“There has never been a war in space; and we don’t want a war to start in space or to extend into space… but we must apply our best thinking to be ready,” said Gen. Stephen Whiting, U.S. Space Command commander.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Kicking off the 40th annual Space Symposium hosted at the Broadmoor, Gen. Stephen Whiting, U.S. Space Command commander, emphasized that while space is certainly a warfighting domain, achieving peace through strength helps ensure that no conflict occurs in, or extends into, space.
Speaking to an audience of global space professionals – including representatives from international military, academic, government, and interagency organizations – on April 8, 2025, Whiting reflected that, while the space industry has realized tremendous progress since the first Space Symposium in 1984, the role of space to our national security is as relevant and important now as it’s ever been.
Today, the space domain is a highly contested strategic environment, with China and Russia continuing to grow their counter-space capabilities to hold U.S. space assets at risk. To re-establish deterrence, U.S. Space Command must be credibly postured to protect and defend our national interests in space, which Whiting said requires acknowledged kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities, fires, and weapons.
“It’s time that we can clearly say that we need space fires, we need weapons systems, we need orbital interceptors… we need them to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight,” Whiting concluded. “We must be dominant at warfighting and war winning.”
To ensure the command’s readiness, Whiting organized his remarks around the further-developed Elements of Victory, which he described as “our best military judgement for what we need to win in a conflict … informed by lessons learned in other domains, from the best thinking across our Joint Force, exercises, and modeling and simulation.”
USSPACECOM’s Elements of Victory, or EoV, consist of five principles:
1. Operate through a first strike
2. Transition from crisis to conflict
3. Integrate and synchronize Joint, interagency, Allied, and commercial effects
4. Deploy, regenerate, and reconstitute space forces
5. Achieve space superiority
Operate through a first strike
The first element is about being ready for “the most stressing scenario, which would be operating through a first strike from an undeterred adversary,” he said. “Our ability to quickly anticipate, defend against, recover from, and respond to a wide range of conditions, threats and scenarios will be possible because of the overall resilience and defensive capabilities of our integrated space enterprise.”
To counter the greatest existential threat, which Whiting described as “a missile attack paired with weapons of mass destruction,” USSPACECOM is fully supporting the development of the Golden Dome Missile Defense Shield for America, which as stated in the Executive Order includes accelerating the development of new missile defense satellites, like the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor and space-based interceptors.
“Space will be foundational to the success of the Golden Dome,” Whiting said. “USSPACECOM is partnering with U.S. Northern Command, Missile Defense Agency, the Space Force and other stakeholders to write an Initial Capabilities Document aimed at defining the capabilities-based requirements that the Golden Dome architecture will need.”
He added that, “while these efforts are ongoing, we’ve also been modernizing our [Nuclear command, control, and communications] capabilities in space.”
Transition from Crisis to Conflict
At a moment’s notice, the command must be able to quickly and seamlessly shift its posture, which Whiting says is reliant upon advanced condition-setting related to authorities, international agreements, basing and access requirements, force posture, and indications and warnings.
“Through campaigning, rapid learning, adaptation, and proactive partnership, USSPACECOM gains the agility to quickly transition to conflict and prepare to contribute to the Joint Force fight early, again, on operationally relevant timelines, and with a ready and lethal force,” Whiting said.
As such, the command has updated its campaign plan and is operationalizing new experimentation and artificial intelligence and machine learning strategies to maximize readiness timelines. Examples of these efforts include Marine Corps Forces Space Command fast-tracking commercial technology to close Space Domain Awareness gaps; use of the Maven Smart System to manage adversary Space Order of Battle in the Joint Operations Center; and a recent 72-hour “sprint” event to test AI/ML priorities using large language models.
Integrate and Synchronize Joint, Interagency, Allied and Commercial Effects
This third EoV is “enabled by command-and-control concepts and relationships, to include integrated campaigning and operational planning; tactics, techniques and procedures; and timely, secure and resilient communications across the integrated space enterprise with our Joint, Interagency, Allied and commercial teammates.”
Whiting described how the command has spent considerable effort working to operationalize its relationships in space with its most capable Allies.
One such example, he announced, “the U.S. and France recently conducted our first ever bilateral Rendezvous and Proximity Operation to demonstrate combined capabilities in space, in the vicinity of a strategic competitor spacecraft.”
Another example is the enhancements to commercial industry partnerships, from updating the command’s Commercial Integration Strategy to growing the Commercial Integration Cell and Joint Commercial Office. The CIC now totals 17 companies and the JCO now has 18 partner nations and NATO as participants, who all work together to provide non-classified commercial data from 17 commercial companies to increase SDA for the United States and other partner nations.
One of the command’s greatest strengths, Whiting emphasized, is its leadership of Multinational Force Operation OLYMPIC DEFENDER, which has made significant strides in the last year, to include the addition of France, Germany and New Zealand, joining the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The growth of MNF-OOD has strengthened USSPACECOM’s partnerships and enabled its Allies to share the burden of space security, and collectively shape norms of responsible behavior in space, while enhancing interoperability for combined space operations.
“After months of hard work, I’m thrilled to announce that MNF-OOD is now [Initial Operational Capability] at seven,” he said. “We are definitely better together when we operate with these partner nations in space.”
Deploy, regenerate, and reconstitute space forces
“To win in a protracted conflict we must maintain space capabilities beyond the initial stages,” Whiting explained. “Sustained space operations require the right mix of responsive launch, sustained maneuver, and logistics to allow for the operational availability, movement, and maneuver required to achieve a position of advantage in space over an adversary. Our ability to sustain combat capability in space across a wide range of scenarios, conditions and threats is essential to our resilience and lethality and accomplished by the mobility and endurance of our integrated space enterprise.”
To get after this challenge, Whiting announced an effort the command is cosponsoring with SpaceWERX on sustained space maneuver, to invest in the most promising technology to help solve these challenges to bring the Joint Function to space forces.
“We must continue widening our advantage over our adversaries in lift–heavy lift and super-heavy lift,” he said, outlining the tremendous advancements by various companies which have served to transform the domain. “We must leverage this massive and growing lead in space lift to outmaneuver and outpace our opponents.”
Achieve Space Superiority
The complexity and expanse of space challenges the notion of having superiority everywhere, all the time, rather, the command is focused on ensuring space superiority can be achieved at a time and place of our choosing.
“Space superiority protects the key space effects we must provide to our nation, to the Joint and to our Allies so that they have the capabilities they need. Space superiority also helps us protect terrestrial forces and our homeland from the space enabled attacks of others,” he said. “Consequently, our ability to achieve space superiority is foundational to deterring our adversaries and winning our nation’s wars.”
As such, the command has made space superiority capabilities a top requirement, which also includes a requirement for SDA capabilities for timely detection, tracking and characterization to feed into command-and-control systems.
“To help field better SDA capability more quickly, USSPACECOM supported a Strategic Funding Increase from the Air Force Research Lab, through SpaceWERX and AFWERX, which will result in LeoLabs deploying a next-generation Seeker-class Ultra High Frequency radar site in the Indo-Pacific region,” Whiting said.
Additionally, as part of the command’s “Year of the C2” initiative, it has identified four kill chains that require integrated C2 networks for connecting sensors to effectors and is working with the Department of the Air Force, U.S. Space Force, the Missile Defense Agency, and the NRO to ensure the necessary integration to field more agile capability and increase lethality by 2027. This also reinforces a warfighting ethos, as the Secretary of Defense has emphasized, and supports efforts to reestablish deterrence, by clarifying capability, credibility and communication.
“We maintain peace through our strength, weakness only invites aggression,” he said, while emphasizing, “War in space is not inevitable and USSPACECOM remains committed to preserving space as a domain for peaceful exploration and use.”
Click here to read the full
transcript of Whiting’s keynote.