Militaries will soon work more extensively in the space between the earth and moon, according to Kwast. That realm is the next high ground, where nations are straining to gain a strategic advantage.
“China is working on building a ‘navy in space'” that would work even beyond earth’s gravity well, Kwast said.
Yet China is the not the most pressing threat. North Korea, with its continued missile testing, is “a real problem” today, Kwast says.
“Right now, if North Korea were to launch a missile into space and detonate an electro magnetic pulse, it would take out our eyes in space,” Kwast said.
The Cold War-era “Star Wars” concept was “very strategic,” Kwast says, but the technology was not feasible. The more the U.S. innovates in space, the lower the potential threat from a missile.
But even though the space industry poised to become eight times as valuable over the next 30 years, Kwast believes it’s too early to think about a new military force in space.
“We could have an operational space force in 3 to 5 years,” Kwast said. “However, that would be jumping to answering what the form looks like, before you know the function.”
Earlier this year Kwast penned a list of recommendations to the Air Force’s U.S. Space Command in a January study called “Fast Space.” In it he details that public-private partnerships must be the nation’s focus, not an “an Air Force in space.”
Kwast notes, “It took from the Wright Brothers in 1903 to 1945 — two World Wars — to get flying to where we needed an Air Force.”
