In 2025, Nazmelis Zengin wrote, “The Fragility of U.S. Space Power in a Multipolar World,” where she argued Washington’s space superiority could be challenged if the United States doesn’t rethink its course, taking lessons from mid-tier space powers. A year later, we asked Nazmelis to revisit her arguments.Image: NASA Kennedy Space Center/NASA/Chris Swanson via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that American space dominance could be challenged if the United States doesn’t alter how it systematically thinks about adaptability, resilience, and co-development, taking lessons from mid-tier space powers. In late 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” which addressed several of the focus areas you identified. How has the American space enterprise changed, for better or worse, since this Executive Order was signed?Since the Executive Order was signed, the American space enterprise has moved in the right direction rhetorically, but the deeper test remains implementation. The order recognizes many of the vulnerabilities I identified in my 2025 article: the need for faster acquisition, a more responsive national security space architecture, stronger commercial integration, and greater allied contributions to collective space security.Its emphasis on procurement reform, adaptive architectures, and commercial innovation suggests that Washington increasingly understands that space superiority can no longer rest solely on technological scale or historical dominance. That represents an important conceptual shift. The United States appears more aware that resilience in orbit will depend on distribution, redundancy, and strategic partnerships rather than concentration alone.At the same time, the risks have not disappeared. There is still a tendency to interpret reform as acceleration rather than transformation. Moving faster through the same centralized and contractor-heavy structure may improve speed without resolving structural fragility. If resilience becomes synonymous with simply deploying larger constellations or expanding military integration, the United States could reproduce many of the same vulnerabilities
Members-Only Content
This article is reserved for War on the Rocks members. Join our community to unlock exclusive insights and analysis.
In 2025, Nazmelis Zengin wrote, “The Fragility of U.S. Space Power in a Multipolar World,” where she argued Washington’s space superiority could be challenged if the United States doesn’t rethink its course, taking lessons from mid-tier space powers. A year later, we asked Nazmelis to revisit her arguments.Image: NASA Kennedy Space Center/NASA/Chris Swanson via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that American space dominance could be challenged if the United States doesn’t alter how it systematically thinks about adaptability, resilience, and co-development, taking lessons from mid-tier space powers. In late 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order “Ensuring American Space Superiority,”
