Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command and a 2024 Wash100 awardee, said missile defeat effects, space fires, assured telemetry, tracking and commanding architecture and space systems cyber defense capabilities are some of SPACECOM’s key priority investment areas cited in its fiscal year 2027 Integrated Priority List, the command reported Thursday.
“Missile Defeat Effects will significantly enhance our ability to defeat trans-regional ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missile threats, as well as air-launched or ground-launched, direct ascent threats,” Whiting said Tuesday during his speech at a symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
“Missile Defeat Effects involve new and innovative approaches, across all domains, which evolve beyond point solutions and one versus one missile interceptors. The services and the Missile Defense Agency are all actively working on ways to defeat an ever-increasing myriad of threats,” he added.
The general also mentioned some of his priorities for 2040 and beyond, including the need to sustain maneuver through dynamic space operations technologies and the development and deployment of a multilayered missile defense architecture.
“Dynamic Space Operations is based on the idea that, in a future fight, some of our assets in space must be able to do what our terrestrial assets do all the time—maneuver and sustain themselves,” Whiting said.
”Doing so will allow our space-based capabilities to execute their mission until the objectives are met, not until they run out of the gas they launched with,” the commander noted.