called it "an investment in war." Presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn denied the second day was cancelled and said the first "turned out to be longer and had a slightly different feel to it." ISW's October 10 assessment notes Putin told Trump that Ukraine was stalling the talks, with no evidence offered and no Russian concessions on the table, and that Treasury Secretary Bessent echoed Moscow's line that Ukrainian refinery strikes are causing the diesel shortage. On the ground, Russia launched about 160 drones overnight October 9–10, Ukraine downed 117, a jet-powered drone was shot down near Lviv, and strikes on substations cut power to parts of Kyiv's metro, transit, and water systems in what Ukrenergo describes as the opening of a planned winter campaign. Glide bombs on Zaporizhzhia on October 10 killed at least 17. Ukrainian drones hit an oil terminal in Rostov-on-Don and rail bridges in Rostov and Bryansk. Last week's Patriot license and this week's PAC-3 seeker contract are the supply side of Ukraine's winter; the diesel license is a sanctions easing Kyiv opposed in public while its negotiators were still in the room.
• NASA and DOE sign the space nuclear pact – SR-1 Freedom to Mars in late 2028, Lunar Reactor-1 launch-ready by 2030, and Isaacman says the Moon Base is ahead of schedule: Administrator Isaacman and Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed a memorandum of understanding titled "Accelerating American Leadership in Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion" on October 8 at OSTP's "Science: A New Golden Age" summit, effective November 1, implementing the December 2025 executive order and NSTM-3. Three lines of work: Space Reactor-1 Freedom, a nuclear-electric spacecraft targeting a late 2028 launch whose reactor starts 48 hours into flight after Earth escape and whose SkyFall payload carries three Ingenuity-class helicopters with cameras, ground-penetrating radar, and radios to survey Mars landing sites and look for subsurface water; Lunar Reactor-1, a fission surface power system for the Moon Base that the 2025 order requires to be launch-ready by 2030, to carry the base through lunar night and shadowed terrain; and continued DOE radioisotope supply, including the MMRTG and 24 heater units for Dragonfly in 2028 and 24 heater units for ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover. "Nuclear power will allow us to go farther, operate longer," Isaacman said, calling it a "Nuclear-NASA era," and told the summit the Moon Base is ahead of schedule. At the same event Trump presented Musk with the National Medal of Science. Congress is out until November 9; the lame-duck list includes appropriations before the December 11 CR deadline, the FY27 NDAA, a NASA authorization act, and a commercial space act. SR-1 is the test article for every nuclear decision after it, and the agreement gives DOE a stake in the schedule as well as the hardware.
• Aschbacher: "Europe does not deploy weapons in space" – as all 27 EU states adopt an orbital threat framework and France, Germany, and the UK build non-destructive counterspace: ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher told reporters at the International Astronautical Congress in Antalya that "Europe does not deploy weapons in space" and that destructive attacks would spread debris and could make orbits unusable for everyone, a line drawn three weeks after Secretary Meink confirmed U.S. on-orbit space control weapons. The same week all 27 EU member states approved a collective framework for responding to threats in orbit, described by Payload as expanding what the bloc can do to counter aggression. The programs underneath are less abstract. BODYGUARD, funded by the European Defence Fund since 2023 across companies in eight countries, is developing an autonomous space situational awareness satellite that can detect adversary spacecraft up close and counter them "with a robot or laser." France is funding a pair of GEO satellites to launch before 2030 to demonstrate defensive maneuvers and FLAMHE, a laser program to disable satellites without debris. Germany's 2025 Space Safety and Security Strategy calls for bodyguard satellites and reusable spaceplanes to inspect and affect adversary systems. The UK has stood up a Space Effects Squadron to disrupt, degrade, and deny. Secure World Foundation's 2026 counterspace report already classifies several European programs as going beyond surveillance. ESA also signed a cooperation agreement with the IAU's Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky on satellite brightness and radio interference. The distinction Aschbacher is drawing is destructive versus non-destructive, and on that definition Europe is building the same category of capability GHOST-R and Fortastra represent on this side of the Atlantic.

🛰️ Technology & Commercial Developments

• Musk: Starship Flight 15 "probably launches a little bit before Thanksgiving" – with the first ship catch, then a full reflight on Flight 16: Speaking to about 2,000 people at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on Saturday, October 10, Musk said Flight 15 is four to six weeks away, later than the October 19 date that had circulated, because a short list of upgrades requires crews inside the tanks. Flight 15 will attempt to catch the ship with the tower arms, which Musk called a "super big deal"; the booster has been caught before, the ship never, and a success would be the first full recovery of an orbital-class rocket. The goal after that is Flight 16, reflying both the booster and the ship. Musk also said the SpaceXAI unit will be renamed SpaceXSI, following the administration's rebranding of frontier AI as "superintelligence." SpaceX flew one Falcon 9 this week, the SDA mission from Vandenberg; Monday's Starlink launch from the same coast is the first Starlink flight in more than three weeks. Starlink stands at 12,988 satellites launched, 11,137 in orbit, and 11,123 working as of October 9. Starlink VP Michael Nicolls used a SpaceNews forum this week to urge every operator to share satellite positions and maneuver plans; with two-thirds of active LEO spacecraft and a proposed Starmind constellation that could reach a million, SpaceX is the operator with the most to lose from someone else's bad ephemeris.
• Crew-12 splashes down after 237 days – Meir reaches 440 cumulative days, Dubrov takes ISS command, and Dragon Freedom closes out the first LZ-40 mission: Dragon Freedom landed in the Pacific about 50 miles west of Los Angeles at 11:34 a.m. ET on October 8 with Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway of NASA, ESA's Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos's Andrey Fedyaev, ending a mission that launched February 13 from SLC-40, logged four spacewalks and 3,792 orbits, and was the first to see a Falcon 9 booster land at LZ-40. Meir now has 440 cumulative days in space. She handed station command to Pyotr Dubrov on October 4 before Crew-12 undocked at 1:05 a.m. ET on October 7. Crew-13, which docked October 1 in a record 7 hours 55 minutes, is now the station's U.S. segment crew through roughly March. Northrop's Cygnus CRS-24 is departing the station for a free-flight period before a South Pacific reentry. Dragon has now completed a dozen operational rotations; Starliner's first, confirmed two weeks ago, is set for 2028.
• Two counterspace startups raise $54 million in a week – Fortastra's satellite bodyguards and Kapta's MTI radar for classified missions, alongside HawkEye 360's RF fingerprinting: Fortastra, founded in 2025 by SpaceX alumnus and Hermeus co-founder Mike Smayda, closed a $30 million Series A led by First In with Upfront, Space Capital, Rsquared, Side Door, and ATX participating, to build maneuverable spacecraft that "hold position near critical assets, evaluate surrounding activity, and respond to potential threats in real time." Its Watchdog V0 pair flew on Transporter-18 and includes rendezvous and proximity operations; the money funds two larger operational prototypes and a company of 18 that plans to double or triple. Kapta Space of Seattle closed a $24 million Series A led by Washington Harbour Partners and Bison Ventures, $30 million total since 2022, to build low-cost moving target indication radar payloads for classified missions won this year; CEO Milton Perque expects flight heritage in 24 to 36 months and says the payload could track midcourse missiles, and that the program predates Golden Dome. HawkEye 360's AFRL-funded demonstration of satellite-to-satellite RF detection is described above. Add GHOST-R's two awards from September and Starfish's Otter on orbit, and the pattern is a commercial layer forming around inspection, characterization, and escort in the same quarter the Space Force acknowledged weapons on orbit. The venture money is arriving before the program-of-record money, which is the usual order.
• Nuri flies its fifth mission with 15 satellites, Long March 12 lofts SatNet Group 27, and Hera arrives at Didymos – a week with no U.S. launches until Saturday: South Korea's Nuri lifted off from Naro Space Center at 11:25 p.m. EDT on October 6 with 15 satellites: five KAIST NEONSATs for a planned ten-satellite Earth observation constellation and ten CubeSats, of which nine deployed; PERSAT-02 failed to separate and likely stays attached to the upper stage. Nuri has four straight successes since its 2021 failure. China's Long March 12 flew SatNet LEO Group 27 from Wenchang on October 9, the 27th batch for the Guowang-class state broadband constellation, two weeks after batch 26 on a Long March 8A. ESA's Hera reached the Didymos–Dimorphos system after two years in transit to measure the result of NASA's 2022 DART impact, and will next release its Milani and Juventas CubeSats. ArianeGroup and SSC completed a second wet dress rehearsal of the Themis reusable demonstrator at Esrange on September 29, announced October 7, with at least one more before a Prometheus hot fire. Vulcan's return to flight is set for no earlier than October 29 on an Amazon Leo mission. Worldwide the year stands at 239 orbital launches with 232 successes. Two of the week's four launches were Korean and Chinese government constellations; the only U.S. flight was the Space Development Agency's.

💭 A Word From Christophe Bosquillon

This week, the National Security Space Association NSSA's SpaceTime series featured 'Recent Advances in China's Commercial Space Industry and the Implications for U.S. National Security.' The NSSA hosted The Honorable Kari Bingen for a presentation of her CSIS team report 'Blurred Orbits: Inside China's Commercial Space Expansion' published in late July 2026. This report refocuses attention toward China's commercial space sector and the industrial base supporting it, which are growing at stunning pace on an unprecedented scale, a challenge that threatens the West directly.

The bottomline is that China's commercial space push is a vector for global information, industrial, and economic control. Price competition is the entry point. China is explicitly modeling its launch and broadband sectors on the Falcon 9/Starlink/Starship playbook - reusable launchers, mass satellite production, vertical integration - with the state subsidizing pricing to undercut Western competitors abroad.

The commercial layer is inseparable from the state. Chinese commercial space companies operate under a legal architecture that obligates cooperation with state and military objectives: the 2017 National Intelligence Law, cybersecurity and data-governance regulations, party oversight are what makes this civil-military fusion work. A Space Silk Road (BRI) bundling creates dependency on Chinese standards, data governance, and infrastructure.

Infrastructure dependency of this kind creates latent leverage over data flows, information access, and terminal-level service that Beijing could exercise selectively. China pretty much follows the Dolman's Astropolitik playbook, with control of the orbital and information "high ground" as a precondition for broader strategic control. By 2030, China will have closed the gap with U.S launches and satellites counts through industrial scale rather than superior innovation.

The 30 September 2026 Project Meridian memo says that "to maintain global dominance, the United States must anticipate future operational environments and act decisively to develop the tools to dominate in them." The Pentagon has assembled a panel enabling industry leaders to help identify the technologies and capabilities the department says will shape future warfare.

The new PBS NOVA documentary "Space Wars" covers the military struggle to control Earth's orbit. But competition for space economic power has already started, first on launchpads and factory floors.

Have a great Space Week ahead!