FINALLY: Space Force Just Received Its First New Offensive Weapon.
U.S. Space Force has begun operating a new offensive weapon system, an upgraded version of a ground-based satellite communications jamming system, for the first time in its short history. The first iteration of the Counter Communications System entered U.S. Air Force service in 2004 and the program has now gotten transferred to the newest branch of the American military.
The Space Force declared it had reached initial operational capability with the Counter Communications System Block 10.2, or CCS B10.2, on Mar. 9. The Harris Corporation, which merged with L3 Technologies last year to form L3Harris Technologies, had received the contract from the Air Force to develop this upgraded variant of the system in 2014.
“CCS is the only offensive system in the United States Space Force arsenal,” Lieutenant Colonel Steve Brogan, the Combat Systems branch materiel leader within the Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center’s (SMC) Special Programs Directorate, said in an official news piece about the system in January 2020. “This upgrade puts the ‘force’ in Space Force and is critical for Space as a warfighting domain.”
Faster, please. And more lasers.