The United States Department of the Air Force published a Request for Information (RFI) on November 2 on the federal procurement website (SAM.gov) describing an ambitious plan to position up to five military spacecraft around the Moon — the first concrete public sign that the US armed forces intend to extend their operational presence beyond Earth orbit. The document, which asks industry to submit "rapid" and "low-risk" solutions for a project dubbed the "Cislunar Space System," is not a formal request for proposals and guarantees no contracts. But it reveals far more than a market survey: it sketches a timeline targeting late 2029 and suggests those initial five spacecraft would serve as seed vehicles for a much larger, possibly proliferated constellation, in which the loss of a few satellites would not compromise the mission.
The most revealing statement in the document, as reported by Ars Technica, came from Major General Stephen Purdy, who oversees the Space Force's advanced programs. In terms that leave no room for ambiguity, he described cislunar space — the region between Earth and the Moon, some 384,000 kilometers away — as a "warfighting domain." It is the same terminology the US military uses to describe cyberspace and the terrestrial battlespace: a theater of operations where adversaries can attack, deny, or contest access. The shift in language is not accidental. It signals a mindset change within the Pentagon that had been building since the creation of the Space Force in December 2019 and is now taking operational shape.
The geopolitical context is clear. Both the United States and China are accelerating their lunar programs. NASA is scheduling crewed Artemis flights in the coming years, while China has already sent astronauts to the lunar surface under its Chang'e program and plans an international lunar base with BRICS partners. Pentagon officials openly discuss competition for safe landing zones — especially near the lunar south pole, where exploitable water-ice deposits are believed to exist. As former Space Force chief General Chance Saltzman put it: "We have a role to play, but we're not the lead. I just don't want to get caught flat-footed when we start to have to protect US interests out there."
The technical details the RFI reveals are intentionally vague. Each of the five spacecraft would carry a "payload" provided by the government, while contractors would be responsible for the spacecraft bus, integration and testing, the ground segment, the launch solution, and operations. In other words, the government supplies the instruments and industry supplies everything that keeps them alive and talking to Earth. The program's total cost was not disclosed, but there is an important reference point: the Oracle-Mobility mission from the Air Force Research Laboratory costs $75 million and is scheduled for mid-2027. A parallel mission, Oracle-Prime, will be positioned at the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1 to detect and track satellites and debris — expected to be operational by the end of 2027.
The physics of operating in cislunar space is radically different from Earth orbit. Satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) sit about 36,000 kilometers from the surface — ten times closer than the Moon. The additional distance multiplies communication challenges, requiring laser links or relay networks that are still in testing. Radiation in deep space, the lack of protection from Earth's magnetic field, and the complexity of maintaining custody of objects in transit all demand navigation technologies the Air Force has already begun developing through the Oracle missions.
The document also flags an important legal dimension. The executive order signed by President Trump in December 2026 established US space policy, including the ability to "detect, characterize, and counter threats to US space interests from low-Earth orbit to cislunar space." That same order raises delicate questions about the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which bans national sovereignty claims over celestial bodies and nuclear weapons in orbit — but does not explicitly address the militarization of cislunar space. As the space between Earth and the Moon evolves from a civil to a military domain, the legal architecture governing this territory is being drafted in real time.
Sources: Ars Technica, Atlabyte, Shattered.io, Linxi News
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