Space Domain Awareness Sensors Cannot Track Maneuvering Objects in GEO

The U.S. Space Surveillance Network (SSN) can catalog objects in geosynchronous orbit (GEO, ~36,000 km altitude) but cannot reliably detect or characterize small maneuvers by adversary satellites in that regime. Russia's Luch/Olymp-K satellites have been observed parking themselves next to U.S. and allied military communications satellites, but these proximity operations are typically detected days or weeks after they occur, through ground-based telescopes that can only observe GEO objects during specific lighting conditions near dawn and dusk. This matters because GEO is where the U.S. parks its most critical and expensive military assets: missile warning (SBIRS), nuclear command and control (AEHF), and wideband military communications (WGS). A single AEHF satellite costs over $6 billion. If a Russian inspector satellite parks 50 kilometers away and the U.S. doesn't detect it for two weeks, that adversary satellite could have already mapped the AEHF's antenna patterns, intercepted side-lobe emissions, or positioned itself for a future kinetic or electronic attack. The operational consequence is that Space Force commanders cannot provide accurate, real-time threat assessments for their most valuable assets. When STRATCOM or INDOPACOM asks 'is my SATCOM link secure?' the honest answer is 'we don't know, because we can't see what's happening near our GEO birds in real time.' This uncertainty degrades confidence in space-dependent operations and forces commanders to maintain expensive terrestrial backup communications that partially negate the advantage of having space assets in the first place. The structural cause is that space surveillance was designed to track predictable, cooperative objects — not adversary satellites conducting deliberate maneuvers to evade detection. The SSN relies heavily on a network of ground-based radars and telescopes built during the Cold War to track ballistic missile trajectories, not to characterize close-approach behavior 36,000 km away. The Space Fence radar on Kwajalein Atoll vastly improved LEO tracking but does not cover GEO. Space-based surveillance (like the GSSAP satellites) helps, but there are only a handful of GSSAP birds trying to monitor an entire orbital belt containing over 600 active satellites and thousands of pieces of debris. Upgrading to persistent GEO surveillance requires either a large constellation of space-based sensors (expensive and itself vulnerable) or a global network of advanced ground telescopes (limited by weather and geometry). Neither has been funded at the scale needed because the intelligence community classifies GEO surveillance requirements, making it difficult to build congressional support for the necessary appropriations.