With launches slated to grow a hundredfold, Space Force seeks more sites, money, people, and AI

Even today’s accelerated pace strains decades-old launch facilities.

Thomas Novelly, Defense One, May 7, 2026

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The guardians manning screens in the mission-ops center here oversaw the launch of five types of rockets in April, a new record that involved NASA’s Artemis II, the first reused New Glenn booster, and a Falcon 9 lofting the final GPS III satellite. But tomorrow’s Space Force may have no time to mark even epochal missions. Within a decade, service leaders say, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will be launching hundreds of rockets a year.

To facilitate the Pentagon’s fast-growing demand for orbital capability, the Space Force is looking for more launch sites, more money, more troops, and more AI.

“In 2025, the Space Force saw a drastic increase in mission requirements across space access, global mission operations, and space control. This trend shows no signs of slowing,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top uniformed leader, told House lawmakers last week. “The Space Force we have today is not the Space Force we will need in the future.”

Nestled on a thin stretch of land just miles from nature preserves and cruise-ship ports, the historic Cape Canaveral facility launched 36 rockets in 2021, its first year as a Space Force facility. Last year, it sent 110 into the heavens, while its California counterpart, Vandenberg Space Force Base, launched another 65.

This year, Space Force leaders intend to launch more than 200 rockets from their two main launch sites. And by 2036, they project, the pair will launch as many as 3,000 annually, according to a service document released last month.

That’s going to take more launchpads……………………..

even as the Space Force looks to spread its launches around, Lauderdale said, it also needs to expand and improve its two main bases and “pivot to invest in ways we never did before.”

Pushing policy

The Space Force’s top brass has been making that pitch as well.

Last month at the Space Symposium in Colorado, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman unveiled “Objective Force 2040,” an ambitious vision with a section on expanding the service’s launch capabilities.

“As the space domain becomes increasingly linked both to national security and to economic

prosperity, the importance of space access grows commensurately,” the document said. “This is a significant challenge because the Space Force has supported exponential growth in launch cadence over the past few years using the same physical infrastructure first built decades ago. The future operating environment will only exacerbate this strain, with booming government and commercial demand as well as new mission requirements for responsive and scalable space access.”

The document noted that the service will “expand and certify state, commercial, and private launch sites to address routine launches, increase surge capacity, and provide geographic diversity,” but also noted some spaceports won’t be fully suitable for some missions.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. People problems

Increasing the number of launches will require more than money. Top Space Force officers have recently called for doubling the service’s end-strength over the next decade.

But even that won’t be enough, they say. Guardians will need to lean on AI to help.

“Our manpower is going to change,” said Air Force Col. Douglas Oltmer, commander of Cape Canaveral’s 45th Weather Squadron. “It’s going to have to change to be able to flex to that launch cadence, but we will not be able to do the job in the future the way we’re doing it now. We’re going to have to leverage technology, AI tools a lot more than we’re doing now.” ……………………………………………………… https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2026/05/launches-slated-grow-hundredfold-space-force-seeks-more-sites-money-people-and-ai/413403/