A new strategic imperative is taking shape in the U.S. defense space community, arriving with remarkable speed and clarity. The question is no longer whether space is a warfighting domain. That debate is settled. The question now is whether the United States has the doctrine in place to maintain its longstanding superiority in space.
Two prominent voices are helping define what that strategy must look like, and their message is worth examining closely by anyone with a stake in the future of space-based military operations and communications.
Two generals, one doctrine
Retired Lt. Gen. John Shaw is one of the most respected strategic thinkers to emerge from the U.S. Space Force. During his active-duty career, he served as commander of Combined Force Space Component Command and Space Operations Command, where he helped shape the foundational operational concepts that define how America organizes and employs its space assets. Since retiring in 2023, he has continued writing and speaking with considerable influence on the direction of military space strategy. In a recent Forbes article, Shaw argued that the age of space maneuver warfare is not a distant prospect. It is imminent.
Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, has been making the same case from inside the institution. Speaking at the 2026 Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Gen. Whiting framed the challenge directly: a satellite locked into a predictable orbit is not a strategic asset. It is a target. His call for a formal maneuver warfare strategy, which Space Command is developing under the working concept of “Apollo Maneuvers,” represents a generational shift in how the Defense Department intends to operate in space.
Together, Shaw and Whiting are articulating a coherent and urgent doctrine. Static, positional space operations, the long-standing model in which satellites are launched into fixed orbits and conserve fuel to extend their operational lifespan, create predictable signatures that peer adversaries can exploit. China and Russia have both accelerated the development of maneuverable counterspace capabilities. The response, both men argue, must be a space force that can maneuver, reposition, and operate unpredictably, much as the Joint Force does in every other domain.
The maneuver warfare paradox
The doctrine is sound. The hardware investments to support it are accelerating. On-orbit refueling demonstrations, space logistics concepts, and maneuverable spacecraft are all advancing on parallel tracks. But there is a dimension of this challenge that the current debate tends to underemphasize, and it is arguably the most operationally consequential one.
Maneuvering spacecraft are only as effective as the communications infrastructure that connects them to commanders and to each other.
Consider what maneuver warfare actually requires at the operational level. It demands real-time situational awareness, low-latency command and control, and the ability to redirect information flows instantly as the operational picture shifts. It requires that data move faster than adversaries can react, and that communication pathways remain available even when specific links are jammed, spoofed, or physically threatened. In short, maneuver warfare in the space domain necessitates maneuvering networks that are non-static, dynamically flexible, and architecturally resilient.
The communication required by the new doctrine cannot depend on highly vulnerable terrestrial gateways or fiber. The necessary ground-based resiliency can be achieved by geographic diversity across landing stations, redundant equipment, and multiple fiber and Points of Presence routes that protect against localized outages or weather events.
The communication requirements of maneuverability
As DoW spacecraft change orbital altitudes and theaters of operation, we must ensure the communications infrastructure can accommodate the maneuverability to get data from the spacecraft to the operational command. For example, when a Navy ship changes its region, connectivity needs to be pre-provisioned. The logic of maneuver dictates that space-based infrastructure needs to become more flexible and adaptive.
This is where new advanced commercial networks can provide an assured communications backbone through Space Relay services. Space relay refers to connecting government or 3rd party satellites to a Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) network via optical laser links to deliver data to its final destination. Optical Inter-Satellite Links (OISLs) on each satellite create an intelligent mesh architecture in space, providing multiple routing options and the ability to skip over a compromised satellite entirely.
Once data is uplinked from a maneuverable satellite, data can traverse the commercial LEO constellation to its intended destination, never transiting a public network, and is inaccessible to a potential adversary. DoW customers retain total control over encryption and decryption and can land the data at government-owned gateways. The proposed Golden Dome missile defense program is expected to require such a global command-and-control system that can fuse information from multiple sources and feed it to weapons in real time.
This flexible COMSATCOM backbone requires the highest levels of resiliency and security. Service resiliency is powered by a software-defined network and AI-driven orchestration that continuously analyzes conditions across every network domain and reroutes traffic in real time, making the constellation smarter over time. AI will be a key technology for network maneuver at the pace that enables space maneuver warfare.
Secure resiliency wraps all the above in a multi-layered cybersecurity framework, including standards compliance (IA-Pre), and 24/7 monitoring, on the premise that true resiliency is when a network can maintain operations and recover rapidly in the event of a compromise.
These are not aspirational specifications. They are engineering requirements that distinguish a mission-critical LEO satellite network from consumer-grade connectivity. They are also precisely the requirements that defense organizations must consider when evaluating commercial satellite partners for integration into a maneuver warfare architecture.
Ensuring space-based situational awareness
Gen. Whiting has noted that the sheer scale of Space Command’s area of operations makes maneuver warfare a logistics challenge as much as a tactical one. He is right. But logistics in space is not only about propellant and on-orbit servicing. It is about the sustained, assured information flow across battlespace that spans every orbit and every geographic theater simultaneously.
The networks that carry that information must be engineered from the ground up for the environment Gen. Shaw and Gen. Whiting are describing. They must accelerate the Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA) loop that is the foundation of modern military decision-making. They must be capable of operating in a congested, contested, and competitive space environment without degradation.
This is the standard against which defense customers will increasingly measure commercial LEO satellite networks. The spacecraft will do the maneuvering. Telesat Lightspeed will always maintain dynamic but predictable network connectivity. But by leveraging a next-generation LEO constellation, our adversaries will not know exactly how, when or where critical government data traverses the network.
The ability to rely on advanced COMSATCOM capabilities makes the new doctrine possible.
