Space Force wants up to five satellites between Earth and the Moon by 2029, and the Pentagon now calls it a "warfighting domain"

The Space Force told industry on Nov. 2 that it is "notionally interested" in launching up to five satellites into cislunar space, the region between Earth's high orbits and the Moon, as soon as late 2029, with operations starting in 2031, Air & Space Forces Magazine reports.

The notice says the spacecraft "may serve as seed vehicles" for a future, larger constellation, the Cislunar Space System. It comes weeks after Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, who runs the service's advanced programs buying, said that as recently as January he was told not to talk about cislunar plans at all. "I've got the Secretary of War and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs full on stating in public: 'This is a warfighting domain,'" Purdy said at an Oct. 21 industry conference, Breaking Defense reported.

Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chairman, told a September conference that the force has to be ready to fight "from the seabed to cislunar space." Two Space Force requests for off-the-shelf cislunar hardware and autonomous AI software are due out soon. The push is driven in part by China, which plans a crewed Moon landing by 2030.