Space deterrence news

Frank Morring, Jr., Amy Butler and Michael Mecham discuss the need for distributed constellations of satellites in an Aviation Week article. Referring to the recent collision between Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251, the authors include the following: "James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the Iridium constellation's ability to absorb the loss of a spacecraft with 'minimal degradation' to its overall service is a model that the Defense Dept. should seek to emulate by introducing more redundancy into its own space systems."

"'Forget the Exquisite Satellites.' That's the message from the thinking man's Marine, General James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce confab in Washington yesterday that the Defense Department may lose its edge in space because of a policy that has led to slow development of costly satellites." According to the article, "Defense needs to shifts its satellite focus away from 'the next cutting edge trinket' to cheaper satellites that it can launch in numbers that will give the United States the advantage of scale over an exquisite design, Cartwright said. Unless Defense changes its approach to space systems, it will 'lose a significant national security advantage.'"

Space deterrence, specifically a form of it called denial deterrence, is a subject being worked on at the Secure World Foundation.