Department of War Executive Order should prioritize readiness against space stalkers

Brian G. Chow

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The administration has yet to follow up on its 200th Executive Order, which called for enhanced readiness. This silence represents a profound missed opportunity. Amidst a severe, persistent partisan divide, focusing on genuine military readiness offers a pathway for non-partisan decisions. To ensure this initiative cost-effectively achieves its goal of preparing for war so as to keep peace—not just for the United States but the free world—the administration must channel the Executive Order’s mandate into tangible action, starting with what I consider to be the most urgent threat: readiness against space stalkers, or spacecraft that can approach and attack satellites in orbit.

Thus far, the administration’s public argument has been focused on a politically charged but secondary issue, namely that the order will restore the warrior ethos, maximize lethality, not tepid lethality and change what the administration called a “woke” DoD. While this rhetoric satisfies its political base, it risks hardening Democrats’ opposition to the entire initiative. If the administration does not redirect, the long-term fate of this critical national security initiative beyond 2028 may ultimately depend more on partisan politics and which party controls the White House than on the readiness priorities themselves.

By deliberately recalling President George Washington’s 1790 address —“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace” — the order, in effect, delivers a clear, uncompromising mandate: Unmatched power does not automatically guarantee adequate readiness. But true military readiness doesn’t come from renaming government institutions. True readiness requires us to understand the nature and characteristics of specific threats and tailor our defensive and deterrent resources to meet those threats in a timely and effective manner.

A readiness-focused project, championed by both sides, is the perfect vehicle for this reframing. The immediate priority must now be to help the administration select its first readiness project. This project should demonstrate the initiative’s potential to cost-effectively produce timely and effective readiness against existing and future threats in all operational domains: land, sea, air, cyber and space.