An interview conducted by Dr. Adrian Leonard Mociulschi
The map of power is being redrawn. Beyond the familiar arenas of land, sea, and air, a new strategic frontier is emerging in orbit, where satellites, artificial intelligence, and increasingly contested space infrastructure are becoming instruments of national power. What once belonged to the realm of science fiction is rapidly entering the world of statecraft, military competition, and geopolitical rivalry, raising fundamental questions about security, deterrence, and the future distribution of power in the twenty-first century.
To explore these questions for our readers, I spoke with Frank Rose, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State and one of Washington's most experienced voices on space security, missile defense and strategic competition. In this interview for STIRIPESURSE.RO, he discusses the militarization of space, the geopolitical implications of critical resources beyond Earth, the rise of AI-enabled warfare, and the strategic significance of the Deveselu missile-defense site within NATO's collective defense architecture.
Adrian Leonard Mociulschi: For decades, warfare has been conducted primarily on land, at sea, and in the air.
As major powers invest heavily in satellites, anti-satellite weapons, and space-based infrastructure, is outer space becoming the next domain of military competition and, eventually, conflict?
Frank Rose: I think that process is already well underway.
The 1991 Gulf War demonstrated how space capabilities could give the United States and its allies a decisive military advantage. But the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated how fundamentally the space environment has changed since then.
Space is no longer merely a supporting domain, nor is access to sophisticated space capabilities limited to a small number of advanced powers. Commercial companies, allies, adversaries, and even non-state actors can increasingly draw upon satellite communications, navigation, remote sensing, and other space-based services to support military operations.
That creates enormous opportunities, but also significant vulnerabilities.
Commercial satellite constellations can make military communications more resilient. Satellite navigation enables precision operations over enormous distances. Commercial imagery provides levels of situational awareness that, only a few decades ago, would have been available almost exclusively to major intelligence agencies.
But those same capabilities are increasingly available to our adversaries. And the satellites and networks providing these services can themselves be subjected to jamming, spoofing, cyberattack, electronic warfare, and potentially physical destruction.
The central lesson is that the United States and its allies can no longer assume that access to space will be assured—or that the military advantages provided by space will remain uniquely ours.
Maintaining an advantage will therefore require us to protect and diversify our own space capabilities, integrate commercial systems more effectively, build greater resilience into our architectures, and, when necessary, have the ability to deny adversaries the unrestricted military use of space and space-derived information.
In twenty-first-century warfare, success on the terrestrial battlefield will increasingly depend upon the ability to operate—and prevail—in the space domain.
Adrian Leonard Mociulschi: Beyond the military dimension of space, there is also an emerging economic and geopolitical dimension that deserves attention.
Throughout history, strategic competition has often been driven by access to strategic resources. As nations and private companies look toward the Moon and other celestial bodies, could competition for critical space resources become one of the defining geopolitical challenges of the twenty-first century?
Frank Rose: My answer at this stage is: we will have to see.
The key question is economics. Before competition for lunar or other extraterrestrial resources becomes a major geopolitical issue, someone will need to demonstrate an economically viable way to identify, extract, process, and use those resources. The technical ability to mine the Moon is not by itself sufficient; there must also be a compelling economic or strategic reason for doing so.
Some resources, such as lunar water ice, could become particularly important because they might eventually support sustained human activity in space or potentially be converted into fuel and other consumables. If that becomes economically feasible, access to certain locations on the Moon could acquire real strategic significance.
But we do not need to look to the Moon to understand the geopolitical importance of critical minerals. We are already seeing it here on Earth.
Rare earth elements and other critical minerals are essential to modern economies and national security. They are used in everything from advanced electronics and electric vehicles to precision-guided weapons, aircraft, satellites, and missile-defense systems.
One of the most important strategic challenges facing the United States and its allies over the coming decade will therefore be diversifying both access to critical minerals and, equally importantly, the capacity to process and refine them.
China's dominant position in several critical-mineral supply chains represents a significant strategic vulnerability for the United States and its allies. Reducing that dependence should be treated as a major economic and national-security priority.
If economically viable sources of strategic resources eventually become available beyond Earth, many of the geopolitical dynamics we are already seeing around critical minerals could ultimately extend into space.
Adrian Leonard Mociulschi: If critical resources may become one of the geopolitical drivers of the future, artificial intelligence is already reshaping the battlefield in the present.
As autonomous drones, AI-enabled targeting systems, and robotic platforms become increasingly integrated into military operations, are we witnessing a revolution in warfare comparable to the advent of air power or nuclear weapons?
Frank Rose: Yes, I believe we are witnessing a major transformation in the character of warfare. The question that concerns me is whether the United States and its allies are learning and adapting quickly enough.
Ukraine has demonstrated the extraordinary speed at which drones, electronic warfare, artificial intelligence, commercial technologies, and battlefield innovation can interact. Technologies and tactics can change in months rather than decades.
A recent debate within the U.S. Army illustrates the challenge. The Army is ending the specialized drone mission of the 173rd Airborne Brigade's experimental Unmanned Assault Battalion and returning the unit to its traditional airborne infantry mission. A bipartisan group of lawmakers—including Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Thom Tillis and Angus King, and Representative Mike Turner—has expressed concern that this could limit the Army's ability to absorb lessons from Ukraine and modernize drone warfare at the speed the contemporary battlefield demands. The Army, for its part, has said the battalion was conceived as a temporary experiment and that the objective is to spread drone expertise across the broader force.
That particular organizational decision is less important than the broader issue it highlights.
The United States has devoted significant resources and senior-level attention to drones, autonomy, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies. But developing or purchasing technology is only one part of military innovation.
The equally important question is whether armed forces can integrate those technologies into doctrine, force structure, training, operational concepts, logistics, and combined-arms warfare.
History provides an important warning. At the end of the First World War, Britain possessed an important technological lead in tanks. Yet during the interwar period, the German Reichswehr under General Hans von Seeckt undertook much of the intellectual and organizational work that ultimately allowed German forces to integrate armor, aircraft, communications, and maneuver into a highly effective form of combined-arms warfare.
Technology mattered. But organizational adaptation mattered just as much.
And today the United States and its allies are not learning in isolation. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are all studying the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and adapting their forces, technologies, and operational concepts accordingly.
Our adversaries are learning.
The critical question is whether we are learning faster.
Adrian Leonard Mociulschi: Finally, I wanted to bring the discussion closer to home and address a topic that remains central to Romania's security and its role within the Alliance.
Having served as the lead negotiator for the U.S. missile-defense site in Romania, how would you explain the strategic importance of the Aegis Ashore system at Deveselu, and what role does it play in NATO's security architecture today?
Frank Rose: For me, Deveselu is both strategically important and deeply personal.
Nearly fifteen years ago, I sat across negotiating tables in Ankara, Bucharest, and Warsaw working with our NATO allies on what was then a controversial question: Was the emerging ballistic-missile threat sufficiently real and urgent to justify constructing a new missile-defense architecture across Europe?
At the time, the answer was not obvious to everyone.
Today, I think the strategic rationale is much clearer.
In March 2026, Iran launched two intermediate-range ballistic missiles toward the U.S.-U.K. military base at Diego Garcia, approximately 4,000 kilometers from Iran. One missile failed in flight, while a U.S. Navy destroyer fired SM-3 interceptors against the other.
Whatever the precise outcome of those individual engagements, the larger strategic significance was unmistakable: Iran had demonstrated an operational missile capability with a range sufficient to threaten much of Europe.
Berlin, Paris, Rome and other European capitals are therefore no longer simply theoretical points on a missile-range chart. The strategic environment we were preparing for more than a decade ago has become much more tangible.
We saw another manifestation of that threat in March, when NATO air and missile defenses detected and intercepted Iranian ballistic missiles targeting Türkiye. NATO subsequently increased its Alliance-wide ballistic-missile-defense posture.
That is why Deveselu remains so important.
The Aegis Ashore installation in Romania is a central component of NATO's ballistic-missile-defense architecture. Together with the Aegis Ashore site in Poland, the forward-deployed radar in Türkiye, U.S. Aegis-equipped ships based in Spain, and NATO's command-and-control network, it provides the Alliance with the ability to detect, track, and intercept ballistic missiles threatening European territory, populations, and forces. NATO declared an Enhanced Operational Capability for its ballistic-missile defense architecture in 2024, and Deveselu remains one of its core components.
There is also a larger strategic point that sometimes gets lost in discussions about missile defense.
Missile defense does not make ballistic missiles irrelevant, and it cannot guarantee that every incoming missile will be intercepted. What it does is complicate an adversary's calculations. It denies an opponent the assumption that launching a ballistic missile will automatically produce the intended military or political effect.
In other words, an adversary does not get a free shot.
And none of this happened by accident. It was the result of difficult political decisions made more than a decade ago by the United States and, especially, by allies such as Romania, Poland, and Türkiye that were willing to host critical elements of this architecture on their territory.
Romania deserves particular credit. Agreeing to host Deveselu required political courage and strategic foresight at a time when the future threat was much less visible than it is today.
Looking back fifteen years later, I believe the events of 2026 have strongly validated the strategic logic behind those decisions.
Deveselu is therefore much more than a missile-defense installation. It is a tangible demonstration of the U.S.-Romanian strategic partnership, Romania's contribution to collective NATO defense, and the value of making difficult security investments before a threat fully materializes.
Adrian Leonard Mociulschi: Mr. Rose, thank you for sharing your expertise with our readers and for this interview. Given your long-standing connection to Romania and your role in the Deveselu project, your perspective is particularly valuable to our audience.
Beyond Earth
As our conversation came to an end, one idea emerged repeatedly across every topic we discussed. As Frank Rose rightly points out, space, artificial intelligence, critical resources, and missile defense are not separate debates, but interconnected dimensions of the same strategic transformation. The technologies may be new, but the underlying challenge remains familiar: how nations adapt to a rapidly changing world.
“Our adversaries are learning. The critical question is whether we are learning faster.” — Frank Rose
An interview conducted by Dr. Adrian Leonard Mociulschi
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