What we have learned from fifty years of military space operations is that the pace of development is slowing down, and the space component is subject to greater constraints than the ground component. What we have also learned is that revolutionary change now seems less and less likely compared to the past. Fifty years of military space experience can allow us to draw some general conclusions about the principles guiding the development of military space systems. We know that the most important aspect of military space programs is that they are developed by humans, and social, economic, political and even emotional factors will have an effect upon the evolution of military space over the next five decades that will be just as important as the pace of technology development -- itself controlled by the decisions that humans make.

The first principle that we can now derive from all of this experience is that the development of space systems takes a long time, sometimes decades.

This was not always so. Early reconnaissance satellites went from first concept to full operation in three years or less. But today it is common for big, sophisticated military spacecraft to take a decade or more to develop, and the time from first proposal to first flight is even longer.

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Day, Dwayne. "SpaceWar 2057." The Space Review. October 4, 2007.