SpaceX says they’re on board for launching weapons into space ‘in defense’ of the US

For the most part, orbital defense isn’t nearly as sexy an endeavor as its made out to be by the media. Protecting America’s large constellation of defense, intelligence and commercial satellites relied on for everything from navigation to communications, is largely an effort that can be undertaken from a desk here on earth — including devising new ways to harden orbital systems against cyber attack and keeping a close eye on orbital traffic to identify threats ahead of time. However, while the vast majority of a Space Force’s orbital requirements would likely be of the pocket-protector variety, there has been an increasing buzz within the national defense community about bridging the gap between science fiction and national defense, prompted in no small part by another technology still in its infancy: hypersonic weapons platforms.

No one on the planet currently has a reliable means of defending against hypersonic missiles, which travel at speeds in excess of Mach 5 (3,836 miles per hour). These missiles, like China’s DF-21D or Russia’s Kinzhal, move too fast to be intercepted by traditional missile defense systems, wreaking havoc with longstanding U.S. war fighting doctrine. As a result, the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Michael Griffin, recently proposed the idea of placing missile platforms in orbit to intercept these hypersonic missiles at the apex, or highest point, in their flight path. Of course, not all hypersonic missiles rely on such an arced trajectory and even if they did, hitting one with a satellite based missile would be like using a remote controlled gun from thousands of miles away to shoot at a bullet traveling 5 times faster than the speed of sound fired from a different gun even further away… but assuming Griffin’s proposal has some basis in field-able technology (as he claims) a few hurdles still remain.