Shelton points future satellites to many small single purpose units for resiliency

Defense.gov News Article: Shelton Discusses Importance of Space Defense

 "Because space launch is so expensive, we loaded as much as we could onto our satellites -- multiple missions, multiple payloads, " Gen William Shelton, commander of Air Force Space Command told GWU students today (1/7/2014) . "After all, we were operating in a relatively peaceful sanctuary in space."

Not today. "As I look at the next 20 years in space, we have a difficult, up-hill climb ahead of us," he said. "I equate this to the difficulty of turning the Queen Mary. You send the rudder command and the delayed response tries your patience."

To sustain space services, the United States must consider architectural alternatives for future satellite constellations. "These alternatives must balance required capability, affordability and resilience," he said. "There are many options that we're actively studying right now. The notion of disaggregation is one. And what we mean by this is moving away from the multiple payload, big satellite construct into a less complex satellite architecture with multiple components."

Distributing space payloads across multiple satellite platforms, increases U.S. resiliency. "At a minimum, it complicates our adversaries' targeting calculus," he said.