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Issue 143

06 Review · Space Maneuver Warfare

Review: The Age Of Space Maneuver Warfare Is Imminent

8 Apr 2026: LtGen (R) John Shaw (and Friend of the Flash) authored an article on the coming Age of Space Maneuver in Forbes. Excerpts below and you can read the entire article here !

Author Greg Gillinger Published April 20, 2026

8 Apr 2026: LtGen (R) John Shaw (and Friend of the Flash) authored an article on the coming Age of Space Maneuver in Forbes. Excerpts below and you can read the entire article here!

– “For the last few decades, the ‘first duty’ of military space professionals has been to deliver space effects down to the terrestrial domains in the form of space support.”

– “As adversary threats in and from space proliferate, the first duty of the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command will shift…from space support to space superiority, with a primary focus of deterring and defeating adversaries within that domain.”

– “Here are at least five ways that imminent paradigm shift will play out in the days ahead”

  • The U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command will pursue space superiority for purposes beyond purely military objectives.
  • U.S. national interests will quickly extend across the Earth-Moon system, requiring a similarly expansive space superiority focus.
  • The U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command will pivot hard into space maneuver warfare and away from its focus on positional space operations.
    • “a space-superiority first duty, coupled with a need to range across the vast Earth-Moon system (over a quarter of a million times larger in volume than the low-earth orbit region where the International Space Station operates today), will drive a more aggressive approach that embraces frequent maneuver and an operational need to change orbital energy at a tempo and magnitude far different from near-earth static operations.”
    • “Across the spectrum of conflict, space commanders must be able to test, train, develop tactics, patrol, inspect, posture and withdraw for messaging purposes, conduct prolonged dynamic station-keeping, pursue and evade, and much more.”
    • “If Space Command could operate those (GSSAP) platforms today in an unconstrained fashion to meet all its current mission needs, each RG-1 would likely exhaust its fuel at 20 times the current rate…space maneuver warfare will, in turn, accelerate space superiority in military space professional cultural identity.”
  • The pivot to space maneuver warfare will drive the broader growth of in-space logistics infrastructure, and faster interoperability across system architectures.
    • “To properly support space maneuver warfare, space logistics will need to grow beyond the traditional one-dimensional space support paradigm.”
    • “We must not mistakenly expect that commercial business cases or civil-space requirements by themselves can drive and solve the logistics needs of space maneuver warfare. This would be tantamount to expecting United Airlines’ or Delta Airlines’ fuel economy business cases to drive and solve the aerial refueling needs of the U.S. Air Force.”
    • Every added component, then, to in-space logistics contributes to a virtuous cycle of value for all U.S. national space interests.
  • Artificial intelligence will be applied across space missions to enable space maneuver warfare and in-space logistics ahead of other domains.

 

”In military terms and practice, domain superiority and maneuver go hand in hand. Military forces that limit themselves to positional, defensive postures usually find themselves lacking the ability to seize the initiative, destined for wars of attrition. Even worse, such forces that encounter an adversary engaging in maneuver warfare against them find themselves at a severe disadvantage.”