The year is kicking off with some interesting news in the space and defense arena. This week, The Swedish Armed Forces made two major investments in sovereign space capabilities, ordering satellites from both Planet and Iceye — continuing the trend of European nations bulking up their space investments for defense.  

In people moves — ULA CEO Tory Bruno departed the company just before the holiday to head up a new national security division of Blue Origin. The move comes in the midst of the certification process for the New Glenn rocket to perform national security launches. 

Also, Mark Holmes and I hosted a webinar in December on the commercial-defense convergence and trends to watch for 2026 with experts from BlackSky and Lanteris Space Systems. We’ve released the conversation as an episode of the On Orbit podcast, you can find the episode in the lineup below. 

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The second edition of GovMilSpace opens with a U.S. Space Force S2 Threat Brief and keynote from CMSgt Ron Lerch, grounding the week in today’s operational and intelligence priorities. That is followed by a Strategic SATCOM session as part of Space Systems Command’s Reverse Industry Day, where leaders from SSC Delta 88, Space Delta 8, and OUSD(A&S) explain how the U.S. plans to partner with industry to build, acquire, and sustain next-generation SATCOM architectures through 2035 and beyond.