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• Sandra Erwin
Gen. Michael Guetlein brought the Pentagon’s case for Golden Dome to North Dakota on Aug. 20, appearing at an event hosted by two of the missile-defense program’s strongest Senate advocates as questions remain over how the initiative will be funded.
Space Defense & Militarization
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Gen. Michael Guetlein brought the Pentagon’s case for Golden Dome to North Dakota on Aug. 20, appearing at an event hosted by two of the missile-defense program’s strongest Senate advocates as questions remain over how the initiative will be funded.
The Space Force’s innovation arm selected 11 companies for a new round of public-private funding agreements designed to advance space technologies beyond the prototype stage. The initiative underscores SpaceWERX’s role in connecting commercial developers with military space requirements and operational adoption.
A U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III returned to Christchurch, New Zealand, after receiving notice of a potentially hazardous Russian aerospace activity, reportedly linked to a planned missile launch. The episode highlights how launch-related warnings can affect military air operations far beyond the launch site.
Five journalists and the two military members escorting them to an event at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California were briefly detained at gunpoint by the installation’s security forces. Local reports said officers mistook the invited group for unauthorized gate crashers.
Christophe Bosquillon examines USSPACECOM’s SWE 2040 framework, focusing on its implications for future space warfare, interoperability and allied integration. The vision signals how European partners may need to align operational concepts, capabilities and cooperation with an increasingly integrated U.S.-led approach to space security.
High activity
Chinese commercial launch company LandSpace successfully recovered the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket after placing the Honghu-03 satellite into orbit. The milestone advances China’s reusable launch effort toward a Falcon 9-style model, with implications for commercial space access and U.S. national-security launch advantages.
Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of the U.S. Space Force, says more missiles have been launched globally in the past three years than in all previous years combined. The assessment underscores the growing role of space-based systems in detecting and tracking missile activity, including launches from Iran.
PlanetiQ completed a milestone with a $2.73 million NOAA award to provide commercial GNSS radio occultation and total electron content data. Separately, Viasat selected Rocket Lab to build a geostationary satellite supporting the Protected Tactical Satcom-Global program, underscoring demand for commercial space capabilities across civil and defense missions.
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