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

4. Department of Defense · Notable

Reestablish offensive space deterrence capabilities

Partially done

118 4. Department of Defense

“Reestablish offensive capabilities to guarantee a favorable balance of forces, efficiently manage the full deterrence spectrum, and seriously complicate enemy calculations of a successful first strike against U.S. space assets.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    Two instruments signed the same day put a policy and a statutory duty behind space warfighting. Executive Order 14369, Ensuring American Space Superiority, makes it Administration policy to secure and defend American interests "in, from, and to space" and to ensure "the ability to detect, characterize, and counter threats to United States space interests from very low-Earth orbit and through cislunar space", and gives the National Security Adviser 180 days to implement a space security strategy and a responsive national security space architecture. The FY2026 NDAA sec. 1603 adds 10 U.S.C. 2275d, which requires the Secretary of Defense to "acquire and operate space systems to be used primarily for space warfighting and control" to meet combatant commanders' requirements, waivable only on a national security determination reported to Congress within 10 days. Neither instrument names an offensive capability or says one has been reestablished, and the enacted counterspace lines are small ($31,298,000 for Counterspace Systems RDT&E, $60,106,000 for Space Control Technology, $2,027,000 of Counterspace Systems procurement).

Research log

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

Research notes

Operative text of the order read on govinfo.gov, which serves the words the Federal Register document page would not give us; the Evidence URL is the Federal Register’s own canonical page for the document.

  • The Space Force’s own doctrine on this - “Space Warfighting: A Framework for Planners” and the counterspace program descriptions - lives on spaceforce.mil, which could not be read. A lead, not Evidence.
  • Partial rather than done: a statutory acquisition duty and a policy of countering threats are a mechanism, not a reestablished offensive capability. Attempted was rejected because 10 U.S.C. 2275d is a standing legal requirement, not a directive awaiting action.
  • The EO 14369 §3(d) deliverables could not be found on any allowlisted host (searched 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 — bare spaceforce.mil does not resolve, which is why an earlier search recorded the site as refusing access — so this negative is now measured rather than assumed. What was read: the service policy-document index at www.spaceforce.mil/space-policy-page/, 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 (one on www.spaceforce.mil 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
reinstate
Object
U.S. offensive space capabilities
ID
230