Topic Spotlight: Space Operations and EW

Then and now. If you go back just a decade, Space was a recognized warfighting domain, but Space Command was buried within the Air Force. China had conducted a controversial kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) test against one of its own defunct weather satellites in 2007. That test, which was the first kinetic ASAT test conducted by any country since 1985, served as a wake-up call to western governments. The resulting debris field of more than 3,000 trackable (golf-ball sized or larger) objects traveling through low-earth orbit also alarmed the growing commercial space market. After 2007, many nations began to acknowledge the reality of contested space operations.

Today, we're in a different place. There is an established US Space Force, a robust commercial satellite launch market and a fast growing industry providing commercial services to support military space operations. EMSO in Space is widely and openly discussed, and you'll hear about it this week at AOC 2023.

Today at 2:30 PM in Potomac Ballroom B, Josh Chavez, Product Manager at Hawkeye 360, will provide a perspective on space-based ESM with his presentation on "Enabling Access: Space-Based Radar Geolocation/Detection for New Audiences in EW."

On Tuesday, from 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM, Tim Fountain of Rohde & Schwarz moderates a Symposium Breakout Session about "Space EW" with presentations from the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, MITRE, the Space Information and Analysis Center and GTRI.

For more background on the US Space Force, see "Space Delta 3 Guardian Embrace Electromagnetic Warfare," JED, October 2022; and "Space Delta 3 as a Pathfinder," AOC Podcast, Jan. 5, 2022.

For more info on the emerging space-based ESM market, see "EW Goes Commercial…from Space," JED, February 2021.

For more information about the basics of space EW, see "Introduction to Space Electronic Warfare," AOC Webinar, June 25, 2020. (Access for AOC members only.)