Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Notable

Issue a declaratory policy that the U.S. will operate at will in space

Partially done

118 4. Department of Defense

“Lead the U.S. government's development of a clear and unambiguous declaratory policy that the United States will operate at will in space and enforce these operations with capabilities that ensure effective deterrence and the ability to impose our will if necessary.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    A declaratory space policy was issued, but not the one the Quote asks for. Executive Order 14369, Ensuring American Space Superiority, opens with the proposition that "Superiority in space is a measure of national vision and willpower" and sets as policy "Securing and defending American vital national and economic security interests in, from, and to space", including the ability to counter threats through cislunar space and to strengthen allied contributions to collective space security. It does not declare that the United States will operate at will in space, and it names no enforcement capability. The 2025 National Security Strategy, issued a fortnight earlier, lists space among the domains where American advantages are strongest but makes no declaratory space commitment.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Leveled partial because a Presidential declaratory space policy exists inside the window and asserts securing and defending U.S. interests in space, while omitting the operate-at-will formulation and the enforcement commitment the Quote asks for. Because progress is measured on this ask and not on an adjacent one, a reader could take it as not started; a boundary call, not yet settled.

  • Operative text read on govinfo.gov (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-12-23/html/2025-23845.htm); the 2025 NSS PDF read in full from whitehouse.gov.
  • The EO 14369 §3(d) deliverables could not be found on any allowlisted site (2026-09-03). Executive Order 14369, Ensuring American Space Superiority, signed 2025-12-18, required a space security strategy and a national security space architecture plan by 2026-06-16. www.spaceforce.mil is readable — the bare spaceforce.mil address does not resolve, which an earlier search had recorded as a refusal — so this negative is now measured rather than assumed. What was read: the service’s policy-document index on spaceforce.mil, which lists the DAF Executive Order Implementation set (Objective Force 2040, Future Operating Environment 2040, the Comprehensive Strategy for the Space Force and others) and no space security strategy and no national security space architecture plan; and the complete USSF newsroom feed, 500 items spanning 2024-07-30 to 2026-09-01, which carries no article announcing either document — the nearest hits are a Vandenberg installation strategic plan (2026-01-23), DAF data and AI strategies (2026-04-22), a Warfighting Acquisition Strategy (2026-02-26) and a command-alignment story (2026-06-09), none of them the ask’s object. How far the negative reaches: USSF’s own publication channels and policy index. It does not reach OSD, the NSC, or any classified annex. Space Warfighting: A Framework for Planners was also sought and not located — it is not announced in the 500-item newsroom sweep, is not on the policy page, and two guessed addresses for it, one on spaceforce.mil (https://www.spaceforce.mil/Portals/2/Space%20Warfighting%20-%20A%20Framework%20for%20Planners_A4.pdf) and one on media.defense.gov, both returned “not found”.
  • The 2026 National Defense Strategy, read in full on the same day, carries nothing here either: “space” appears twice, in threat-listing clauses, and “Space Force”, “counterspace” and “orbit” zero times. The strategy that would ordinarily carry a space declaratory policy does not.
Action
issue
Object
U.S. declaratory policy on space operations
ID
235