
- A Disruptive Innovation
- The Foundation: Starship's Unprecedented Capabilities
- The New Frontier: Cislunar and Lunar Military Infrastructure
- Hypothetical Horizons: Space Control and Orbital Warfare
- Challenges and Strategic Considerations
- Summary
- Today's 10 Most Popular Books on Elon Musk
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A Disruptive Innovation
The development of the SpaceX Starship system represents a fundamental discontinuity in space access, an event comparable in strategic significance to the advent of the jet engine in aviation or the nuclear submarine in naval warfare. It is not an incremental improvement over existing rockets but a complete transformation in the economics and logistics of reaching orbit and beyond. While public attention has understandably focused on the grand civilian objectives of establishing bases on the Moon and colonizing Mars, the system’s foundational capabilities – full and rapid reusability, massive payload capacity, and a radically reduced cost-per-kilogram – have significant military implications that are being actively explored by the United States Department of Defense. These capabilities are poised to redefine the strategic calculus for military logistics, force projection, and control of the space domain, potentially shifting the global balance of power for decades to come.
For over sixty years, space has been an expensive and unforgiving operational environment. The high cost and low frequency of launches forced military planners to develop “exquisite,” multi-billion-dollar satellites that were technologically dense, highly capable, and often irreplaceable. The loss of a single asset, whether through malfunction or hostile action, could create a significant gap in national security capabilities, from communications and navigation to intelligence gathering. This reality shaped the very nature of military space doctrine, which revolved around protecting a small number of invaluable assets.
Starship promises to shatter this paradigm. Its combination of low-cost, high-frequency launch makes space assets potentially cheap, abundant, and easily replaceable. This fundamental shift alters the strategic landscape from one of protecting a few precious “queens” on the orbital chessboard to one of leveraging a resilient, replenishable, and potentially overwhelming presence of “pawns.” An adversary can no longer hope to achieve a decisive advantage by destroying a handful of satellites if they can be replaced by the dozen within days or weeks. This introduces the concepts of attrition, logistics, and industrial capacity into space warfare on a scale never before imagined. The United States Space Force, established in 2019 partly in response to the growing military space capabilities of Russia and China, now finds itself on the cusp of possessing a tool that could enable it to execute its mission of protecting U.S. interests and conducting space operations in entirely new ways. The era of exquisite, fragile space architectures is ending; the era of mass-produced, resilient, and dynamic space power is beginning.
The Foundation: Starship’s Unprecedented Capabilities
To understand Starship’s military potential, one must first appreciate the sheer scale of its departure from all previous space launch systems. It is not merely an evolution; it is a revolution built on three pillars: reusability, payload capacity, and cost. These three factors, working in concert, create a new foundation upon which entirely new military doctrines and space architectures can be constructed.
The Starship system is a two-stage vehicle, standing approximately 121 meters (398 feet) tall when fully stacked. The first stage, known as the Super Heavy booster, is the most powerful rocket booster ever built. It is powered by 33 advanced Raptor engines burning liquid methane and liquid oxygen, generating over 7,590 metric tons of thrust at liftoff – roughly double that of the Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the Moon. After propelling the second stage out of the densest part of the atmosphere, the Super Heavy booster is designed to perform a flip maneuver, reignite its engines, and fly back to the launch site, landing vertically in the arms of the launch tower to be refueled and prepared for another flight in a matter of hours or days.
The second stage is the Starship spacecraft itself. It is a versatile vehicle powered by six Raptor engines (three optimized for sea-level and three for the vacuum of space) and serves as both an upper stage and a long-duration, in-space craft. It is designed to deliver its payload to orbit and then perform its own propulsive landing back on Earth, protected by a shield of thousands of hexagonal ceramic tiles. This complete reusability of both stages is the key to unlocking radically lower launch costs. While the current cost to build a Starship stack is estimated at around $90 million, SpaceX’s operational goal is to reduce the marginal cost of a single flight to less than $10 million.
This economic shift is paired with an immense increase in capability. In its fully reusable configuration, Starship is designed to lift between 100 and 150 metric tons (220,000 to 331,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit (LEO). This dwarfs the capacity of its predecessor, the Falcon 9, which can carry about 17.5 metric tons in a reusable configuration, and even surpasses NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS), which can lift 95 metric tons but is completely expendable at a cost of over $2 billion per launch. If operated in an expendable mode, Starship’s theoretical payload capacity could reach 250 metric tons. At a projected cost of $10 million per launch and a capacity of 150 tons, the cost-per-kilogram to LEO could plummet to as low as $67, a staggering reduction from the roughly $4,000 per kilogram for a reusable Falcon 9.
Beyond sheer mass, Starship offers a cavernous payload bay with a usable volume of approximately 1,100 cubic meters – larger than any rocket fairing currently in operation. For decades, military satellite designers have been constrained by the “tyranny of the fairing,” forced to engineer complex, folding structures and make compromises in capability to fit their hardware into the tight confines of traditional rockets. Size and mass were primary design constraints that often drove up complexity and cost. Starship’s massive volume and low cost-per-kilogram effectively remove these constraints. This liberation enables a new class of military satellites that can be designed to optimize mission performance rather than launch efficiency. This could mean surveillance satellites with huge primary mirrors for unprecedented ground resolution, communications satellites with massive antennas for higher bandwidth, or orbital platforms with extensive radiation shielding and large fuel tanks for unparalleled maneuverability and lifespan. These satellites could be simpler and cheaper to build because they wouldn’t require the intricate, compact engineering of their predecessors. This shift from optimizing for launch to optimizing for the mission is a fundamental change in the philosophy of military space hardware design.
The most tangible and actively developed military application for Starship is the concept of rapid global logistics, a mission that could fundamentally alter the speed and reach of U.S. force projection. The U.S. Space Force is formally pursuing this capability through its Point-to-Point Delivery (P2PD) program, an initiative that grew out of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) “Rocket Cargo” Vanguard program. The program’s ambitious goal is to leverage a commercial rocket like Starship to deliver the cargo equivalent of a C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft – roughly 85 to 100 tons – to nearly any point on Earth in under an hour.
The strategic rationale behind P2PD is rooted in the challenges of modern warfare, particularly the rise of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategies employed by near-peer adversaries like China. In a potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific, for example, traditional sea and airlift assets would be highly vulnerable to long-range missiles and integrated air defense systems, potentially cutting off forward-deployed forces from resupply. A rocket traversing through the upper atmosphere and space on a suborbital trajectory would be exceptionally difficult to intercept, allowing it to bypass these contested zones and deliver critical supplies directly where they are needed.
To advance this concept, the Department of the Air Force awarded SpaceX a five-year, $102 million contract in 2022. This contract is not for building a military rocket but for collecting flight data from the ongoing Starship test program to demonstrate the technologies required for point-to-point cargo transport. The research focuses on key challenges, such as developing novel methods for loading and unloading cargo rapidly, engineering a cargo bay for military use, and perfecting the ability to land a massive rocket safely near personnel and structures or in austere locations. The Space Force has even explored concepts like airdropping payloads from the rocket after reentry to service locations where a landing is not feasible. Demonstration missions are envisioned for as early as 2026, with plans for test landings at remote locations like Johnston Atoll in the Pacific.
Despite the futuristic appeal, P2PD is not intended to replace the military’s conventional airlift fleet. A direct comparison with the C-17 Globemaster III, the workhorse of U.S. strategic airlift, reveals a clear set of trade-offs. While Starship offers unparalleled speed, its projected mission cost, even at the optimistic low end of $10 million, is orders of magnitude higher than a C-17 flight, which costs around $540,000 for an 18-hour journey halfway across the globe. The C-17 is also far more flexible, capable of operating from short, unprepared, and unpaved runways, a feat that would be impossible for the Starship system, which requires a heavily reinforced launch and landing tower or a complex, yet-to-be-developed at-sea platform.
This analysis makes it clear that Starship’s role in logistics will be highly specialized, reserved for “exceptional circumstances” where speed is the overriding factor and cost is a secondary concern. Its primary value is not in routine, peacetime logistics but as a strategic tool to be wielded in the opening moments of a high-intensity conflict. Imagine a scenario where a key ally like Taiwan is under attack and its ports and airfields are being targeted. A Starship could deliver a battery of long-range anti-ship missiles, critical repair parts for a damaged runway, or a contingent of special operations forces within the first few hours of the conflict. Such a delivery could be strategically decisive, blunting an invasion or preserving a defensive foothold long enough for conventional forces to be brought to bear. In this context, P2PD is not merely a faster delivery truck; it’s a tool for strategic shaping, capable of breaking an A2/AD blockade and altering the initial conditions of a war.
Recognizing the critical nature of such missions, the Pentagon has also expressed interest in procuring its own “gray tail” Starships. This would give the Department of Defense direct ownership and operational control of the vehicles for sensitive or high-risk missions, ensuring access is not subject to the “influence of corporate whims” and can be guaranteed in a crisis.
Beyond its terrestrial logistics role, Starship is poised to revolutionize the deployment, architecture, and resilience of military satellite constellations, fundamentally changing how the United States controls the “high ground” of space. Its ability to launch hundreds of satellites at once is a “game changer” that makes the concept of large, proliferated Low Earth Orbit (pLEO) constellations not just theoretically appealing but economically and logistically feasible. This capability directly supports the U.S. Space Force’s strategic shift away from a few exquisite satellites toward a more resilient, distributed architecture, exemplified by the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.
Starship’s impact on military satellite operations can be understood in three key areas. First is the sheer speed of deployment. A single Starship launch could place an entire plane of a new constellation into orbit, a task that would currently require multiple launches over many months with smaller rockets like the Falcon 9. This allows for the rapid establishment of new capabilities, from communications and navigation to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). SpaceX has already demonstrated a proof-of-concept for this capability, deploying several dummy satellites from a Starship during a test flight.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, is the ability to rapidly reconstitute space assets during a conflict. A core tenet of modern space warfare is the idea of degrading an adversary’s capabilities by targeting their satellites. Starship provides a powerful counter to this threat. If an adversary were to destroy or disable a portion of a U.S. military constellation, Starship could launch dozens or even hundreds of replacement satellites on short notice, restoring functionality and rendering the attack ineffective. This capacity for rapid replenishment fundamentally enhances the resilience of U.S. space infrastructure, turning what could have been a crippling blow into a temporary setback.
Third, as previously noted, Starship’s massive payload bay enables the creation of entirely new classes of military satellites. Freed from the constraints of size and weight, military designers can develop platforms with unprecedented capabilities – larger sensors for higher-fidelity intelligence, more powerful transmitters for jam-resistant communications, and greater fuel reserves for extensive on-orbit maneuvering. A prime example of this new paradigm is already taking shape. SpaceX holds a $1.8 billion contract with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to build and deploy a vast, swarming constellation of hundreds of spy satellites known as Starshield. This network, leveraging the mass-production techniques honed for the Starlink constellation, will provide persistent, high-revisit surveillance capabilities. While initial prototypes have been launched on Falcon 9 rockets, Starship is the only logical vehicle for deploying the full constellation at the scale and speed required by the NRO.
The advent of this rapid deployment and reconstitution capability fundamentally alters the strategic calculus of space warfare. For decades, anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons have been developed with the goal of targeting a small number of high-value, “exquisite” satellites. A successful strike could blind an adversary or sever their communications. However, against a proliferated constellation of hundreds or thousands of interconnected satellites, this one-on-one approach becomes economically and logistically untenable. The problem is compounded by Starship’s ability to quickly replace any losses. If an adversary expends a multi-million-dollar ASAT weapon to destroy a satellite, only for it to be replaced the following week as one of a hundred satellites on a single Starship launch, the strategic and economic exchange ratio becomes overwhelmingly unfavorable.
This reality forces a critical shift in targeting priorities. The key vulnerability is no longer the individual satellites in orbit but the terrestrial launch infrastructure that puts them there. The center of gravity in a future space conflict would not be in orbit, but at the launch pads on the ground – at Starbase in Texas and at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. An adversary’s most logical move would be to target this launch capability to prevent reconstitution. This elevates the strategic importance of protecting these sites to a national priority and will likely drive the development of more resilient launch options, such as mobile or sea-based launch platforms, to ensure assured access to space during a crisis.
The New Frontier: Cislunar and Lunar Military Infrastructure
Starship’s capabilities extend far beyond Earth orbit, positioning it as the primary enabler for the extension of military presence and infrastructure into cislunar space – the vast region of space between geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and the Moon. This domain is rapidly becoming a new arena for great power competition, with the United States and China locked in a race to harness its scientific, economic, and national security benefits. China has already demonstrated significant prowess in this area, having landed spacecraft on the far side of the Moon, a feat the U.S. does not currently have the ability to replicate.
Operating effectively in cislunar space requires establishing a foundational infrastructure for space domain awareness (SDA), high-bandwidth communications, and independent navigation – services that are taken for granted in near-Earth orbits but do not currently exist in the lunar environment. Starship’s unprecedented heavy-lift capability is the key to building this infrastructure. It is the only launch vehicle on the horizon capable of affordably transporting the massive components required, such as large SDA sensor arrays, powerful communication relay stations, on-orbit fuel depots, or even modular energy stations to power these assets.
The Pentagon is actively pursuing this future. Officials have stated that Starship’s ability to place large payloads into higher orbits is important for the push to operate in the cislunar environment. The vehicle could be used to establish an unmanned “little space station” or an “orbital bus” – a large, modular docking station in a strategic location where various payloads could be attached, tested, and operated. This would create a persistent, serviceable military outpost in deep space.
Starship’s proficiency in this domain is already being proven through its partnership with NASA. A specialized variant, the Starship Human Landing System (HLS), is under a multi-billion-dollar contract to serve as the vehicle that will land American astronauts on the lunar surface for the Artemis program. This mission profile requires Starship to launch, refuel in Earth orbit via multiple tanker flights, travel to lunar orbit, land on the Moon, and ascend back to lunar orbit – a complex series of operations that will directly demonstrate the technologies needed for sustained military and civilian activity in the cislunar domain.
The ability to establish a persistent military presence in cislunar space would transform the Moon and its surroundings from a distant scientific curiosity into a piece of strategic “high ground” analogous to critical geographical locations on Earth. Cislunar space contains several gravitationally stable Lagrange points, which are ideal locations for placing persistent surveillance platforms that can observe both the Earth and deep space with an unobstructed view. The lunar surface itself, particularly the permanently shadowed craters at the poles which may contain water ice, could host sensors shielded from terrestrial observation or serve as a base for future operations. Some have even begun referring to the Moon as the “first island off the coast of Earth,” highlighting its emerging strategic importance.
Before Starship, the cost and complexity of placing any meaningful infrastructure in these locations made such concepts purely theoretical. Starship makes them feasible. The nation that first establishes a robust cislunar architecture – providing domain awareness, communications, and navigation – will effectively control the “lines of communication” in this new domain. They will be positioned to set the operational norms, monitor all traffic, and possess a significant strategic advantage, much like how control of vital sea lanes or island chains has dictated maritime power throughout history. Starship is the vehicle that makes this race for cislunar dominance not just possible, but inevitable.
Hypothetical Horizons: Space Control and Orbital Warfare
Beyond the more concrete applications in logistics and satellite deployment, Starship opens the door to a range of more speculative, yet strategically significant, military roles in the realms of space control and orbital warfare. The U.S. Space Force’s doctrine explicitly states that its purpose is to achieve “space superiority,” which involves conducting both defensive and offensive counterspace operations to ensure freedom of action for U.S. forces while denying the same to adversaries. Starship provides a platform with the mass, volume, and potential for on-orbit persistence to turn these doctrinal concepts into reality.
One of the most compelling hypothetical roles is that of an on-orbit “mothership” or mobile logistics hub. A single Starship, with its enormous internal volume, could be configured as a massive orbital warehouse, carrying spare parts, refueling modules, and replacement satellites. It could rendezvous with friendly military assets to conduct large-scale servicing, repairs, or upgrades, dramatically extending their operational lifespan and enhancing the resilience of the entire military space architecture. This capability would transform satellites from disposable assets with fixed lifespans into serviceable, long-term platforms.
In an offensive capacity, a Starship could serve as a carrier for a new generation of sophisticated co-orbital counterspace systems. Instead of launching a single, large anti-satellite weapon, a Starship could discreetly release dozens of smaller, stealthier satellites into various orbital planes. These smaller assets could then perform a range of missions, from conducting close-up inspections of adversary satellites through Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) to executing non-kinetic attacks like high-powered jamming for electronic warfare or even physical rendezvous to upload malicious code in a cyber-operation. This “mothership” approach provides a level of unpredictability and scalability that would be difficult for an adversary to counter.
More controversial and technologically distant concepts have also been discussed. One is the idea of using Starship as a platform for space-based Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), such as high-powered lasers. A persistent DEW platform in a strategic orbit could hold an adversary’s entire satellite fleet at risk, potentially creating a “checkmate” capability in space. Another long-theorized concept is kinetic bombardment, often called “Rods from God,” where a platform in orbit would deorbit dense, inert tungsten rods to strike ground targets at hypersonic speeds. While such concepts are physically plausible, they face immense technical, legal, and geopolitical hurdles and are not considered near-term possibilities.
Perhaps Starship’s most potent and disruptive role in orbital warfare is not as a direct weapon, but as a tool of economic imposition. Direct kinetic attacks on an adversary’s satellites are overt acts of war with clear attribution and high risk of escalation. A more subtle and potentially more effective form of space control is to make it prohibitively costly for an adversary to conduct their own offensive operations. One analysis suggests a novel form of economic warfare: a single, low-cost Starship launch could be used to deploy a cloud of hundreds of simple, inexpensive decoys or inspection satellites in the vicinity of an adversary’s single, high-value, multi-billion-dollar reconnaissance satellite.
This action creates an impossible targeting problem. The adversary is faced with a dilemma: either accept the risk of their prized asset being inspected, harassed, or potentially disabled, or attempt to clear the field. To do so, they would have to expend dozens of their own expensive ASAT weapons or use precious on-board fuel to maneuver away, all to counter a threat deployed at a fraction of the cost. By leveraging its asymmetric launch cost advantage, Starship allows the U.S. to impose disproportionate logistical and economic costs on an adversary, shifting the focus of space warfare from a contest of direct destruction to a game of economic and logistical attrition. This represents a new and powerful form of deterrence, where space superiority is achieved not just by having the best weapons, but by having a logistical and economic base that your adversary simply cannot match.
Challenges and Strategic Considerations
While Starship’s potential to revolutionize military space power is immense, its adoption is not without significant challenges, vulnerabilities, and strategic risks. The very characteristics that make it a game-changer also introduce novel weaknesses and complex geopolitical dilemmas. A balanced analysis requires acknowledging these hurdles, which can be categorized into three main areas: technical and operational vulnerabilities, legal and geopolitical implications, and strategic dependencies.
Technical and Operational Vulnerabilities
Starship’s operational profile, while innovative, presents several vulnerabilities in a military context. Its method of reentry and landing, designed for efficiency and reusability, makes it a potentially predictable target. The vehicle reenters the atmosphere “belly-first” at a high angle of attack to maximize drag, performing a series of “S-maneuvers” to bleed off speed before flipping vertical for a final landing burn. While these maneuvers add some unpredictability, the overall trajectory to a fixed landing site can be calculated, creating a window where it could be vulnerable to advanced anti-aircraft or anti-ballistic missile systems.
During this reentry phase, Starship is a massive, hot object, generating an enormous infrared and radar signature that would be easily detectable by an adversary’s sensors. It has been described as a “big, hot, blind target” that is, for a critical portion of its flight, an unpowered glider. Furthermore, the entire system is highly dependent on extensive and fixed ground infrastructure. The launch and landing tower, often called “Stage 0,” is a complex piece of machinery required to stack, fuel, and catch the returning vehicles. This reliance on a few specific, hardened locations limits its operational flexibility and makes these sites high-value targets in any conflict. Finally, the sophisticated, autonomous flight control systems that enable Starship’s landings are reliant on complex networks of sensors and computers. These systems represent a potential attack surface for cyber warfare or electronic jamming, which could disrupt a landing attempt with catastrophic results.
Legal and Geopolitical Implications
The militarization of Starship will inevitably strain the existing international legal framework for space, primarily the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST). The treaty bans the placement of weapons of mass destruction in orbit and prohibits military bases or weapons testing on celestial bodies like the Moon. However, it is ambiguous on the legality of conventional weapons in orbit and does not expressly forbid all military activities in space. A commercial vehicle like Starship, when used for a military mission by a state, places direct responsibility for its actions on that state, blurring the lines between commercial and state activity and creating complex legal questions.
One of the most significant geopolitical risks is the potential for misinterpretation. A rapid, suborbital launch for a P2PD mission follows a trajectory that is nearly indistinguishable from that of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) in its initial phases. An adversary’s early-warning systems could mistake a logistics mission for a nuclear first strike, leading to a catastrophic miscalculation and potentially triggering an escalatory response. Establishing clear communication protocols and transparency measures will be essential to mitigate this risk, but this becomes difficult in a high-tension crisis or active conflict.
Moreover, the very existence of a system with Starship’s potent capabilities is likely to accelerate an international space arms race. Adversaries like China and Russia, seeing the United States develop a platform capable of rapidly deploying massive constellations, establishing cislunar dominance, and potentially hosting orbital weapons, will almost certainly feel compelled to accelerate their own counterspace and ASAT weapon development programs. This reactive cycle could lead to a more contested, weaponized, and unstable space environment, increasing the risk of conflict for all nations.
Commercial and Strategic Dependencies
Finally, the U.S. military’s increasing reliance on SpaceX for a growing portfolio of critical national security capabilities creates a unique set of strategic vulnerabilities. This dependence on a single commercial entity for everything from routine satellite launch to astronaut transport, global satellite communications (Starlink), and classified intelligence constellations (Starshield) is unprecedented. This raises concerns about supply chain security and the potential for a private company’s corporate interests or leadership decisions to conflict with U.S. national security objectives during a crisis.
The geopolitical exposure of SpaceX’s leadership adds another layer of complexity. The company’s CEO has significant business interests in other countries, notably a major Tesla factory in China, which could theoretically be used as leverage by an adversary to influence the company’s actions. The Pentagon is acutely aware of this dependency. The ongoing discussions about procuring government-owned “gray tail” Starships are a direct response to this risk, representing an effort to ensure that the U.S. government has guaranteed access and absolute operational control over this critical capability when national security is at stake.
Ultimately, the militarization of Starship presents a strategic paradox: its most revolutionary capabilities are intrinsically linked to its greatest vulnerabilities. The reusability that makes it affordable also makes its landing sites predictable targets. The incredible speed that makes it a logistical game-changer also creates a significant risk of nuclear miscalculation. And the reliance on a dynamic commercial innovator for a military edge creates a strategic dependency that could be exploited. This means that for the U.S. military, adopting Starship is not a simple technological upgrade; it is a complex strategic trade-off that will require the development of new doctrines, new rules of engagement, and new international norms to manage the cascading risks and unintended consequences its use will inevitably create.
Summary
The SpaceX Starship is not merely a bigger rocket; it is a catalyst for a new era of military space power, fundamentally altering the strategic landscape in a way not seen since the dawn of the space age. Its core attributes of full reusability, massive payload capacity, and radically low launch costs combine to dismantle the economic and logistical barriers that have constrained military space operations for over half a century.
The most probable near-term applications are already reshaping Pentagon strategy. In logistics, the Point-to-Point Delivery program promises a niche but strategically decisive capability to deliver critical cargo anywhere in the world in under an hour, providing a powerful tool to overcome an adversary’s anti-access/area-denial defenses in the opening moments of a conflict. In satellite deployment, Starship makes the concept of large, resilient, proliferated constellations economically and logistically viable, shifting military space architecture from a few exquisite, vulnerable assets to a robust, replenishable network.
Looking further ahead, Starship stands as the sole enabler for establishing a meaningful military presence in cislunar space, turning the Moon and the region around it into the next great strategic high ground. Its potential role in orbital warfare, whether as a “mothership” for servicing and deploying other assets or as a tool of economic imposition, introduces entirely new concepts of space control and deterrence.
However, these revolutionary capabilities are accompanied by significant challenges. The system’s operational profile creates new technical vulnerabilities, its use strains existing legal frameworks and risks catastrophic misinterpretation, and the military’s reliance on a single commercial provider introduces novel strategic dependencies. The emergence of Starship moves space from a domain that primarily supports terrestrial operations to a central theater of great power competition in its own right. It creates a strategic imperative for the United States and the international community to urgently develop new doctrines, policies, and arms control frameworks. The goal must be to manage the instabilities and harness the opportunities created by this unprecedented capability, ensuring that the ultimate high ground does not become the next great battlefield.
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