FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – July 31, 2026 – Sirotin Intelligence, the space and defense intelligence platform, today released a visual briefing on The Space Warfighting Environment 2040 (SWE 2040), the U.S. Space Command publication that frames how the Joint Force expects to compete and fight in space over the next fifteen years.

The briefing condenses the 44-page USSPACECOM J7 document into 19 slides of plain-English analysis, with every figure traced back to the page it came from and checked against Sirotin Intelligence's own reporting from June and July 2026, including SDA's data-relay constellation reaching half strength, America's first robotic satellite servicer arriving in GEO, and Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian satellite ground infrastructure.

SWE 2040 stands apart from the year's other space frameworks as the only one that projects the operating environment forward rather than cataloging the present. The briefing was produced for the readers who depend on satellites every day but will never open the source document.

What the briefing covers

The visual report walks through the document's core argument: every space-enabled effect travels one chain, from ground to orbit and back, and that chain is where modern attacks concentrate. It maps the competitive landscape as USSPACECOM sees it, with China building launch volume, Russia engineering confusion through jamming and cyber operations, and smaller actors such as Iran buying commercial imagery to target U.S. infrastructure. It also covers the report's watchlist: cislunar terrain, quantum milestones, AI-enabled kill meshes, and a talent base the Pentagon admits is trapped in static org charts.

The briefing places SWE 2040 among the year's other space frameworks, from the CSIS Space Threat Assessment to the Secure World Foundation counterspace report, and explains what the document adds that the others leave out.

Availability

The full briefing is available for download below and at sirotinintelligence.com, alongside the weekly Sirotin Intelligence Briefing covering space, defense, and geopolitics.