Carter visited the center along with other senior defense officials and praised its potential. Most public discussion about the center has focused on the “war games” it carries out to prepare for conflict with adversaries such as Russia and China, but the Pentagon chief said the center is doing more than that.

“I’ll say that in addition to war-gaming, they’re doing real-world, minute-by-minute, no-kidding operations,” Carter said. “We need them to work right now on problems of space’s role in conflict — first of all, because we are in conflicts today. I’ll just remind you that we are in the counter-[Islamic State] fight, and I have instructed our space community to join the fight, to figure out what we can do to contribute.”

Carter did not elaborate, likely due to the highly classified nature of the center’s operations. But his comments highlight aspects of its work. The center — known in the military as the “JICSpOC” — includes some officials from the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the nation’s spy satellites and works closely with the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. Navy Adm. Cecil D. Haney, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, has said previously that “violent extremist organizations” have accessed space-based technologies to encrypt their communications.

The center was established in October on a 4,172-acre military base that is in the countryside east of Colorado Springs. Inside the base, it is co-located with a handful of other units on 315 acres of restricted area that are even more heavily guarded than the rest of the installation.

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Media traveling with Carter were not allowed to view the JICSpOC — or even its exact location. Col. DeAnna Burt, commander of the 50th Space Wing at Schriever, said it is located in a facility that originally had been set aside for another unit. Schriever, with its focus on space operations, also had the infrastructure in place to track and communicate with satellites, the NRO and other agencies involved with powerful antennas.

Carter said the center was “but a gleam in my eye” five years ago, when he was deputy defense secretary and space was considered a sanctuary where military systems could operate without interference. Since then, both Russia and China have continued to bolster their abilities in space. Threats to U.S. satellites now include surface-to-air missiles, and cyber and electronic attacks that could disable them, independent analysts and defense officials acknowledge.

Air Force Gen. John Hyten, speaking last month at an annual space symposium in Colorado Springs, said that the JICSpOC has carried out three experiments so far and learned that the United States has “lost the ability” to make sense of where a potential threat in space originates. To address that, specialists from intelligence agencies were brought in and asked to explain what they would do when presented with different hypothetical problems.

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“There’ll be a lot of changes coming along,” Hyten said. “A lot of those things still have to be worked out, but we’re gonna work them out based on real data, real understanding, and a tight partnership with the entire community.”

Burt, whose unit operates dozens of GPS satellites owned by the Air Force, said Thursday that the JICSpOC is important because it provides a way for U.S. agencies to make sure they are not inadvertently opposing each other in space. She predicted that “just like every other domain,” an adversary will eventually move from using satellites for surveillance and reconnaissance to trying to weaponize them.