Surviving in Space

While the goal of the Pentagon’s “third offset” strategy is to deter attacks, its implementation in space could make any attack on US assets survivable, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said Wednesday at a Washington Post event. Work said potential adversaries have been planning to attack US systems in space in case war ever does come. “We have considered space a sanctuary for quite some time and, therefore, a lot of our systems are big, expensive, enormously capable, but enormously vulnerable,” he said. Over the next decade or so, Work said, those systems’ capabilities will be distributed to smaller, maneuverable systems that can avoid attacks. The Pentagon will also tap into available commercial resources, including open-source data from private satellites that photograph every inch of the earth. “By using a combination of commercial technologies plus disaggregating our own constellation, we’re confident we’re going to be able to survive any type of concerted attack …,” Work said. (See also DOD’s 3rd Offset Strategy 101.)