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However, Lt. General DeAnna Burt, the deputy chief devoted to Space Force's cyber and nuclear operations, among others, have also used 'patterns of life' to reference detectable, routine activity by any and all technological platforms in space.
Last May, Lt. Gen. Burt dropped the term of art while criticizing China for its opaque and noncooperative space program activities.
'We've said what our capabilities are,' Lt. Gen. Burt told SpaceNews. 'If you are honest and say what things are and have patterns of life that indicate they are what they are, then it's an everyday operation,' Burt said.
Whatever Space Force's intent, the branch issued its new publication in mid-November to announce, in part, its plan to identify and track UFOs in orbit around Earth โ a high priority initiative the branch calls 'Space Domain Awareness' (SDA).
The strategy document, titled 'Space Doctrine Publication 3-100, Space Domain Awareness,' outlines Space Force's mission to successfully monitor a vast orbital range that includes everything from low earth orbit (LEO) to the moon.
STARCOM drafted the document as part of its mission to educate and train US Space Force personnel, officially dubbed 'guardians.'
Since the branch's creation in 2019, the number of orbital knowns and UFO 'unknowns' shadowing the Earth has skyrocketed by the thousands.
Space Force, citing NASA data, published a chart revealing that there are now over 25,000 objects total in orbit, although most were determined to be 'rocket bodies,' 'spacecraft,' 'mission-related debris' or other known man-made objects.
Space Force leadership said it hopes to positively identify any and all UFOs to determine if they should be recovered or if they pose a clear and present danger to the United States.
Or, in military's own unique jargon, Space Force hopes to 'distinguish between sources of spacecraft anomalies in support of anomaly resolution, recovery, and space attack assessment,' the new document states.
But that will cost money, alongside Space Force's other duties providing satellite and other space-based support for American troops on the ground worldwide.
This year, the new military branch is requesting a $30 billion budget from Congress for 2024, just one of many UFO-centric provisions to the 2024 National Defense Authorization (NDAA) now approaching a heated, contested vote on Capitol Hill.
As detailed by the law creating Space Force, the military branch has two related but distinct duties.
First it must organize, train and equip personnel to 'protect US and allied interests in space.' But, secondarily, it must also 'provide space capabilities to the joint forces' here on Earth, such as maintaining spy satellites and other space-based military hardware.
Space Force's STARCOM noted that figuring out the mystery of what these UFOs or UAP are is essential, in part, so that it can get on with it's other military troop-support tasks.
'Anomalous indications,' the new guidance document states, 'unnecessarily consume SDA resources (e.g., sensors, communication nodes, command and control [C2] centers, planners, operators) that would otherwise be supporting space and terrestrial combatant commands.'
One new concern, the document added, is the growing threat of foreign spy satellites and worse, in the large dark orbital region between the Earth and the moon, dubbed 'cislunar' orbit.
'Current sensor capabilities will find that the vastness of space between the Earth and the moon, and around the moon, creates challenging conditions for search, custody, and collection operations in support of joint forces,' the branch's new strategy document stated.
Space Force noted plans by the US Air Force Research Lab for a new security and monitoring probe, the Oracle spacecraft, which 'aims to launch in 2026 to an area of gravitational stability between the Earth and the Moon to test techniques to monitor space traffic that travels through that region.'
Given all this uncharted territory, which is at best poorly monitored by US defense systems, it is no surprise that the branch's 'guardians' are requesting $3.9 billion more from taxpayers for 2024 than its 2023 fiscal year budget.
At present, over 60 percent of the US Space Force's budget, or about $19.2 billion worth, has been earmarked for research, development, testing and evaluation.
Nearly $20 billion, in other words, just to create the tools and techniques for the new and growing problem of defending US interests from foreign military activity, terrestrial and possibly extraterrestrial, in outer space.
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