These missions include maritime law enforcement (specifically drug interdiction), intelligence, buoy tending, vessel traffic management, and icebreaking. For example, various types of space-based surveillance can assist with many Coast Guard missions. Nearly every one of the Coast GuardвЂ™s 11 statutory missions can be better facilitated by improved access to space-based capabilities, whether theyвЂ™re organic Coast Guard capabilities or capabilities provided by a partner department or agency. This will require both a focused staffing and budget commitment, but every established position established and every spent dollar will pay dividends in terms of enhanced mission effectiveness and efficiency savings. The Coast Guard should lean hard into the increased, affordable access to space that commercial space opportunities provide.

First, how can the service best capitalize on cheap, ready access to space to facilitate its missions, as it had already started to do so with the Polar Scout launches? Second, how do commercial space efforts interact with the maritime industry and maritime domain and to what extent, if any, does the Coast Guard need to adjust or modify its extensive suite of operating authorities and regulations to ensure that any risk to the safety and security of the maritime is adequately addressed? And third, how can the Coast Guard, as part of the joint force, assist the Space Force in executing the latterвЂ™s own responsibilities? Capitalizing on cheap access To succeed as an information-age military service and total-domain governance agency in the 21st century, the Coast Guard should view space through three lenses. The Coast Guard has already gotten in the game, but it must continue to seriously consider space as it develops budgets and strategies for the future.Д«y Jacob Parakilas, Hannah Bryce, Kenneth Cukier, Heather Roff, and Missy Cummings 2018 The United States is pursuing the Artemis Accords, the Space Force is getting off the ground, NASA is looking towards Mars (but first to the moon! To stay!), and commercial space pursuits are booming. Indeed, we are at the start of a second great space age, one that is shaping up to be turbo-charged by the commercial market and the seemingly never-ending, exponentially increasing power of computer processing. And while the Coast Guard lost linkage to Yukon and Kodiak shortly after launch, the mere fact that the service had the vision to go boldly to the heavens to meet that need should be a forerunner of things to come. This means the Coast Guard increasingly requires the ability to communicate over-the-horizon - thus, Polar Scout. The Coast Guard is statutorily charged with serving as the United StatesвЂ™ Arctic governance presence. Likewise, greater traffic means more need for increased governance presence to ensure safe, rules-based operations within the Arctic. The Chinese, in particular, are constantly pressing to exploit resources the world over, be it living marine or hydrocarbon-based. In short, a warmer climate results in greater access greater access results in greater maritime traffic, including by Russia and China. These two cubesats were intended to serve as the vanguard of enhanced telecommunications coverage in the Arctic, a domain that has always been important but is of increasing strategic significance today because it is at the intersection of great power competition and global climate change. Federal Executive Fellow - The Brookings Institution

Marine space warfare department