Army crafting a new space policy, moving out on counterspace

 Theresa Hitchens

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The Army's emphasis currently is "on the counterspace piece for space control, electronic warfare, really doing counter-communications," said Brig. Gen. Donald Brooks, deputy commanding general for operations at Army Space and Missile Defense Command.

SMD 2025 — The US Army is working on a new space policy to serve as the “umbrella” for a new Army space strategy and doctrine, as well as the foundation for future requirements and acquisitions, according to a senior service official.

The rewrite of what is known as Army Regulation 900.1 [PDF] is necessary in the face of the changed operational environment in space stemming from advancing adversary threats, Brig. Gen. Donald Brooks, deputy commanding general for operations at Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), told Breaking Defense in an interview on Tuesday

“The last one was written in 2011. And a lot of things have changed over the last 14, almost 15 years,” he said, noting that the previous Army space strategy also was crafted in 2011.

Work on rewriting the policy is being spearheaded by Col. Pete Atkinson, space division chief with the Army’s Strategic Operations Directorate, with SMDC supporting the effort, Brooks added.

 

Straits Forum Puts Fujian at Center of Cross-Strait Integration Campaign

 Emerson Tsui

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Two meetings took place in Fujian Province across May and June that indicate the growing importance of its role in cross-Strait relations and shed light on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) current views of Taiwan’s security. Despite a high-profile appearance by a former president of Taiwan, a lack of engagement with Taiwan’s incumbent administration affirmed that unification remains a unilateral policy position. Developments in the region by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), meanwhile, belie Beijing’s peaceful overtures.

On May 8, the Central Taiwan Work Office and Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) convened a high-level inter-ministerial meeting in Fuzhou along with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and Fujian’s provincial government (Fujian Government, May 9). The meeting, which 48 other central and provincial departments also attended, was held to evaluate the implementation of Beijing’s 2023 directive on constructing a “Cross-Strait Integrated Development Demonstration Zone” (两岸融合发展示范区). It also underscored the Party-state’s resolve to embed integration into the bureaucratic apparatus of governance, while simultaneously preparing for a military operation (Xinhua, May 8). The directive, which was jointly issued by the CCP Central Committee and the State Council, included incentives to attract “Taiwan compatriots” (台湾同胞) to relocate to Fujian Province. These incentives spanned residence registration, housing, education and school registration, legal services, employment, and civic engagement (Xinhua, September 12, 2023).

Five ways the Russia-Ukraine war could end

Five ways the Russia-Ukraine war could end

Nick Paton Walsh

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Kyiv, Ukraine — 

A Trump-Putin meeting has been floated by both sides for some time. So why might either side want it to happen now?

US President Donald Trump wants to bring the force of his personality to bear on forging a deal, believing that six months of intransigence from Moscow might be overcome by meeting the Kremlin head face to face. He seems still to cling to the idea the Kremlin can be cajoled into stopping the war, despite his Russian counterpart recently suggesting the maximalist position that the Russian and Ukrainian people are one, and wherever a Russian soldier steps is Russia.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin wants to buy time, having already rejected a European, US and Ukrainian unconditional ceasefire proposal in May, offering instead two unilateral, short and inconsequential pauses. His forces are surging ahead on the front lines in a summer offensive that might bring him close enough to his goals that negotiations in the fall are over a very different status quo in the war.

Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb Has Implications for Golden Dome

Tobias Naegele

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Ukraine’s “Operation Spiderweb” attack on Russian air bases, which destroyed unprotected bombers at rest on their ramps, is reshaping how U.S. thinkers approach defending military bases and the U.S. homeland. The Spiderweb attack launched scores of drones from inside Russia, a surprise that caught the Russian air force entirely unprepared and unable to fend off short-range strikes. That has implications for how the Air Force defends its bases—and even which threats America’s future Golden Dome defense shield must guard against.

“A lot of people were not as stressed about [unmanned aerial systems attacking the U.S.] because they felt like the tyranny of distance” would be sufficient to stop such threats, said Doug Jones, chief technology officer for Leidos’ Defense Sector. “They were not taking into account the … insurgency delivery of UASes.”  

What Ukraine’s attack showed, Jones said, is that small UASes smuggled to a launch point near potential targets can overcome their inability to fly long distances in a short time and short-circuit conventional defenses.  

Why blow up satellites when you can just hack them?

Why blow up satellites when you can just hack them?

Iain Thomson

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Black Hat Four countries have now tested anti-satellite missiles (the US, China, Russia, and India), but it's much easier and cheaper just to hack them.

In a briefing at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, Milenko Starcik and Andrzej Olchawa from German biz VisionSpace Technologies demonstrated how easy it is by exploiting software vulnerabilities in the software used in the satellites themselves, as well as the ground stations that control them.

"I used to work at the European Space Agency on ground station IT," Olchawa told The Register, "So I decided to go into business to address it directly."

Satellites are proliferating. In 2005, there were fewer than 1,000 in orbit (many of them inactive). But two decades later, there are about 12,300 functioning satellites, per the European Space Agency. The majority of those are Starlink satellites owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX, but there has also been a sharp rise in the number of military platforms thanks to rising global tensions. Plus, it's cheaper than ever to build and launch such hardware, they explained.

 

Opinion – Trump’s Tariffs are the Incentive the BRICS Needed

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Luis Gouveia Jr

 In July, the BRICS had their 2025 summit in Rio de Janeiro. A few days after a summit, Donald Trump used his social media, Truth Social, to threaten those who want to join the BRICS. Amid his tariff threats, the US president affirmed that states participating in the BRICS’ “anti-American policies” would face 10% tariffs. A few weeks later, Trump announced a 50% tariff on imports from Brazil, reportedly in response to judicial prosecutions against Jair Bolsonaro.

 This week, he announced 50% tariffs on products coming from India – justifying the tariffs because of India’s imports of Russian oil and arms.In Brazil and India, the reactions have been quiteIn similar. Their respective leaders, President Lula da Silva and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have assertively refused to follow a servile path. Both claimed that Trump’s tariffs are unacceptable foreign interference and an attack on their countries’ sovereignty. Lula da Silva said that he will not humiliate himself to get a deal with the US. Even in highly polarized Brazil, the majority of public opinion seems to support Lula da Silva’s claims. Meanwhile, in India, Narendra Modi said he is ready to “pay the heavy price” to safeguard India’s interests. Whether Trump truly intended to weaken the BRICS, his policies are having the opposite effect. The US president is uniting the group at a moment when they were facing significant challenges.

 

Four Years On: An Appraisal of the Taliban’s Return

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Grant Farrn 

August 2021 the world watched as thousands of people, both Americans and Afghans, crowded onto airplanes at the Kabul airport to escape the return of the Taliban. By the end of August 2021, the United States had evacuated over 200,000 people. On August 15, 2021, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country, and the Taliban seized control of Kabul calling themselves the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The collapse of the Islamic Republic was predicated on the United States-Taliban deal that was signed in February of 2020. Most people assumed the Taliban would be unable to govern Afghanistan and that their government would not last. After all they were rural tribal people with a fundamental belief in a primitive version of Islam, and their control of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 was in many ways a disaster. But, the Taliban have now led the country for four years, with no end in sight.

Arguing that they are following basic Islamic law regarding the proper place for women in society, the Taliban have severely restricted the rights of women, restrictions more severe than in any other Islamic country. The treatment of women is the major reason the Taliban has not been recognized as the legitimate government of Afghanistan by many nations (Drury, 2025). The Taliban have also been denied a seat in the United Nations, again largely because of their treatment of women (Lederer, 2025). Recently the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for two Taliban leaders, Haibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of Afghanistan, and Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the chief Justice in the Afghan supreme court, for their treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan (Ayre, 2025).

 

Opinion – Could the United Nations Solve the Gaza Quandary?

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John Allphin Moore, Jr. and Jerry Pubantz

John Allphin Moore, Jr. and Jerry PubantzThe Gaza War presents a conundrum for the international community that evades straightforward answer. A cease-fire remains elusive; news overage deepens public angst and outrage, competing parties resist any possible bargain with opponents, and, most distressingly, there is no plan for a post-Gaza War, even if a lasting cease-fire could be achieved. The Israeli government seems determined to consolidate control in the strip for the foreseeable future; a hobbled Hamas persists as a player, intending to maintain political sway despite the withering military efforts of the IDF, and the Palestine Authority appears sclerotic and incapable of offering a significant leadership role. For a moment, President Trump seemed to suggest, as a post-war solution, the expulsion of all two million Palestinians to make way for a beachfront high-end development to attract wealthy tourists. By early August 2025, the U.S. administration had joined with the Israeli government in touting an “All or nothing” ultimatum, demanding full release of all hostages and a complete Hamas disarmament, while setting as its goal a completed occupation of Gaza by Israeli forces.

The situation regarding a post-war Gaza strategy, is, frankly, static and bleak. We believe that an imaginable answer to the challenge rests with the United Nations, and we recommend using the example of the UN’s peacekeeping efforts in Timor-Leste, one of the organization’s most successful operations, launched at the end of the last century.

 

China Advances and the US Retreats in Latin America and the Caribbean

Hyeran Jo and Nathalie Méndez

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The BRICS meeting in Rio on July 6th and 7th gives a snapshot of the great power competition between China and the United States in different regions around the world, including Latin America. China has become the largest trading partner for many countries in Latin America, investing heavily in infrastructure and forging political alliances that further its strategic objectives. For its part, the Trump Administration of the United States issued the statement that those participating countries will face increased tariffs. The statement was the continuation of exercise and assertion of its authority for the past and present century. 

The positioning of various BRICS members and participating countries is particularly telling of what the great power competition means in the region and also globally. Brazil’s Lula hosted the meeting aiming to showcase its foreign policy leadership, not necessarily antagonizing the West. Russia is still going through the war in Ukraine, and Putin attended only online. India’s Modi was present as well as Ramaphosa from South Africa. No show of Xi Jinping was notable, although Premier Li Qiang was attending. Besides the BRICS core, other countries also showed promotion of their interests. Iran, for one, joined the group in 2024 and sent a ministerial level delegation to rebuke recent strikes on Iran.

 

China’s War On Starlink: From Laser Attacks To Supply-Chain Sabotage, PLA Scientists Work To Wreck Starlink

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Nitin J Ticku

 

Chinese military scientists are relentlessly working on a new project — how to neutralize the Starlink advantage of its adversaries in the case of a war.

And, Beijing is debating everything from stealth submarines fitted with space-shooting lasers, supply-chain sabotage, custom-built attack satellites to kill Starlink satellites, to diplomacy and co-opting Elon Musk, the influential owner of Starlink and recent friend-turned-foe of US President Donald Trump.

In fact, Chinese scientists and researchers have published not one or two but dozens of papers in peer-reviewed journals debating the most efficient way of killing the thousands of Starlink satellites in the Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO).

Worried that these satellites could be used against China, for reconnaissance purposes during peacetime, and for targeting Chinese assets during a war situation, Chinese researchers have been discussing ways to counter this threat.

Notably, China is working on two parallel tracks simultaneously. On the one hand, Beijing is actively developing capabilities that can destroy and neutralize Starlink satellites within minutes; at the same time, Beijing is also developing its own LEO satellite system, the Qianfan mega-constellation project, also known as G60