A 2023 sunrise over the U.S., photographed from the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
In July, the Space Force led its largest exercise to date, “Resolute 25,” which sought to demonstrate how the U.S. and its allies would “operate in a contested, dynamic environment against high-end threats on short notice,” according to a press release.
The warfighting simulation incorporated “space-based and space-enabled capabilities,” including space electromagnetic and orbital warfare. These are tools the U.S. could deploy against today’s threats. But what about threats in 2030 — or even 2050?
Sounds like a question for Space Futures Command.
At least, that’s the idea behind this proposed organization: help the U.S. anticipate how a future war might unfold in space, and what technological and operational capabilities would be needed to deter it.
“We have to understand what the threat environment is, and there has to be some level of forecasting of what that turns into,” said Jennifer Reeves, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and senior resident fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute think tank in Arlington, Virginia.
The U.S. doesn’t yet have such an organization, although Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, who leads Space Systems Command, said last month at AIAA’s ASCEND conference in Las Vegas that Space Futures is “making a lot of progress.”
“The idea of Futures is to make sure that we’re working closely with the as is, the to be, all of the people that spend Space Force money, to get after those needs,” Garrant said, referring to operational relevance and resilient capabilities.
In early 2024 under the Biden administration, the Air Force proposed Space Futures as part of its broader strategy of “Optimizing for Great Power Competition.” The document outlined a new field command that “forecasts the threat environment, develops and validates concepts, conducts experimentation and wargames, and performs mission area design.” In other words, the U.S. must game out what role the space domain will play in a possible confrontation with China.
The Space Force was still in the process of establishing Space Futures when the Trump administration took over. In early February, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth halted the Air Force restructuring until the top department jobs were filled and those officials could review the plans. The Senate confirmed Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink in May and Undersecretary Matthew Lohmeier in late July.
For now, Space Futures remains just that — a future concept. A Space Force spokesperson said in a statement “the Air Force is still exploring options and has not made an official decision to stand up Space Futures Command.”
But, as Garrant said at ASCEND, the space domain is “ever changing and rapidly evolving.”
“The challenge that the Space Force has is that we’ve never really fought a war in space and it’s a rapidly developing domain, so it’s harder than most domains to predict that future operating environment and build things around it,” said Joel Mozer, who retired in 2023 after five years as the Space Force’s chief scientist.
He added: “That’s where the long-term strategic foresight comes in: where you really need to think not about what you think the most probable future is, but what’s the range of plausible.”
The case for Space Futures
One of the jobs of this command would be to think about the “what ifs”: What if the $630 billion space economy grows to many trillions of dollars? What if asteroid-mining becomes a booming industry? What if the U.S. establishes a permanent presence on the lunar surface? What if China does too? What if the red lines in space are different from those of conventional war?
Space Futures would also have to examine the geopolitical dynamics — for instance, what if China invades Taiwan? — and determine what that means for the space domain. As Mozer described it, this is the melding of the real, known and projected needs and threats with strategic foresight of what’s plausible.
The Air Force’s original plan combined three organizations under Space Futures’ control. The new Concepts and Technology Center would define the future operating environment, specifically what threats might emerge and what capabilities the U.S. might need against them. Those conclusions would inform a new Wargaming Center that would test those concepts with simulations and exercises. Finally, the Space Warfighting Analysis Center, established in 2021, would assess all of that to determine the requirements for the Space Force’s technical architecture and force design.
Brian Green, a retired Air Force JAG who served as the chief of space operations law and a space law instructor, said the idea would be to locate these future-focused activities together.
“How can we start figuring out what we would need in terms of new technology; new organizational constructs; new operational design and tactics, techniques and procedures? Are there agreements that we might need to be making with other partners in order to gain some kind of an ability or assure better interoperability?” Green asked. “These are some of the types of things that would be appropriate for a Space Futures Command to do.”
Another key goal of the proposed command was “prioritizing and streamlining science and technology pipelines to better meet warfighting needs,” according to a 2024 Space Force FAQ on the reorganization. This future thinking would translate into the development and acquisition of new technologies.
Those future capabilities depend on the threat environment. Some experts and former officials suggested potential areas of focus, such as building resiliency into positioning, navigation, and timing infrastructure and advancing the refueling and maneuverability of satellites.
The challenges ahead
Creating an entirely new command would come with resource, bureaucratic, legal and logistical challenges — details as basic as where to base the command and getting the desks and equipment to fill it. The Space Force must also balance future planning with its present operations.
In 2019, the Army stood up Army Futures Command to innovate and help build the Army of 2040. It combined commands to accelerate research and development and analyze warfighting concepts. At its start, it employed about 17,000 people and oversaw at least $30 billion.
In 2022, researchers at the National Academy of Sciences surveyed Army Futures Command and found “growing pains,” concluding a brand-new command could not itself remake organizational culture. Hegseth, as part of his Army Transformation Initiative, is now merging Army Futures with Training and Doctrine Command to create a Training and Transformation Command.
The Space Force is the military’s newest, and still one of the smallest branches, which some have argued creates an opportunity to build a different kind of force, rather than impose old structures with something like Space Futures.
“Having separate commands for acquisition, operations and future concept development is counterproductive to innovation,” wrote Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, in a February paper. Instead, he argued, the Space Force should “embrace its exceptionalism” and organize by mission areas.
On the other hand, combining all future activities under a single command would put Space Futures on a level playing field with the other operational commands. “It gives it not just the gravitas of being on that level, but also then those appropriate resources that come with a command to be able to use them as it moves forward,” said Reeves.
Yet the Space Force will have to embrace a forward-looking mission, whether through Space Futures or another structure, experts say. The Trump administration requested about $40 billion for the Space Force for fiscal year 2026, with about $29 billion going to research and development into next-generation capabilities, including Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared GEO/Polar capabilities and Golden Dome missile defense architecture.
“The future never comes out the way you plan it,” Mozer said. “Any future operating environment that you create is bound to miss the mark. What you hope is close enough to the mark that you get enough information out of it to do you some good.”
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