Space Mission Resilience

Abstract

The United States and its allies rely upon space systems to enable global commerce, trade, and security. Consequently, it is imperative to understand the susceptibilities and vulnerabilities this reliance creates as well as how best to mitigate hazards and threats to space assets and operations. The concept of resilience provides a framework for evaluation of alternative national security space architectures. Resilience is defined by the U.S. Defense Department as “the ability of a [space] architecture to support the functions necessary for mission success with higher probability, shorter periods of reduced capability, and across a wider range of scenarios, conditions, and threats, in spite of hostile action or adverse conditions. Resilience may leverage cross-domain or alternative government, commercial, or international capabilities.” A comprehensive, enterprise-wide, missionfocused, multi-disciplinary assessment utilizing quantifiable metrics and systems engineering, operations research, and other analytic techniques identifies capability gaps, shortfalls, potential needs as well as evaluates the value, cost, schedule, and risk of alternative materiel and nonmateriel solutions, and evaluated a range of possible solutions. This assessment can be used as a guide to national security space policy makers, planners, architects, acquisition managers, and operators to inform decisions about future national security space capabilities.