Space may be the final frontier and it's starting to get awfully crowded. With Russia and China stepping up their orbital capabilities — and having already demonstrated the ability to destroy satellites — the Air Force is turning increasing attention to what happens above our planet.
"There is no soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, anywhere in the world that is not critically depending on what we provide in space," Gen. John Hyten, head of Air Force Space Command, said Dec. 8.
The Air Force will spend close to an estimated $10 billion on space operations in 2016, according to government budget documents.
Part of that will go toward preparing to launch GPS III satellites in 2017 — the next generation of navigation satellites. The new units have increased bandwidth for military use, as well as better anti-jamming capabilities to ensure the signal gets through any interference.
But some space experts are worried about the military's ability to get those satellites into orbit. United Launch Alliance, one of the Pentagon's biggest space contractors, announced in November it would pull out of a competition to provide the Defense Department with rockets.
The company — a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin —said it can't get access to enough Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines due to current U.S. sanctions against the country.
But Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, accused the companies of "manufacturing a crisis," saying their move should be viewed "with skepticism and scrutinized heavily."
Elsewhere, the Pentagon started a temporary joint space command center to experiment on how the services should respond to potential threats in orbit. The Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado started Oct. 1 and is expected to run through most of 2016.
