A guest commentary published by the Orlando Sentinel argues that the United States needs more launch capacity and infrastructure to rapidly restore space capabilities if they are disrupted during a conflict.
Authors Mark Montgomery and Emmerson Overell point to updated Trump administration space policies that call for U.S. ranges to support more than 1,000 launches and reentries a year by 2030. The policy also calls for high-priority national-security launches within 48 hours of need, including from expeditionary locations.
Florida is central to that conversation: Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center, along with Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, account for 83% of U.S. launches, according to the FAA figures cited in the commentary. The authors say that concentration means launch-site availability could become a constraint as activity grows.
The commentary cites the Space Force's 2023 VICTUS NOX mission, in which a standby spacecraft was prepared within 57 hours and launched 27 hours after the final launch order, as an example of rapid launch capability. It argues that making such responsiveness routine would require additional spaceports, launch sites and support infrastructure.
The authors also cite FAA data showing 217 U.S. launches in 2025 and say SpaceX completed 170 of them, compared with 92 launches by China. They contend that commercial providers and allied launch options could help broaden access to orbit rather than relying on a small number of sites or providers.
Montgomery is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Overell researches security threats at the organization’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation. The piece was originally published by RealClearDefense and distributed through RealClearWire.
