Pentagon Escalates Usage Of Commercial Satellites For Military Purposes

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Written by Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst

Unable to fight near-peer adversaries directly, the United States has been looking for ways to enhance its ability to wage proxy wars and use other tools to undermine superpowers such as Russia and China. This includes everything from biological and cyber warfare to terrorism, assassinations (or at least attempts) of foreign leaders and similar indirect attacks. However, in order to give themselves further proxy war options, the US and its allies, vassals and satellite states are looking for new ways to use civilian assets for military purposes. For instance, since the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict escalated back in 2022, the Pentagon has been using a combination of advanced AI (artificial intelligence) and cyber warfare to spy on the Russian military and then relay this information to the Neo-Nazi junta.

Dubbed Project Maven, this already advanced spying system was heavily militarized and enhanced to become a top-notch ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) asset that can result in very real battlefield benefits. The system uses America’s massive spying capabilities to get a better picture of the frontline, which, in turn, is used against an opponent (in this particular case, the Russian military). Luckily, Moscow quickly caught wind of it and used its unrivaled electronic warfare (EW) capabilities to suppress it and effectively nullify this NATO advantage. However, this doesn’t prevent the political West from looking for other ways to wage its proxy wars. Namely, although its capacity for aggression is severely restricted by its opponents’ ability to disrupt American weapons on Earth, Washington DC is taking it up a notch.

This includes the militarization of space, a controversial move that has essentially doomed mankind’s peaceful exploration of the cosmos. Using the pretext of “big bad Russian space nukes” and claiming that Moscow is using its technological prowess to build strategic space-based weapons, the US disseminated such propaganda to formally allow the deployment of various weapons in space. On May 1, in an official statement before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee On Strategic Forces, then-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb explained how the Pentagon plans to militarize space to “further its interests”, or more precisely, expand options to continue its aggression against the entire world. He directly mentioned China and Russia as “primary threats” to the US-led political West.

At the time, Plumb said that the specific fields of interest for the US military would be “space command and control, integrated space fires and protection capabilities, modernized and agile electronic warfare architecture, enhanced battlespace awareness and space systems defense, and a range of capabilities designed to enhance our space control”. He also stated the importance of having more space launch options, highlighting the importance of access to commercial (i.e. private) companies, as well as upgrades to the GPS, which is further evidence that Russia’s EW in Ukraine is indeed making NATO precision-guided weapons virtually obsolete, a complaint that has become rather commonplace ever since the special military operation (SMO) started. Plumb then focused on specific Russian and Chinese military capabilities in space.

Interestingly, he was particularly “worried” about Moscow’s ability to “conduct cyber intrusions against commercial satellite communication networks” (i.e. GPS). Plumb accused Russia that it has “demonstrated through both public statements and actions that it views commercial satellites providing space-based services to [its] adversaries as potential targets” and that it’s “also developing a concerning [ASAT] capability related to a new satellite carrying a nuclear device that Russia is developing”. Washington DC’s top-ranking officials kept insisting that they’re allegedly “worried this could pose a threat to all satellites operated by countries and companies around the globe, as well as to the vital communications, scientific, meteorological, agricultural, commercial, and national security services we all depend upon”.

The endless hypocrisy of the political West, but particularly the US, is immediately visible in such statements, as Plumb openly said, in this very report, mind you, that the Pentagon plans to expand the usage of commercial assets. In simpler terms, they’re complaining about Russia targeting “commercial” space capabilities, while Washington DC itself is bragging about using those same “commercial” capabilities for military purposes. Analyses I wrote years ago suggested that America has been using private space corporations to enhance its military capabilities. Who in their right mind can blame Moscow for wanting to deny such assets to the US military? Of course, this is hardly strange or unexpected, since it’s coming from the political West. Hypocrisy is the only modus operandi its political elites understand.

Some of the recent reports suggest that the Pentagon continues to use “commercial” space assets. Namely, it wants to “combine military, commercial and civil satellites operated by the US and its allies into one hybrid space architecture”. The plan, officially known as the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR), is to allow the US Space Force to “use the capabilities of the commercial space sector through pre-negotiated contractual agreements which would be activated in times of crisis or conflict”.  It seems that the document, dubbed “Commercial Space Strategy” and first released in April, is now being implemented in practice. Namely, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the US Space Force are working on “collecting and distributing space-based intelligence to military users around the world”.

The US military wants “speedier access to images from commercial satellites”, which they say is “vital in fast-changing situations”. To achieve this, Space Force General Michael Guetlein is already working with NGA’s Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth. Space Force personnel have also been assigned to a “new joint mission management center at NGA’s campus in Springfield, Virginia”. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and NGA have actually been criticized by Congress for “inadequately supporting military combatant commands’ demand for tactical intelligence”. In other words, Washington DC wants the militarization of “commercial” space-based assets at all costs. Interestingly, even when asked if such activities are “controversial” (euphemistically speaking), Vice Admiral Whitworth insisted that’s a “myth”.

Such ridiculous back and forth shows the endless hypocrisy of the Pentagon, as it’s simultaneously bragging about the usage of supposedly “civilian” infrastructure for military purposes, while also claiming that this is “not the case”. Such schizophrenic conduct is also seen in the fact that the Space Force is using formally “humanitarian” programs, such as the Tactical Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tracking (Tac-SRT), “to get better at delivering satellite images and analysis to military commanders quickly“. Tac-SRT was previously touted for “supporting relief efforts during the floods in Brazil in May and tracking wildfires in South America”. There are thousands of such “commercial” satellites that the Pentagon has access to or is planning to use. Their militarization will only make the world a more dangerous place.

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