Author Description

In 2019, the United States faced challenges to national prosperity and security and an increasingly complex and volatile threat environment. No longer dominant or unchallenged in every domain of warfare--air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace--the country had entered a period marked by a return to major power competition as the primary U.S. national security concern.Throughout the year, national security space issues were a major focus for senior U.S. Air Force leaders. Many had long recognized the centrality of space to U.S. national defense and security, including, increasingly, the effectiveness of the country's military operations and the success of its commercial interests. America's rivals, especially adversaries China and Russia, continued to develop space and cyber warfare capabilities that could threaten the U.S. electric power grid and critical military and commercial satellites, damaging or destroying U.S. intelligence, navigation, and communications capabilities. Many civilian and military leaders believed that developments such as the anti-satellite missile tests conducted by China and Russia, and China's landing on the "dark side" of the Moon in January 2019, signaled the end of U.S. preeminence in space and were additional evidence that space was evolving from a formerly benign environment to a warfighting domain.The creation of the United States Space Force in December 2019 was, in part, a response to these challenges. But the idea of a space corps or a space force was not a new one.