US cannot rebuild military satellites after war with China or Russia: RAND report

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RAND report claims the civilian space contractor workforce in the US can not support rebuilding lost satellites within 12 to 24 months of a war with either Russia or China

The benchmark timeline is based on RAND's own assumptions and calculations surrounding a protracted war with either regional superpower

The report highlights labor gaps that are as dire as 19:1 in certain cases when it comes to engineering replacements

A new report has warned the United States might struggle to replace satellites lost in a space war because it lacks the requisite workers.

The report, "Breaking Glass, Missing Hands" , was sponsored by the Vice Chief of Space Operations and conducted by RAND Project AIR FORCE, the Department of the Air Force's own federally funded research center, as part of a fiscal 2024 project titled "In Emergency, Break Glass."

It does not, however, focus on the Department of the Air Force's internal workforce or Space Force civilian employees; instead, it highlights shortfalls in the civilian sector.

An overly ambitious reconstruction timeline?

RAND's report identifies shortfalls in three groups: engineers with bachelor's degrees or higher, skilled touch labor (technicians and assemblers), and advanced-degree specialists in electro-optical sensing and radiation hardening.

None of these are easy to replace or replicate in a short period, but one must consider that the 12- to 24-month target is one RAND has self-assessed in an industry that can take as much as a decade to replace satellites on average.

RAND notes that no such formal requirement exists, adding that the creation of the Space Force in 2019 could be read as a tacit acknowledgment of near-term dependence on space.

The people the report is most worried about, interestingly, are cleanroom technicians, welders, and solderers, not scientists, because of the labor shortages in play that already come to roughly nineteen jobs for one qualified individual.

This is further exacerbated by RAND essentially trying to set a somewhat aggressive standard that the Pentagon has yet to define formally. It also cited security clearance delays as a hiring bottleneck, with initial Secret investigations averaging more than 87 days in fiscal 2024 and Top Secret cases running close to six months.

Interestingly, RAND notes that in a conflict where the adversary can destroy systems faster than the United States can launch replacements, building exact replicas with known vulnerabilities may accomplish little, especially in a protracted war.

It also offers a startlingly small remedy for what it paints as a significant problem: RAND's recommendations cost an estimated $4 million a year for scholarships and internships, $1 million a year for outreach and recruitment, and a one-off $800,000 feasibility study on retraining workers from adjacent industries.

This is a minuscule amount compared to the roughly $32 billion the US Space Force is expected to have in play for Fiscal 2027, clocking in at just 0.016 percent of that figure, and 0.003 percent of the $185 billion earmarked for the Golden Dome project .

A war might not be required to exacerbate the issue, however; the White House's space transportation policy released in August targets more than 1,000 launches and reentries by 2030, up from roughly 200 a year today. A wartime surge without the requisite employees in training or in reserve could only further complicate those goals.