Report: How to Earn Space Superiority | The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies

In January 2026, the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Center of Excellence convened experts from military, government, industry, allied, and academic backgrounds for an unclassified workshop examining how conflict in space might emerge and escalate. The resulting report distills the exercise into findings and recommendations meant to inform policy and budget decisions. We’ve summarized the key themes for you here. 

First, the methodology: Four regionally focused teams (INDOPACOM, EUCOM, CENTCOM, NORTHCOM) worked through five escalating vignette sets spanning a hypothetical 180-day timeline. These vignettes spanned from a Chinese satellite-capture “show of force” through jamming all the way to an unattributed nuclear detonation in low-Earth orbit. Teams assessed severity and proposed unconstrained response options. NORTHCOM scenarios were deliberately left unattributed to test decision-making under uncertainty.

Key findings 

Five themes emerged:

1. Complexity is inherent to the domain. Space’s physical and observational characteristics make attribution and escalation assessment difficult.
2. Gray zone normalization. The U.S. is already in a sustained gray zone with China, where deniable actions are gradually shifting the baseline of “acceptable” behavior.
3. Adversary cooperation amplifies threat perception. Coordinated or even loosely parallel actions by Russia, China, and Iran were judged far more hostile collectively than individually, straining U.S. response capacity.
4. Attribution underpins everything. Without confidently identifying actors and intent, decision-makers can’t easily select proportionate responses.
5. Strategic communication and credible response options are decisive. Messaging shapes perception and coalition unity, while a narrow toolkit risks forcing choices between inaction and overreaction.

Recommendations 

Here, we summarize the report’s seven recommendations.

Decrease ambiguity to accelerate decision-making. The USG needs to work towards comprehensive, widely understood standards, norms, or laws for behavior in space, even if defined unilaterally at first. 

Build strategic weight through partner integration. In an arena without enforceable international law, numbers and alignment matter. The report urges continued expansion of multinational space campaigns, clearly defined roles for allied, civil, and commercial actors within joint planning, and greater use of foreign military sales to build interoperable capacity.

Shape perceptions through strategic messaging. The U.S. must proactively communicate when hostile acts occur, explain why they’re unacceptable, and signal that a response is coming—both to sustain congressional and public support and to deny adversaries the ability to control the narrative. 

Deny benefits of hostile actions through mission resilience. Resilience-by-design directly supports the Space Force’s goal of denying first-mover advantage. This means proliferating and diversifying capabilities across LEO, MEO, and GEO so that, for example, a nuclear detonation degrading LEO doesn’t cripple the entire architecture. 

Tenaciously defend critical infrastructure. We need to continuously test cyber defenses, build deeper Pentagon-industry collaboration, and to treat ground installations and power grids as priority assets for missile defense and counter-UAS protection (including under Golden Dome planning).

Build credible capability and capacity to execute response options. How? Sustained investment in space superiority weapons, dynamic space operations (in-orbit servicing, refueling, pre-positioned surge assets), and expanded U.S. launch infrastructure—noting China currently operates five launch complexes to the United States’ two. 

Sharpen a winning edge through training and exercises. This means running joint exercises that incorporate terrestrial strike options against ground-based space threats, wargames that presume future frameworks and reconstitution capacity are already in place, and continuous refinement of the decision cycle.

Conclusion

Broadly, the U.S. needs clearer frameworks, mission resilience, and the ability to operate through space-related attacks. Above all, the report calls for a sense of urgency. Urgency in getting those frameworks built, urgency in training these untested scenarios, urgency in integrating with partners… urgency even in getting this conversation into the mainstream. Otherwise space remains a gray-zone zone for adversaries to exploit.

Access the full report, written by Cols. (Ret.) Charles S. Galbreath, USSF, Jennifer K. Reeves, USAF, and Kyle Pumroy, USSF, here: “Space Superiority Through the Spectrum of Conflict: Findings and Recommendations from the Conflict in Space Workshop.”

While you’re here… 

Check out this article by Jerae Perez, which explores the recognition/authorization gap that can occur when you have any kind of ambiguity over escalation thresholds: “Weaponized Hesitation: Authority and Tempo in Gray-Zone Competition.” Important to address for the untested, un-frameworked domain of space.