Monitoring the heavens: Space Force has 1,000 ‘priority targets,’ 600 sensors – Breaking Defense
Besides tracking adversary satellites, said Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, “sometimes I want to be looking at my own object to see if anything’s going on, right?”
By: THERESA HITCHENS for Breaking Defense
WASHINGTON — The Space Force’s head of intelligence says the service currently is keeping a very close eye on about 1,000 satellites — both those owned by adversaries and some US birds that might be threatened by adversaries — via a much expanded network of radars and telescopes around the globe.
Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, told the Mitchell Institute today that US space domain awareness (SDA) capabilities have grown substantially since the Space Force was stood up in December 2019. At that time, US Space Command operated some “two to three dozen government-related sensors,” most of which were optical telescopes or radar first developed to track missiles rather than satellites.
