Krista Langeland

This report characterizes the nature of the impact that artificial intelligence and machine learning tools could bring to the U.S. Space Force's space domain awareness mission, with a focus on the process to quantify the risk of collision in space.

This report documents the authors' development of a methodology to define, assess, and evaluate resilience criteria over time, with a focus on the qualitative assessments of subject matter experts. The methodology is applied to a specific approach to building resilience: integrating coalition and commercial partners into the U.S. military satellite communications mission.

The expanding commercial space industry offers new opportunities--such as technological advances, lower launch costs, and innovative satellite applications--that could help the U.S. military meet mission requirements more efficiently. RAND researchers evaluated two commercial space markets to understand opportunities and risks that the Department of the Air Force could encounter when making decisions to invest in commercial space capabilities.

The authors summarize research to date about using a game-theoretic model of competition and cooperation in outer space to examine the dynamics of conflict there, short of wars of total destruction. They focus specifically on the dynamics of space competition in the context of limited space war. They provide a summary of the aspects of the research that would be of interest to a general audience of space policymakers and potential warfighters.

As the United States has become increasingly reliant on space-based capabilities, protecting them has become vital to national security, especially in the face of China's ambitions for superiority in space. Considering the application of classical deterrence theory to the space domain, the authors show how and why China's own objectives should be considered in building a tailored deterrence strategy for China in space.