This report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. This analytical study looks at the importance of Deep Space Operations and recommends an approach for senior policy leaders. Section 1 presents a capability requirements definition with candidate solutions and technology strategies. Section 2 recommends an acquisition and organizational approach. Section 3 provides an extended strategic rationale for deep space operations as a national priority.

This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

This chapter of Air University's Space Horizons Research Group presents capability requirements, potential solutions, and strategic rationale for achieving movement and maneuver advantage in deep space. In this context, deep space is anything beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO). Driving the research are two primary assumptions underpinning the need for investment in deep space propulsion. The first assumption is that growing international activity, commerce, and industry in space extends the global commons, thus creating a military-economic imperative for the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to expand its protection of U.S. interests by defending space lines of communication. Although there are wide-ranging reasons to expand the space-faring capabilities of the human species, from the capitalistic to the existential, the fact of its occurrence offers the U.S. immense strategic opportunity. Section 1, operating on this assumption, recommends capability-based requirements for deep space operations given a projected future operating environment. There are many candidate technologies for in-space propulsion systems. Presented here, in brief, are the most relevant to deep space operations based on their current or potential capabilities and the recommendations of experts interviewed for this study. By no means is the list all-inclusive, but it serves as a foundation for further investigation. Only a sampling of performance measures are included in order to provide context for comparison. In general, performance goals for advanced propulsion include improvements in thrust levels, specific impulse (LP), power, specific mass (or specific power), volume, system mass, system complexity, operational complexity, commonality with other spacecraft systems, manufacturability, durability, safety, reliability, and cost.

Chemical Propulsion - Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES) * Nuclear-Thermal Propulsion (NTP) and Nuclear-Electric Propulsion (NEP) * Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) * Directed Energy-Driven Technology * Solar Thermal Propulsion * Electric Propulsion - Hall Effect, Field Reverse Configuration, and Electrospray Thrusters * Mach Effect Thrusters (MET) * EmDrive * Technology Survey Summary * Propulsion Assessment Approaches: Existing and Breakthrough * Existing Technology: Using Measures of Performance and Design Reference Missions * Breakthrough Propulsion: Applying Vision and Rigor in Pioneering Research * Assessment Approach Summary * Technology Strategy * Acquisition and Organizational Approach