Released on April 4, 2025, the Space Force Doctrine Document 1 (SFDD-1) articulates the raison d’etre and establishes a common lexicon for U.S. military space power. It spells out the what, when, where, why, and how of the Space Force and its role in the joint force today. But there is also a need to look well beyond the present, using as much imagination as possible. The military use of space is evolving quickly, necessitating not only new capabilities but also creating entirely new missions. The Space Force will have to figure out how to identify and integrate new space missions into the U.S. war machine. To do that, it will have to shatter outdated paradigms and policies, while securing greater funding. Doing so is critically important, as new space missions, with the potential to vastly increase the military’s lethality, should be central to Pentagon efforts to rebuild the force to match threats and use that force for deterrence.
New Military Space Missions, Not Just New Capabilities
In his 1949 book War in Three Dimensions, Australian fighter ace and Royal Air Force Air Vice-Marshal Edgar James Kingston-McCloughry wrote that “there has perhaps never in the history of warfare existed a comparable state of ignorance about the potentialities of available weapons.” Though he was referring to military use of the air, his observation applies equally to space today. As with air power, rapid technological advancements and operational experience using the domain are key drivers of change. Another reason is the threat environment, largely shaped by China and Russia, which are diligently working to develop and field new military capabilities using space and aspiring to challenge U.S. military strength in other domains. Enhancing U.S. military space power is about developing new capabilities, but even more than new capabilities, it’s about identifying new space missions. But how the U.S. military uses space is still constrained, an issue recognized by the chief of space operations (CSO), who noted in April 2025 that “overly restrictive space policy and outdated ways of thinking” are holding back U.S. military space power.
The Space Force has proposed establishing a new command, called Space Futures Command, to assess the long-term capabilities required to maintain the U.S. edge in space. New capabilities are important, but so are new missions. The CSO directly spoke about this challenge, suggesting there might be a need for a “process by which we will evaluate new missions” during congressional testimony on April 3, 2025. The issue is that the military use of space is in such an early stage that no one has perhaps quite figured out all the military space missions and functions themselves. But there are already several new missions on the horizon that might not fit squarely into existing core functions described in SFDD-1. The Golden Dome initiative, specifically missile intercept from space, is one such mission. Space mobility and orbital global strike, described in this commentary, would also be two other entirely new military space missions, not just new capabilities.
Golden Dome Signals a Pivot
Golden Dome is a clear sign that the Trump administration is willing to reconsider policies that have long held the lid on U.S. efforts to fully realize the warfighting potential of space, though in most ways Golden Dome would use space no differently than the military has done for decades. Space sensing will play a critical role in Golden Dome, as it does today in the U.S. early warning architecture, with satellites used to detect and track missile launches. But Golden Dome is a paradigm shift because it includes the deployment of space-based missile interceptors, opening the door to a new chapter in how the U.S. military uses space. Though designed to counter ballistic missiles during the boost phase of their trajectories when they pass through space, space-based interceptors, potentially orbiting Earth somewhere between 300 kilometers and 500 kilometers in altitude, are also formidable tools for space control (i.e., space superiority). Missile intercept is the new space mission that would come with Golden Dome, one that also relates to space control.
Space control, as outlined in SFDD-1, is really just another way of saying warfighting in space. The goal of space control is space superiority—allowing U.S. forces unfettered use of space while denying that to an adversary. From a practical standpoint, space control can be broken into two parts: counterspace and counter-counterspace. The counterspace mission is oriented around stopping adversaries from using space for their own operations. Conversely, the counter-counterspace mission aims to defeat counterspace weapons employed by an adversary, protecting and defending U.S. space assets. Space-based missile interceptors can perform both space control roles, taking out an adversary’s satellites or intercepting kinetic ground-launched antisatellite missiles targeting high-value U.S. satellites. Such a capability would immensely enhance U.S. space superiority, beyond missile defense alone, and create a potent deterrent effect.
Looking Beyond Space Access to Space Mobility
Another new space mission might be called space mobility. This would be a look past mere space access to a broader space mobility mission, a concept whose building blocks are proven. For years, U.S. Transportation Command, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and the Defense Innovation Unit have been working on developments that would fit into a space mobility mission. Since 2022, AFRL has been budgeted to pursue one evolutionary path of space mobility with the rocket cargo program, which aims to move goods and material from one point on Earth to another using suborbital rocket flights. The success of commercial reusable rockets, including Blue Origin’s New Shepard and SpaceX’s Falcon 9, testify to the feasibility of this concept. Though point-to-point transportation using a rocket would carry a relatively high cost-to-weight ratio, due to its ability to deliver cargo (or possibly in the future soldiers) anywhere in the world in less than 90 minutes, it would have value when speed is key.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample-return mission, SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner capsules, and Varda’s return vehicle, among others, offer recent examples of existing capabilities that lay the groundwork for another variation of space mobility, one involving orbital flight and reentry through Earth’s atmosphere. This model could support point-to-point delivery on Earth but also can support a model that caches supplies in orbit for later delivery (i.e., warehousing in space), which could reduce delivery times still further than what is possible using rocket cargo. Since March 2023, the Air Force has funded work at four companies to look at this concept, which has been called orbital cargo drop. A vehicle in orbit that is capable of surviving reentry could also deliver more than just cargo—it could deliver weapons. This is the same concept as a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS), a system developed by the Soviet Union and most recently tested by China in 2021 that is designed to deliver a warhead to its target using low Earth orbit. To date, this is a type of system the U.S. military has not pursued.
A Revolution in Space Power: Orbital Global Strike
A FOBS is but one of many variations of orbital global strike, a concept that could also be called space-to-Earth fires. Today, an intercontinental ballistic missile is on average the fastest way to deliver a munition to the other side of the globe, capable of reaching its target in about 30 minutes. But in the future that might instead be an orbital global strike capability based on a satellite constellation, with each satellite having some type of space-to-Earth weapon. For such a weapon, the time to reach the target could be as fast as a projectile falling from orbit to the ground at Mach 10, a time measured in mere minutes. Weapons launched from satellites in orbit could include solid projectiles (e.g., rods from God) or weapons like drones or air-breathing missiles that deploy from reentry vehicles, like the ones described for space mobility, after they descend through Earth’s atmosphere. Orbital global strike could be used for strategic purposes, meaning to target an adversary’s war-making and other infrastructure, or tactical purposes in direct support to armed forces in combat.
Adversaries would find it difficult to defend against orbital strike weapons, as most current air defenses, other than systems designed for terminal phase missile intercept, would be inadequate for the task. Global strike from space would be a true game changer, offering an unrivaled level of promptness and speed, significantly increasing the lethality of space power. Creating an orbital global strike mission would be akin to the evolution of air power from mainly a tool of reconnaissance to one oriented around long-range bombardment, a journey started when the Italian military dropped the first bombs from an airplane during wartime in 1911. And it’s not a pipe dream. The same technology that produced commercial satellite constellations hints at the possibility of an orbital global strike network consisting of a similar number of satellites. Mega constellations can be built, launched, and operated both relatively affordably and without routinely colliding with other satellites, contrary to concerns expressed around the time that Starlink and OneWeb were launching their first satellites.
Identifying and Validating New Space Missions
The Pentagon, possibly led by the Space Force, should find a way to identify and validate new space missions, including those described here and others still unimagined, bringing them into the fold as quickly as possible. If SFDD-1 is meant to define the core functions in such a way as to allow for the inclusion of new missions, it may have set the guardrails too narrowly. The notion of space access in SFDD-1 is too restrictive to cover the vision of space mobility outlined in this commentary. Space mobility is about more than just access to space, in the same way that the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command is about more than access to the air, though some elements, like air refueling, do concern air access itself. Space-based intercept of missiles could fit into the space control mission, if implemented in the way outlined in this article as a tool for space control, but the missile intercept mission itself is not really about space control. Finally, the oddest duck is orbital global strike, or space-to-Earth fires. This mission is so distinct and so clearly visible on the horizon of military space power that it is impossible to ignore.
A key takeaway of this commentary should be that the military use of space is evolving rapidly, with the potential for significant change, both to mission and capabilities, into the foreseeable future. Whatever the policy blockers—probably ones that are largely classified—for jump-starting new military space missions like orbital global strike, they need to be reconsidered and removed. SFDD-1 does an excellent job of defining the current vision of space power. But the vision of military space power should be considered in an endemic state of flux. There is no reason to think that SFDD-1 is not intended as a living document that evolves over time—something the Space Force might want to make clear. As part of that evolution, it will be important to distinguish between new missions and new capabilities, ensuring that the Space Force has its eyes open to both, using Space Futures Command or another process. The other services frankly do not have to worry about new missions, since warfighting in their domains has matured over decades, in the case of air power, and centuries, in the case of maritime and land power. The other services can mostly focus on new capabilities and tactics.
Conclusion
SFDD-1 sets the stage for U.S. military space power, which has changed dramatically since the first satellites were launched over 70 years ago. It will continue to evolve in the future, limited perhaps only by imagination and a willingness to shatter paradigms. Having to anticipate new space missions, without a crystal ball, is an extra burden for the Space Force. But it is also an incredible opportunity, a chance to shape the future of military space power from its current primordial condition. The CSO understands the barriers, namely mindset and policy but also funding limitations, that are holding back the potential of space power. As military leaders look over the horizon, optimizing structures and priorities around increasing warfighter lethality, they need to think big on what U.S. military space power should look like in the future. It is a strength multiplier now for the joint force and will be so even more in the future if the Pentagon plays its cards right.
Clayton Swope is the deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
