US continues to lead in military space technology

Washington Post:

The United States may be falling behind in transportation, education and health care down here on Earth, but its military infrastructure is certainly way ahead when it comes to imagery and communications satellites armed with defensive and offensive capabilities out there in space. 

That the United States leads in the militarization of space is apparent from House and Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearings this month on the fiscal 2013 budget of $9.7 billion for military space programs. 

Like many Pentagon programs, these have had amazing successes but also billion-dollar overruns and costly failures. 

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, released at Wednesday’s Senate hearing, showed major Defense space acquisition programs “have increased by about $11.6 billion — 321 percent — from initial estimates for fiscal years 2011 through 2016.”
The military services see them as the future. 

“Our assured access to space and cyberspace is foundational to today’s military operations and to our ability to project power whenever and wherever needed across the planet,” said Air Force Gen. William Shelton, head of Space Command. He listed enhancements to our space capabilities in “missile warning, positioning, navigation and timing; satellite communications; space situational awareness [knowing where everything is in space]; and space launch.” 

Army Lt. Gen. Richard Formica, who heads Army Space and Missile Defense Command, claimed his service is “the biggest user of space-based capabilities,” which are critical to land operations. “If the Army wants to shoot, move or communicate, it needs space,” Formica said.
Implicit in those statements, whether the general realized it, is that without access to space the Army couldn’t do as well what it used to do before there was all this space-dependent gadgetry. 

“Space capabilities enable effective command-and-control responsiveness and agility necessary for a globally engaged, superior naval force consistent with emphasis on forward operations and joint operations,” said the Navy Department’s Robert Winokur, its director of oceanography, space and maritime domain awareness.

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Having become dependent on these systems, the Army’s Formica said, they “have to be defended and also have redundancy if they can’t be protected in the heavens.” Shelton talked of “passive and active defense measures to deter, and if necessary, defeat potential adversary attacks against our forces.” For satellite defense, Shelton mentioned a rapid-attack identification system, called RDGS-0. It has a central operations center that detects and reports sources of radio jammers hitting U.S. military and commercial satellites.
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These sophisticated  communication systems have been a real plus in dealing with threats like al Qaeda which has been reduced to primitive not passing.  We can expect that China will try to build systems to attack our advantages in space.  The Russians might try, but they have remained primitive in most tech areas of warfare.