Enabling Human Security from Space

The authors highlight how the U.S. Space Force's (USSF's) capabilities can be used to address human security challenges, such as climate change, food insecurity, and communicable diseases while also addressing national security challenges and ensuring secure and stable allies.

The United States must be not only reactive but also proactive to ensure that human crises are mitigated and potentially prevented before they occur. The USSF can use its capabilities for collection of data and monitoring of indicators related to human security to help identify human security challenges as they emerge, thus opening the door to possible interventions—potentially involving resources from both the U.S. military and the broader international community. Such interventions might help prevent the escalation of cascading challenges. Peacetime opportunities for utilization of space capabilities include sharing access to information through satellite communication platforms; tracking agricultural and weather trends through environmental monitoring; and ensuring sustainable development via intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.

The USSF's position within the U.S. Department of Defense and its mission to protect U.S. interests from space provide a clear scope of responsibilities and established communication channels that can support comprehensive, accurate, and predictive analyses using the data gleaned from space technologies. By taking a leading role in using space technology to address human security factors, the USSF would give legitimacy to this endeavor.