Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine is advising/warning of the need for the US to be prepared to fight in the region of the moon.

At a conference at the Air and Space Forces Association, Caine said that

American troops need to prepare for combat not only in Earth’s orbit but around the moon….

And that

the US military should adapt now so it “is prepared to fight, endure, and win…from the seabed to cislunar space.

That’s good, but it doesn’t go far enough. We need to be able to fight and win on the surface of the moon, also, and we need to seize the even higher ground of the Martian surface and the volume of space around it, which includes Mars’ moons and their potential for to serve as bases and launchers.

The region around the moon must also include—and we must explicitly seize for our exclusive military use—the Lagrange points of the Earth-moon system. These points are areas well separated spatially from the moon where the gravitational forces of Earth and the moon are balanced so that objects can sit there stably without needing to expend energy to remain in place.

The Earth-moon Lagrange points include two in the moon’s orbit roughly 60 degrees in front of and behind the moon, a third just beyond the moon on the Earth-moon line, a fourth on the same line but between the moon and Earth, and a fifth on the same line but on the far side of Earth from the moon.

Those Lagrange points, as stable as they are, also are important economically since refiners and factories would be stable there.

One more item: communication lags between Earth and the moon, and especially between Earth and Mars, are such that real time, active control from Earth of our defensive systems there would be impractical. That puts a premium on active, military-tailored AI being in place to exercise tactical and immediate control over our systems there within strategic parameters transmitted to them from DoD here on the ground. That puts a premium on putting a low lid on efforts to overregulate AI innovations.