Space defense center begins 24/7 operations

The secret unit’s mission is to protect satellites

The National Space Defense Center at Schriever Air Force Base has moved beyond war games, with intelligence agency experts and Space Command airmen joining forces to protect American satellites in orbit.

The center, which last year was operating with borrowed troops, has begun operating 24 hours a day and boasts a staff of 230. Their mission is to ferret out threats to military and spy satellites and take actions to keep American interests safe in orbit.

“It’s that big transition point,” the center’s director, Col. Todd Brost, told The Gazette.

The ultra-secret center operates behind a prisonlike double-fence inside Schriever’s secure area. While specifics of the unit haven’t been released, Brost said it includes contractors, representatives of American spy agencies along with troops from Air Force Space Command.

“This is not an Air Force unit,” Brost explained. “It’s not really even a Department of Defense unit.”

The center, which started as a concept in late 2015, arose out of increasing fear that America’s enemies would make satel- lites a wartime target.

The military’s satellites provide communications, navigation and missile warning for troops around the globe. In wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, satellites have given American ground troops an unprecedented advantage to track and target enemies. Intelligence satellites focus on foreign powers, with capabilities to intercept communications and photograph enemy military and civilian sites.

That success led rival nations to focus on space, starting in 2007 with China’s successful demonstration of anti-satellite missiles.

Now, with Russia showing increasing anti-U.S. sentiments, North Korea developing space-capable missiles and Iran quickly developing its own antisatellite capabilities, space is becoming increasingly crowded and dangerous, Brost said.

“Space used to be a benign environment and that’s what’s changed,” he said.

In Colorado Springs, the center uses what intelligence agencies have gathered along with data gathered by space-watching military units like the 21st Space Wing at Peterson Air Force Base to discern what the enemy is planning in space and how they could execute the mission.

“Now you have an intelligence person sitting next to (a satellite) operator,” he said.