The Space Force is poised to launch 100 or more satellites into orbit in 2025, the service’s top intelligence officer said this week—nearly doubling the previously known number of USSF spacecraft.
“The Space Force will add over 100 satellites just in 2025,” Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon said at an event held by Center for Strategic and International Studies on March 20. “That is to add resilient capabilities for our winning capabilities, missile warning and missile track, secure communications for the force, and, of course, reconnaissance and sensing that allows us to close long-range fires on a on a scale that no other country can really do.”
At the end of fiscal 2023, the Space Force disclosed that it had 83 satellites in service. Another 27 have since gone up for the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, as well as a few others.
The rapid expansion in 2025 is set to include more SDA satellites, as well as GPS satellites, Next-Gen OPIR missile warning satellites, Wideband Global SATCOM spacecraft, and more.
The massive increase is needed to create resilient networks, Gagnon said—something the Space Force wants to deter kinetic attacks but also cyber and electronic ones too. Space and cyber dominance often go hand-in-hand, he said. citing the example of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Gaining cyber and space superiority over your adversaries is an early objective in ground campaigns, and I think that will play out as we move forward later into the 21st century with additional conflict,” Gagnon said.
A key example of this was Russia’s cyberattack on a major supplier of Ukraine’s satellite network, ViaSat, just before the invasion. While the hacking effort did hinder the nation’s military network, it also unintentionally knocked out tens of thousands of modems across Europe and the Middle East. Kyiv then turned to Starlink, which kept communications flowing for the government and military.
“They were attempting to do command and control warfare, but their impacts were not the impacts they expected,” said Gagnon. “They were unable to disrupt the Ukrainian military command and control.” Experts suggest that the failed attempt may have been due to the Russians underestimating the rapid restoration of cyber services.
Gagnon described the ViaSat attack as a Soviet-era tactic called “information confrontation,” encompassing both electronic warfare to disrupt or control information flow and messaging, such as propaganda and narratives used to shape perceptions. The ViaSat attack blended both, making it a key component of Russia’s information warfare strategy.
Modern cyberattacks, such as information confrontation, aim to disrupt or control the electromagnetic spectrum through jamming or hacking to damage communications, data, and weapons systems. Gagnon highlighted that spectrum dominance is “absolutely critical to long-range fires,” especially if the target is mobile and requires tracking.
“In order to do that, you’re usually dealing with a satellite or UAV, and a ground or air firing unit; you have to network that force together,” said Gagnon. “That type of network happens through the electromagnetic spectrum. If you do not have access to it, to use it uninhibited, or to work through it when disrupted, you cannot bring your network to bear.”
Spectrum dominance includes cybersecurity, anti-jamming, and anti-spoofing technologies along with developing electronic warfare tools to disrupt enemy operations and strengthening command and control systems across all domains—something that wasn’t prioritized in the past, Gagnon said.
“One of our challenges in the Department of Defense is that we started to undervalue how important it was to have spectrum superiority, and that’s because we had 20 years of fighting in the Middle East against adversaries who are not challenging our spectrum,” explained Gagnon. Other experts have also pointed out that the Pentagon’s electromagnetic warfare efforts in space are hindered by poor coordination and a lack of communication between stakeholders. “Those core skills, which will be resident in some select officers, and really our NCO core are the special sauce that allow us to project power in a unified manner against both fixed and mobile targets.”