Old and Busted: Air Supremacy. New Hotness: Orbital Supremacy.

Hegseth at Cape Canaveral

One of the foundation stones of any understanding of the national security requirements of the United States is a requirement to fully understand that we are primarily a maritime and aerospace power. That is our comparative advantage.

Aerospace isn’t just air-breathing aircraft, it includes space.

For far too long, narrow-thinking people for the most base reasons have neglected space. Like many things, we gained a huge advantage over everyone else, and then decided the money would be better spent buying votes and currying favor with…whoever was going to help buy votes.

From Carter’s malaise to Obama’s obsession with using NASA for “Muslim outreach” when it wasn’t trying to block efforts to get away from reliance on Russian rocket engines, you could not find poorer stewardship of what was once a national jewel.

With the new administration, we hear talk of space being a priority—and know the challenges from ballistic and hypersonic missiles has never been greater—but where are we going?

The best way to find out what the Trump Administration wants to do, what its priorities are, and where the puck is going, is not to read second-hand reports from people who often have their own agendas or blinkered views of personalities and politics. No. The best thing you can do is go to primary sources.

Yesterday Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke at Cape Canaveral on his “Arsenal of Freedom Tour.” I’ll post the full video at the bottom of the post, but this part of his speech is the juicy center that should get your attention.

…we’re rebuilding our military. That’s why we’re on the Arsenal of Freedom Tour. That’s why we’re here in Florida. We’re going across the country for a couple of months talking to industry large like this one and small. We need all of them and we need you to move fast at scale at cost to out compete our adversaries to rebuild our arsenal of freedom. President Trump did it in his first term and we’re doing it again.

As you may have heard, the one big beautiful bill provided the War Department an historic down payment of $150 billion to supercharge President Trump’s defense capabilities. He has announced the goal to to spend 1.5 trillion for our national defense in 2027. That is a massive message to the rest of the world that American strength uh is not going anywhere anytime soon. We will dominate in every domain.

That one big beautiful bill also provided 25 billion for the Golden Dome for America, revolutionizing our homeland defense through cutting edge spacebased cap capabilities, which we’re going to need. We’re talking about a vigilant constellation of next generation sensors and satellites that will see every threat from every corner of the globe paired with a network of space-based interceptors ready to neutralize any ballistic missile, any hypersonic weapon, any drone long before it threatens our homeland. The kind of protection President Trump has promised the American people and the War Department will deliver. That is how we establish total orbital supremacy.

That is how we guarantee the safety and security of the American people. Space Force’s General Guetlein has done a fantastic job so far leading the charge. He knows the path of what’s expected for Golden Dome. I get briefed monthly on its progress. This is not something where some you see President Reagan helped defeat the Soviets by casting a vision of SDI of a of a dome. President Trump, given the companies we have in this country like this one, can now make that vision a reality for the American people, a huge conundrum for our adversaries who are counting on a whole different dynamic. We will continue to work with our partners because we have to dominate the space domain. That means we’ll ensure that we keep building rockets and engines and landers that you make here at scale and at speed.

Weaponizing space is back on the menu.

Image credit: Leonardo