#STRATDELA

Nuclear thrones The tricky problem of toilets in fallout shelters: https://doomsdaymachines.net/p/nuclear-thrones

Destructive Anti-Satellite Tests Score Low on Strategic and Military Benefits https://fas.org/publication/anti-satellite-tests-score-low-on-benefits/

“It’s not foreign for the Army to shoot a ship at sea. Why should it be any different for the army to engage a satellite in space? It’s the same construct, and it’s a matter of our core competencies to maneuver on the land to be able to deliver effects across all domains,” Mroszczyk, director of Army Space and Missile Defense Command’s Transformation Integration Directorate – Space Superiority (TID-SS), told Breaking Defense in a wide-ranging interview on the margins of the annual Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMD) Symposium here. Mroszcyck would not specify exactly what the Army would use to target satellites. However, he stressed that the Army would follow US national space policy that eschews the use of destructive kinetic anti-satellite attacks that would create long-lived space debris. ... “There are two real expansion areas … that we’re looking at,” he said. One is “counter-surveillance and reconnaissance” focusing on an adversary’s space-based capabilities and the other is “stratospheric warfare” just a few miles down. ... “Generally, space superiority is a relative measure against the enemy. We want to have an advantage overall in both how we use space capabilities, but also how we can take away their use [of space],” he said. “That goal is changing the balance in our favor. So, the Army’s job is to do that from the land, and we are expanding that.” https://breakingdefense.com/2026/08/army-gears-up-to-engage-enemy-surveillance-satellites/

Brig. Gen. Robert Mikesh, charged with offensive fires under the PAE, detailed the quadruple challenge today at the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium by pointing towards energetics and propulsion, targeting and seekers, the industrial base and “munitions breadth and depth.” https://breakingdefense.com/2026/08/army-fires-community-tackling-four-capability-gaps-including-magazine-depth/

A competition is underway to develop the U.S. Army’s next long-range, surface-to-surface missile potentially for the Lockheed Martin High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). U.S. Army officials are evaluating competing industry bids to develop an Affordable High Speed Strike (AHSS) missile. The Army quietly released a request for white papers to industry in May to submit proposals for AHSS. “AHSS is an entirely new missile,” a spokesperson for the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) tells Aviation Week. The Army wants the AHSS missile to offer more range than the 1,000-km-plus (621.3-mi.) reach of the Precision Strike Missile Increment 4, of which the contract was stripped from Lockheed and reopened to competitive bidding earlier this year. ... DEVCOM’s booth at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium here includes a graphic of two potential AHSS concepts. One shows a conventional rocket-propelled, ballistic missile. The other shows a missile with an air-breathing propulsion system. The latter concept was referenced in written questions by the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2025 to Brent Ingraham, who was then the nominee to be assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, technology and logistics. The question from the committee asked, referencing the RTX/Northrop Grumman Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM): “Do you believe the Army should assess possible alternative, cheaper capabilities, such as the air-breathing scramjet missile being developed by the Air Force?” Ingraham replied that the Army’s AHSS program is working on delivering such capabilities, with participation by the Australian military. Australia is a development partner with the Air Force on the HACM program. https://aviationweek.com/defense/missile-defense-weapons/competition-starts-next-us-army-long-range-missile

JASSM-ER-N and LRHW-N, anyone? ("N" as in "Nuclear") https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2026-08/BG3976.pdf

Putting Armageddon on Autopilot: How Artificial Intelligence Could Make Nuclear Threats More Effective https://warontherocks.com/putting-armageddon-on-autopilot-how-artificial-intelligence-could-make-nuclear-threats-more-effective/

Anticipatory Arms Control for the AI Age | Arms Control Association https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2026-07/features/anticipatory-arms-control-ai-age

The list puts what Whiting called “integrated space fires” and “counter-pLEO” capabilities first and second. Those are followed by joint integrated space command and control; dedicated space domain awareness for space engagements; and sustained space maneuver. “This isn’t just a wish list. It’s a clear demand signal to several audiences describing the warfighting capabilities we need to meet our mission,” Whiting said. ... “We’re a combatant command and we fight to win wars,” Whiting said in his keynote address. “To win, we need credible, acknowledged, kinetic and non-kinetic fires. They are a key component of how we establish space superiority and restore credible deterrence.” Integrated Space Fires refers broadly to the ability to produce military effects against adversary space capabilities. Whiting declined to identify particular weapons or programs, but said the command believes some U.S. capabilities must be publicly acknowledged if they are to contribute to deterrence. ... He described deterrence as having three elements: making clear what the United States intends to protect, denying an adversary the benefits of an attack through resilient systems, and being able to impose costs in response. ... Proliferated low Earth orbit constellations consist of hundreds or thousands of satellites operating as a distributed network. Their scale makes them more resilient than traditional architectures built around a small number of spacecraft — an advantage the United States itself is exploiting for communications, missile warning and other military missions. But Whiting said the same technology poses a problem when used by an adversary. “When you have 1000s of satellites in a constellation, just trying to affect an individual satellite at a time is not going to be a winning hand, most likely,” he said. “And so we’re going to have to figure out how we can affect the critical nodes of such a constellation to make sure they can’t be used against us.” https://spacenews.com/space-command-identifies-capabilities-it-needs-for-the-next-space-war/

The Air Force is searching for an artificial intelligent agent that can centralize the various data streams underpinning its aging nuclear ballistic missile fleet, according to an active industry notice. In a request for information published July 24, the Air Force says the Minuteman III (MMIII) program manages key data across “approximately 60 disparate and disconnected systems,” from “local hard drives” to “shared networks.” But it has no way to centrally govern all of them, requiring considerable manhours for tasks like assessing when parts may need to be replaced. https://breakingdefense.com/2026/08/air-force-seeks-ai-tool-to-help-manage-minuteman-iii-icbm-sustainment/

The Pentagon’s push to replenish missile inventories is creating an opening for a new class of manufacturers that say the problem isn’t simply a shortage of factory space. It is how those factories are built. Startups such as Machina, Hadrian and Freeform are applying software, robotics and highly automated production techniques to aerospace and defense manufacturing, challenging a model that has long relied on dedicated machinery, specialized tooling and skilled labor to make relatively small numbers of complex parts. ... Machina’s manufacturing platform, called RoboCraftsman, uses robotic arms to progressively shape sheets of metal into aerospace structures. The company uses artificial intelligence to give robotic equipment more autonomy over how it performs a physical task. “Our use of AI and robotics allows us to build flexible manufacturing systems that can switch between processes and geometries while reducing the need for dedicated tooling,” Mehr said. https://spacenews.com/pentagon-missile-buildup-changing-the-factory-floor/

“Surely you’re not going to try and attack with a direct asset ASAT [anti-satellite weapon] 10,000 satellites,” Lt. Gen. Rick Zellmann, deputy commander of US Space Command (SPACECOM), said today. Instead, he told the annual Army Space and Missile Defense Symposium here, both adversaries and the US military’s “targeting folks” are looking to find “the various nodes where you can get a one-to-many solution” to take down “proliferated constellations.” Those solutions include cyber and directed-energy weapons, as well as focusing attacks on the limited number of ground systems used by satellite networks, Zellmann said. Directed energy is particularly attractive, he said, because it “doesn’t cost you much for a shot.” Brig. Gen. Drew Morgan, deputy head of Army Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC), agreed, telling the symposium that directed-energy weapons provide new “opportunities” for counterspace operations. https://breakingdefense.com/2026/08/laser-weapons-for-space-us-officials-see-threat-opportunity/

...we're not trying to raise the salience of nuclear weapons. To the contrary, we don't want to put anybody in a position where they have to use them, but we want to be able to give the president and secretary credible, rational nuclear options to buttress an integrated conventional strategy along with the arms control piece or the stability piece in a way designed to avoid war in the first place.

Remarks by Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby at the 2026 United States Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium > U.S. Department of War > Transcript | U.S. Department of War https://www.war.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4567089/remarks-by-under-secretary-of-war-for-policy-elbridge-colby-at-the-2026-united/

As expected, Guam missile defense development and deployment experience is used for the Golden Dome for America project. https://www.dvidshub.net/image/9819408/golden-dome-leaders-visit-guam

Vladimir Putin: "In conclusion, I would like to stress once again that Russia is strengthening its security in general and in specific regions. It is always open to finding a compromise that would be acceptable to all of our neighbours and partners. We are open to it, as long as mutual interests are taken into consideration." Sounds like arms control. Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/80512

“There is no such thing as a regional conflict anymore,” Correll said. “Every conflict is global in the information domain.” That will have implications for decision-makers, Correll added. Modern deterrence, for instance, will increasingly depend on understanding events occurring far beyond the physical boundaries of any individual theater because a war may start in one spot, but its cyber operations, narratives, intelligence campaigns and political effects can circle the globe almost immediately. The objective, Correll said, is to “constrain political decision space and shape strategic outcomes,” adding that a key goal is constraining an opponent’s political options and shaping strategic outcomes. ... “Frontier AI capabilities can be used by potential adversaries to enhance cyber operations, generate convincing disinformation at scale, or support targeting in ways that compress decision timelines and increase escalation risks,” Correll said. “The question is not whether AI will be present in the future conflict. It already is.” https://breakingdefense.com/2026/08/no-such-thing-as-a-regional-conflict-anymore-stratcom-chief-says/

China's Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs Li Chijiang rejected a US-led joint statement concerning ballistic missile launch notifications at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Tuesday, stressing that China's legitimate and reasonable defense modernization should not be called into question and Beijing's goodwill in providing advance notification of missile launches should not be hijacked by geopolitical calculations. Li also said China firmly opposes attempts by certain countries to misuse the conference as a platform for political manipulation. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202608/1368026.shtml

“We’re building something completely differently, and that architecture is coming together, and is being proven every single day,” Guetlein stressed today. “We have radars on contract. We have launchers on contract. We have space-based interceptors on contract. Hypersonic ballistic tracking system on contract. Space data network is on contract. Our construction contracts have been let [sic], and we are moving out with haste to get after what the President [Donald Trump] asked us to do in the summer of 2028.” ... “We’ve had two tests. We can’t talk about those tests, but those tests were phenomenally successful, and they demonstrated that the capabilities that we are putting together, both command and control, our sensor network, and our effectors, are going to be effective against the threats as they are currently designed,” the Golden Dome director added. https://www.twz.com/space/golden-dome-missile-defense-shield-at-risk-of-grinding-to-a-halt-due-to-budget-impasse

We call on all countries, particularly nuclear-weapon States, that launch ICBMs, SLBMs, and SLVs to provide notification of such launches no less than 24 hours in advance. Notifications should include such information as the generic class of the ballistic missile or SLV, the planned launch notification window, the launch area, and the planned direction. Countries should also provide clear notices for airmen and mariners consistent with international standards to reduce risk, including in expected impact or landing areas. Regularized, transparent notification arrangements do not constrain any nation’s military development or operational needs. Instead, they reduce the risk of miscalculation, build confidence, and reflect a shared commitment to security. We remain committed to working with all countries to strengthen the implementation of and expand notification frameworks and to hold accountable any state whose actions fall short of its responsibilities. https://geneva.usmission.gov/2026/08/11/joint-statement-on-notifications-of-ballistic-missile-launches/