Brian G. Chow
On April 17, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations of the Space Force, released his third major statement on Competitive Endurance — a strategic framework designed to guide the U.S. Space Force in achieving space superiority. Titled Space Warfighting: A Framework for Planners, this new document builds upon Gen. Saltzman’s 2023 keynote and his 2024 white paper, cementing Competitive Endurance as a foundational theory for U.S. military space power.
The question now is whether Gen. Saltzman should immediately begin applying all three Competitive Endurance documents to address specific space-based threats. Doing so would accelerate the shift from theory to practice, enabling the Space Force to develop operational plans, relevant capabilities and actionable responses tailored to real-world space threats.
To assess the practical utility of Competitive Endurance, it is essential to first apply the framework to specific threats — one at a time. Two key questions guide this approach:Can the framework be applied to a specific space threat to generate countermeasures more quickly, more cost-effectively, or both, compared to traditional ad hoc methods?
Can the process of applying the framework to individual threats also serve to refine and improve the overall theory — effectively using each application as a form of iterative training?
To explore both questions, I focus on a particularly urgent and illustrative case: China’s so-called “space stalkers” — dual-use spacecraft designed to shadow, disrupt or disable U.S. satellites. I selected this threat for two reasons. First, I have spent over a decade analyzing its evolution and the counterstrategies necessary to mitigate it. This depth of study allows me to critically evaluate whether Competitive Endurance offers a faster, more effective pathway to solutions.
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