Defense Leaders: We Need to Invest in Space, Unmanned Systems for the Arctic

Facing increased threats in the Arctic and growing concern about U.S. gaps in the region, the Pentagon will invest in more space-based and unmanned assets, defense officials said this week as they rolled out a new strategy for the region.

“A key focus … is championing investments that will enhance our awareness of threats in the region,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience Iris Ferguson told reporters July 22. “We want to make sure that we have the right sensing architecture and the right communications architecture for command and control.”

Since 2020, the Department of the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy have all released Arctic strategies calling for more investment in the region, and former U.S. Northern Command boss Gen. Glen D. VanHerck and others have noted a lack of funding for domain awareness.

Those concerns gained prominence in early 2023 when a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. and Canada, including time near the Aleutian islands. More recently, new NORTHCOM commander Gen. Gregory M. Guillot revealed in March that Russian bombers approached American airspace from the northeast for the first time in two years. He also warned that the Chinese are likely to send warplanes near Alaska as soon as this year.

“The Arctic is perhaps the shortest and least defended threat vector to North America, and that’s what makes it so important,” Guillot’s deputy, Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Carden, said July 23 at an event hosted by the Wilson Center.

With Russia and China cooperating more and more in the Arctic, the U.S. needs better technology and infrastructure to sense threats and communicate them, officials say. Much of the infrastructure in place dates back to the Cold War, and the harsh conditions of the region take a toll on both buildings and equipment.

“It’s not like those sensors can exist in the Arctic, without some hardened, climate-controlled infrastructure,” said Carden. “You know, I spent a lot of time early in my career training for operations in the desert, and we used to have a say, ‘Life’s hard in the desert.’ I’ll tell you, life is harder in the Arctic, and we’re learning that very quickly.”

Installations like Pituffik Space Base are slated to get millions of dollars to modernize, Ferguson said. Meanwhile, the DOD is also eyeing sensors that can handle the conditions—and make it such that human operators don’t have to brave them as much.

“Domain awareness missions are well suited for uncrewed systems approaches in all domains, so sensing missions, ISR, etc.,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen H. Hicks told reporters July 22. “So this is a clear area where we can apply some of what we’re doing in the department. The features we’re looking for there are endurance, not putting humans at risk in a harsh environment. But at the same time … you have to ensure that even those uncrewed systems are survivable long enough at least to endure or are so inexpensive, that their attritable nature is still worth it for the mission you’re putting them on. So that means a lot of research and development and testing, and that’s where we’re focused in this area.”

Space also features prominently in the new strategy, with mentions of possible new missile warning/missile tracking, communications, and weather satellites, as well as more and more use of commercial satellites.

The Arctic’s location at the top of the world can mean spottier satellite coverage, requiring more polar-specific systems. DOD will work on those systems, while also trying to leverage partnerships to keep costs down, officials said.

“It’s an area that we haven’t invested in to date as much because of the inclination of our geosynchronous orbits,” Ferguson said. “We have to actively invest in the Arctic region in particular, we’ve been working over the last several years to leverage these kind of commercial assets to include testing and development … with our Air Force Research Lab.”

The Space Force has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Next-Gen OPIR Polar for missile warning in the region, and the Space Development Agency is putting many of its satellites in polar orbit as well. The department is also working with NATO ally Norway to put a communications payload on a Norwegian satellite that will soon launch.

“This is actually a mission where the U.S. DOD, the Norwegian [Ministry of Defense], and Inmarsat came together to provide the capability way cheaper and way faster than any of those entities could have done by themselves,” Maj. Gen. Odd-Harald Hagen, the Defense Attaché at the Royal Norwegian Embassy, said at the Wilson Center event.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Air Force has helped companies like SpaceX and OneWeb to invest in polar coverage, Ferguson said, and the results have been encouraging. Now the next step is making sure operators can access those networks.

“What we’re trying to do is field hybrid SATCOM terminals for our users so that they can access multiple constellations,” she said. “That’s the next round. You have the satellite capabilities and the commercial capacity, but you need the users to have their terminals to be able to access it.”

While satellites and unmanned systems may play a key role moving forward, Air Force Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Maitre also noted the importance of boots on the ground and manned platforms, trained to handle the Arctic’s unique challenges.

“We’ve stationed really the largest number of advanced tactical fighter aircraft, fifth-generation, within the Arctic, and that’s just us,” said Maitre, the director for concepts and strategy in Air Force Futures. “If you add in our allies like Norway that also operate the F-35, that is a compelling robust presence that we have in the Arctic.

“… With Norway, we’ve worked a lot with how we operate F-35s in cold weather, where we have a lot to learn from our allies. In Sweden, we’ve talked about dispersed operations in the Arctic that they’ve lived in a real fashion for over 50 years that we can still learn from. And with Canada, we’ve looked at dispersed power generation and what that means in these remote sites in a cold environment.”