For most of the space age, the military's interest in space has ended at geosynchronous orbit, about 36,000 kilometers up, where communications and missile-warning satellites sit. The U.S. Space Force now says that boundary is out of date, and it wants hardware to prove it within three years.
Speaking Oct. 21 at AFCEA Space Industry Days in Los Angeles, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the Space Force's portfolio acquisition executive for advanced programs, said the service will "imminently" release two requests for information (RFIs) seeking satellites, software and ground systems for cislunar space, the region between Earth and the Moon. The goal, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine, is equipment ready to launch as soon as 2029.
The Defense News reports the target more precisely: initial capabilities by the end of fiscal 2029, which means September 2029.
Two RFIs, two different asks
The first request is aimed at technology that already exists or nearly does. It covers spacecraft, sensors and systems for space domain awareness across the Earth-Moon region, along with positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems and the ground infrastructure to support them. Purdy was blunt about the expected maturity level. "This isn't a four- or five-year science project," he said.
The second RFI is about software. The Space Force wants artificial intelligence and autonomous processing for cislunar spacecraft, which will operate far from Earth and cannot rely on constant hands-on control from the ground. Purdy described the aim as a "fully autonomous system... able to handle all its hardware faults."
That requirement says a lot about the engineering problem. A spacecraft near the Moon that hits a fault and waits for operators to diagnose it is a spacecraft at risk. Asking industry for systems that can manage their own failures is a recognition that the region is too large and too remote to be run the way near-Earth constellations are.
A very big place to watch
The scale is the core difficulty. The volume of cislunar space is 1,728 times that of the space within geosynchronous orbit, Air & Space Forces Magazine noted. The sensors that track objects near Earth were not built to search a volume that large, and the orbits around the Moon and the Earth-Moon Lagrange points behave very differently from familiar low-Earth and geosynchronous paths.
The Space Force is not starting from nothing. The Air Force Research Laboratory has worked on the problem through its Oracle program, which was planned for cislunar space domain awareness, and both AFRL and DARPA have done earlier cislunar research. What is new is the demand that the work turn into fielded systems on a fixed schedule.
New office, new money, new framing
The RFIs are part of a broader buildup. This spring the Space Force set up a Cislunar Coordination Office (Air & Space Forces Magazine dates it to April, The Defense News to May), led by Jaime Stearns. The office has produced roadmaps for space domain awareness, communications and lunar navigation, along with a list of priorities that do not yet have funding.
Working with AFRL and SpaceWERX, the service also plans a $30 million industry challenge called Lunar Prime, which targets flight demonstrations within two years of award.
The policy framing has also shifted. Purdy pointed to Pentagon leadership, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, and to a December 2025 executive order as the forces behind the new attention to cislunar space. He said the Defense Secretary and the Joint Chiefs chairman are stating publicly: "This is a warfighting domain."
The order he cited, signed Dec. 18, 2025, is titled "Ensuring American Space Superiority." According to the Commerce Department's Office of Space Commerce, it calls for Americans to return to the Moon by 2028 and for initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030. It also directs that a lunar surface reactor be ready for launch by 2030, calls for a commercial pathway to replace the International Space Station by 2030, and directs the government to ensure it can detect, characterize and counter security threats to U.S. space interests.
That last clause matters most for the Space Force. If the U.S. plans to put people and a reactor on the Moon on a short timeline, someone has to be able to see what else is operating in the space between here and there.
The China factor
Purdy made clear that competition is setting the pace. "China is moving out in this area. We have traditionally not," he said, as quoted by The Defense News. He noted that China plans a crewed Moon mission by 2030. The Defense News also pointed to a Chinese project to launch 30 CubeSats toward an Earth-Moon Lagrange point and lunar orbit.
Put those facts together and the 2029 deadline makes sense as an effort to keep pace. The Space Force appears to want basic awareness and navigation capability near the Moon before the period when both countries expect to be operating there with crews.
Why It Matters
The announcement marks a change in how the U.S. military defines its operating area. Much of the U.S. government's cislunar planning has centered on NASA and its Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon. Calling it a warfighting domain, and backing that with an office, a prize challenge and procurement on a fixed timeline, means the Earth-Moon region is now a defense planning problem as well as an exploration one.
The acquisition approach is also notable. Instead of a long development program, the Space Force is asking what industry can deliver almost immediately. That favors companies already building lunar-capable spacecraft and sensors, and it tests whether the commercial lunar sector is mature enough to support military timelines.
There are open questions. The coordination office's list of unfunded priorities shows that some needs are not yet funded, and an RFI is only a request for information, not a contract. Building autonomous spacecraft that can handle their own hardware faults is hard engineering on any schedule. The next concrete signs will be the RFIs themselves, the response from industry, and whether the Lunar Prime challenge produces hardware that flies within its two-year window.
