> I see these headlines a lot. Honest question: do we know if these programs actually do anything?
The Pentagon themselves seem to think so, "Space Force officials and more than 450 aerospace companies are against the White House's proposal":
> Space Force officials are eager to exit the business of warning third-party satellite operators, including rivals such as Russia and China, of possible collisions in orbit. The military would prefer to focus on managing ever-growing threats from satellites, an intensive effort that requires continual monitoring as other nations' increasingly sophisticated spacecraft maneuver from one orbit to another.
> But until someone else is ready to take over, the Space Force will remain saddled with the responsibility of issuing these alerts. The Space Force calls these alerts conjunction assessments, and there are national security reasons for sharing the warnings far and wide, because a traffic accident in orbit would endanger the Space Force's own satellites.
