The US Space Force is a relatively young arm of the US armed forces, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any operating assets. The USSF announced late last week that its Space Fence radar system, for example, is now officially operational. First, yes, that’s actually what they call it. Second, the space fence is a radar system designed to provide advanced tracking of objects in orbit, including, but not limited to, commercial and military satellites.

Space Fence’s ground infrastructure is located in the Marshall Islands and is currently in the “initial operational readiness and operational acceptance” phase. The program will track the existing 26,000 orbital objects that have already been considered in the existing Space Surveillance Network (SSN). However, Space Force announced via an update of the new phase of operation that it expects to expand this list quickly with its own additions.

To aid in the detailed tracking of objects in this orbital area, the radar observation technology developed by Lockheed Martin on behalf of Space Force can capture objects roughly the size of a marble in low-earth orbit. Given this fine-grained powers of observation, it seems quite likely that the catalog should ultimately contain nearly all of the active and passive potential observation, communication, and potentially militarized in-space assets operated by nearly everyone.

Knowing the terrain is an essential part of the success of a military operation. The official online delivery of the Space Fence is therefore a major milestone for the Space Force. The first dedicated payload was also recently launched: a secure high-frequency communications satellite that joins an existing constellation in space and provides communications services for military operations on earth, on land, at sea and in the air.

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