We have backup systems coming on line:
America sees long (up to five years) endurance UAVs as salvation in the event of a space satellite apocalypse. The U.S. military is concerned about American dependence on space satellites, particularly the GPS birds. The U.S. Navy is particularly disturbed about this, because their warships depend on satellite communications while at sea. They can get by with the older wireless communications, but this form of transmission is very slow, and the navy has to move a lot more data these days in order to operate effectively.
The U.S. Air Force believes China is developing the ability to carry out a major attack on American military satellites (the "satellite apocalypse"). Their proposed solution is to take GPS out of orbit, and make it portable. High flying aircraft, UAVs or blimps would take over satellite communications, surveillance and navigation (GPS) chores, although for smaller areas. This would make GPS, and other satellite functions, more resilient to attack.
This capability will put the ball in our court and give us the option to escalate. Our enemies are trying to match our space capabilities even as they try to degrade ours. With rapidly deployable replacements, if an enemy decides to degrade our space capabilities we can respond by wiping out their less robust capabilities while relying on the UAV replacements to maintain our capabilities.
UPDATE: Thanks to Stones Cry Out for the link.
