Space is no longer a quiet scientific sanctuary — it is a contested warfighting domain.

Everything the United States military relies on to project strength depends on space: communications, navigation, missile warning, targeting, and logistics. Space is the backbone of our entire national security enterprise.

We are living through the most consequential shift in space power since the Cold War. Near-peer adversaries are actively seeking advantage in orbit using jammers, cyber tools, directed-energy systems, and maneuverable co-orbital “killer satellites” designed to blind or disable U.S. systems. Senior leaders now openly discuss “dogfighting” in space.

The threat is not hypothetical. It is happening now.

So, as investors, we ask one defining question: If future conflict starts in space, who is building the next-generation technologies to see, deter, survive, and win?

The Old Space Model Is Broken

For decades, space national security was built around a few large, exquisite satellites —engineering marvels that were expensive, slow to produce, and increasingly vulnerable to modern threats. That model cannot survive today’s threat environment.

The pace of space threats far outstrips traditional government procurement cycles. Meanwhile, commercial partnerships, allied forces, and easier access to space have fundamentally changed what is possible. Space is now crowded, competitive, and contested across orbital regimes.

The new environment demands something entirely different:

Resilience — architectures and supply chains that can absorb attack and reconstitute

Speed — decision cycles that operate at machine speed

Awareness — real-time understanding of behavior in orbit, not a catalog updated once every 24 hours

Decisive Advantage — systems designed to preserve U.S. space superiority

This shift transforms the old linear “sensor-to-shooter” kill chain into a kill web: an adaptive network of interconnected sensors, platforms, and decision nodes. This shift also demands world-class, cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions as a key component of national security in space.

Commercial innovators are the only ones moving fast enough, iterating quickly enough, and pricing low enough to meet this moment. And the government knows it — they are actively looking to integrate commercial capabilities into day-one warfighting architectures.

Understand, Decide, Connect

At Washington Harbour Partners, our investment thesis is built around three mission-critical pillars. These priorities come straight from the U.S. Space Force, National Reconnaissance Office, Space Development Agency, and the Intelligence Community. This is Washington Harbour Partners’ OODA loop.

1. Understand the domain
   
   You cannot protect what you cannot see.
   
   You cannot deter what you cannot characterize.
   
   And you cannot win if you are surprised.
   
   Space Domain Awareness is no longer about “tracking objects.” It’s about understanding behavior: predicting intent, detecting maneuvers, and building a dynamic picture of the orbital environment.
   
   This is the Observe and Orient phase of the OODA loop and the foundation of the space kill web, an evolution of the traditional military kill chain adapted to the complexities of integrated space operations.
   
   
2. Decide at machine speed
   
   In a crisis, humans cannot manually command fleets of hundreds or thousands of satellites. Decision cycles must compress from hours to milliseconds.
   
   Mission autonomy platforms build the AI-enabled battle management layer of planning, orchestrating, and executing missions across distributed constellations. This is how you maintain tempo and stay inside an adversary’s decision cycle.
   
   This is the Decide and Act part of the OODA loop. We cannot operate solely in a defensive stance or allow adversary aggression to limit our ability to operate in space.
   
   
3. Connect systems to act faster than the threat
   
   Even the most advanced satellite is useless if it cannot deliver data.
   
   Ground infrastructure is the connective tissue of the space kill web — and one of its weakest points. Future conflict demands globally distributed, resilient ground systems that operate at machine speed, unconstrained by geography or operators on consoles.
   
   Connectivity is not support infrastructure; it is combat infrastructure.
   
   
4. Protect space superiority
   
   Hackers have proven how easy it is to hack and exploit space assets.
   
   Key space-based national security systems such as missile defense can fail in conflict without innovative and built-in cyber protections. Space architecture must be designed with cybersecurity systems that can detect and define threats, and continue to operate through attacks.
   
   The success and viability of the U.S. space architecture will depend on new cybersecurity solutions.
   

How Our Companies Fit

We invest in companies that meet the needs of an ever-evolving technology landscape, from cybersecurity to government and defense programs to enterprise systems. Washington Harbour Partners brings a fresh approach, providing flexibility and deep operational expertise at all stages of a company’s lifecycle, from Series A through pre-IPO.

SIXGEN is ushering in a new era of cyber capabilities in key areas, unifying full-spectrum cyber operations, electronic warfare, secure radio frequency communications, and other multi-domain digital operations.

Outpost Mission Services delivers full-lifecycle mission and technical engineering services to the most consequential national security infrastructure domestically and in frontier geographies around the world.

Trusted Space gives the U.S. a real-time, dynamic understanding of what objects in orbit are doing and why, including multi-source data fusion, maneuver detection, threat characterization, and AI models that forecast intent.

Quindar is building the AI-powered command fabric that allows satellites to operate as coordinated autonomous systems.

Turion builds the maneuvering layer of space – satellites capable of servicing, repositioning, and inspecting other spacecraft autonomously.

Apex Space is building what will become the backbone of a resilient, responsive orbital defense layer: commercially manufactured “orbital magazines” that host and deploy space-based interceptors for missile defense.

Northwood is building the ground infrastructure layer that will serve as the backbone for future space missions, solving one of the most pressing bottlenecks in the domain.

Why Investors Should Care

Space isn’t a niche. It is the front line of great-power competition and a pillar of the global economy.

The shift from legacy primes to agile commercial innovators is happening now. We are a front-line defense budget that works at the speed of industry, and provides an unrivaled ability to scale and transition capability to our defense partners. We’ve heard the Secretary of War talk about the need to “accelerate private capital investment.” We’re leading that acceleration at Washington Harbour Partners.

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