U.S. Space Command Is Testing Maneuver Warfare To Prepare for Next Generation of Fighting

It won’t look like a dogfight from Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica, but in a future war, U.S. satellites may need to maneuver to survive. Space Command (SPACECOM) is practicing the right way to do it. SPACECOM announced on September 8 the completion of Apollo Maneuvers 2026, its inaugural live-fly exercise focused on Dynamic Space Operations (DSO), which involve repositioning satellites more quickly and responsively as threats and missions change. The exercise reflects SPACECOM’s growing emphasis on refining maneuver warfare in space. DSO provides commanders with the ability to move and sustain spacecraft more flexibly, while maneuver warfare is how they use that mobility to gain a better positional advantage to complicate, evade, or counter adversarial operations. That shift is increasingly important as Congress warns that DSO remains under-resourced compared to advancing Chinese capabilities. U.S. Military Satellites Must Become More Agile Apollo Maneuvers drew inspiration from the U.S. Army’s 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers, a series of exercises that tested ground tactics at scale before America entered World War II. Today, SPACECOM is similarly trying to determine what space warfare requires before commanders engage in combat above the atmosphere. During the first week of September, Apollo Maneuvers paired a tabletop exercise with live operational demonstrations using existing U.S. military satellites, allowing forces to test concepts with spacecraft operating in orbit rather than relying only on simulations. SPACECOM coordinated moves spanning multiple orbits; refined maneuver warfare tactics; tested contested logistics and satellite servicing; and integrated select allies and commercial partners. Satellites already shift to maintain or adjust their orbits. DSO envisions something more demanding: spacecraft able to reposition more frequently and responsively as threats and missions change. In practice, that could mean relocating away from a threatening spacecraft or repositioning to monitor an adversarial satellite. SPACECOM’s Space Warfighting Environment 2040 says maneuver warfare will be critical to future conflict as adversaries will increasingly target U.S. space systems to disrupt communications, intelligence, and other operations. The ability to operate under persistent attack, quickly repositioning and restoring damaged capabilities, will be key to maintaining operational advantage in a contested space domain. SPACECOM says exercise data will inform doctrine, operational plans, and future logistics and servicing requirements for sustained maneuvers, but Congress has already warned that the Pentagon is not moving quickly enough to turn DSO prototypes into operational capabilities. In June, the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) said it was “alarmed” that SPACECOM repeatedly identified DSO as essential to space superiority, yet DSO was not prioritized in the fiscal year (FY) 2027 Space Force budget request. The committee added that DSO remains “chronically underfunded” and that current Space Force prototyping efforts are “insufficient.” The gap is particularly acute as China is simultaneously demonstrating increasingly sophisticated on-orbit maneuver and proximity operations. The same month as HAC’s warning, a secretive Chinese uncrewed spaceplane released a small satellite that looped around a Chinese satellite before returning toward the spaceplane. Beijing has also conducted synchronized close-proximity movements that U.S. officials describe as orbital “dogfighting.” U.S. Military Should Turn Lessons Into Readiness Following the first Apollo Maneuvers live-fly event, SPACECOM should use the data to pinpoint what slows or limits maneuver operations as well as gaps in threat detection, command and control, logistics, and on-orbit servicing. Those findings should inform the DSO report proposed by HAC, while future exercise iterations should deliberately stress identified system weaknesses under progressively harder conditions, such as cyberattacks or disrupted communications. Exposed gaps should then be translated into FY 2028 Space Force budget and training priorities. In a future conflict, the side that can maneuver, preserve, and reposition its space capabilities will be better able to sustain communications, intelligence, targeting, and other space-enabled operations that increasingly determine military advantage on Earth. Emmerson Overell is a project coordinator at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where she researches threats to U.S. and allied security in the Arctic, space, and cyberspace. For more analysis from Emmerson and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_CCTI. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.