DAF study finds new space launch site ‘probably’ required

WASHINGTON ― A new Department of the Air Force study shows that the Space Force likely will require a new launch facility to get beyond the current crunch at at Vandenberg SFB in California and Cape Canaveral in Florida, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said today.

“We’ve just finished up a study, and that’s working its way through the process to come down to the Hill. At a high level, what it says is we probably need another site that’s capable of heavy and super heavy launch capability,” he told the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).

“It still shocks me a little bit that just launch bases, launch infrastructure seems to be the limitation right now on the nation’s ability to … at least for the next foreseeable future, grow our commercial launch infrastructure, which supports again both commercial and national [security launch.]”

The Space Force last July sounded the alarm that the rapid rise in the number of launches, both for national security and for commercial customers, was threatening to overwhelm its two current launch ranges.

Lt. Gen. David Miller, Space Force deputy for Strategy, Plans, Programs and Requirements, told a congressional briefing hosted by George Washington University’s National Security Institute on Tuesday that the service alone is looking at some 1,000 missions between fiscal years 2027 and 2031.

According to a report Tuesday in Payload, an upcoming report by the Commercial Space Foundation found that the space community could require as many as 7,000 launches annually, surpassing capacity for some types of launch vehicles as soon as 2030.

During the HASC hearing today, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman stressed that “step one” is for the Space Force to “make sure we’re using as efficiently as possible the resources we have.

“Second is growing the infrastructure to support the demand signal that we are seeing from industry and our national security launches. We’re going to have to increase the capacity. Connected to that is the geographic resiliency that you might need, to have separate launch locations and not be so tied to just the two specific launch ports that we that we have,” he added. “So, we’re looking heavily and we’re now analyzing alternatives to support other options.”