America Must Be Able to Restore Its Space Power at War Speed

For decades, the U.S. military treated space largely as an enabler of power on Earth. Satellites helped troops communicate, guided precision weapons, and provided intelligence. Today, those systems are increasingly perceived as a means for U.S. and allied forces to apply power. The Trump administration is now putting that shift into policy. The next challenge is ensuring the United States can rapidly restore space capabilities when they are disrupted.

The administration also released an updated National Space Transportation Policy, replacing guidance issued in 2013. The Obama-era policy already called for responsive, resilient access to space and rapid restoration of capabilities during conflict. The Trump update goes further, explicitly linking rapid and resilient access to space to U.S. space superiority. It calls for space ranges to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries annually by 2030 and directs the Pentagon to evaluate barriers to supporting high-priority national security launches within 48 hours of need, including from expeditionary locations.

With China improving both its space and counterspace capabilities, U.S. space superiority cannot rest solely on having better satellites. Washington also needs the ability to rapidly replace or augment critical capabilities when satellites or supporting infrastructure are disrupted.

The Space Force has shown that rapid launch is possible. During VICTUS NOX in 2023, a standby spacecraft was readied within 57 hours and reached orbit 27 hours after the final launch order. VICTUS DIEM later tested preparing a spacecraft for launch in under 12 hours and separately ran a 36-hour simulated rapid-launch scenario. In June, VICTUS HAZE gave Rocket Lab just 24 hours to prepare a rocket for launch to an orbit unknown in advance; the launch succeeded. The challenge is making that speed routine, especially during potential crises.

Rapid launch is useful only if Washington has enough launch sites, range capacity, and available airspace to make that speed repeatable at scale. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reports the United States was responsible for 217 launches in 2025, while the administration wants U.S. ranges capable of supporting more than 1,000 launches and reentries annually by 2030.

Following Trump’s new space policies, the FAA stated that federal ranges are already strained and warned that launch-site availability could become a bottleneck as military, civil, and commercial demands grow. Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Kennedy Space Center, and Vandenberg Space Force Base account for 83-percent of U.S. launches, concentrating activity at just three locations. Furthermore, the FAA says efficiency improvements can accommodate higher cadence in the short term, but reaching the administration’s 1,000-goal will require additional spaceport capacity, launch sites, and support infrastructure. It is also exploring priority airspace for critical launch corridors because scheduling and airspace availability can constrain higher launch cadence.

Commercial industry gives Washington a major advantage, but it does not automatically solve the infrastructure problem. SpaceX conducted 170 launches in 2025 — compared to China’s 92 launches — demonstrating the scale of Washington’s commercial edge. The Space Force is also integrating commercial systems into military architectures and developing pre-negotiated agreements to secure commercial surge capacity during crisis or conflict.

But much of today’s commercial launch capacity still depends on the same concentrated federal infrastructure. SpaceX’s Falcon fleet launches from Kennedy, Cape Canaveral, and Vandenberg, while Blue Origin’s New Glenn launches from Cape Canaveral. Washington should use commercial investment and competition to expand viable launch sites and avoid dependence on any one provider or location.

Allies can expand those pathways further. Partner countries provide a source of resilience that Washington cannot replicate as efficiently alone: geographic dispersion, alternative launch locations, broader sensor coverage, additional capacity, and cost-sharing.

NATO’s STARLIFT initiative aims to develop a network of allied launch capabilities able to put assets into orbit at short notice, while HALO aims to connect sovereign allied military satellites into a larger network. In August, a U.S. space-surveillance sensor launched aboard a Japanese satellite on a Japanese rocket. The United States, United Kingdom, and Australia are also jointly fielding the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC), a three-site network designed to track objects in geosynchronous orbit. Allied contributions to DARC are projected to reduce U.S. lifecycle costs by 25 percent.

The strategic bargain is straightforward: allies give Washington more places to launch from, more satellites to draw on, and more pathways to keep missions running if U.S. systems are disrupted. The transportation policy already directs State and Commerce to review export controls to enable additional space transportation opportunities with allies. Washington should use that opening — alongside STARLIFT and partnerships with the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance and Japan — to pre-clear licensing procedures, certify compatible payload and launch interfaces, and conduct no-notice exercises in which allied spaceports or spacecraft to help restore lost capabilities within 48 hours.

The White House has rightly identified space as a driver of military power and rapid access to orbit as essential to national security. America will not preserve its space superiority by making every satellite or launch site invulnerable. It will do so by creating enough launch capacity, commercial alternatives, and allied pathways that attacks become less consequential and system recovery becomes faster.

Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery (U.S. Navy, ret.) is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and served 32 years in the U.S. Navy, including as deputy director for plans, policy, and strategy (J5) at U.S. European Command. Emmerson Overell researches threats to U.S. and allied security in the Arctic, space, and cyberspace at FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation.

image: Artist’s illustration of Rocket Lab’s spacecraft for the U.S. Space Force’s Tactically Responsive Space mission, VICTUS HAZE. Credit: Rocket Lab