A recent interview with United States Space Force officers gave an insight into this, “physical orbital range”, or “range volume” [Getrost, J. Bejcek, M.D. Galbreath, C. (Penney, H. Host) 2024 AA–Episode 190. Orbital Warfare Transcript. Mitchell Aerospace Power (1 July)]. The physical range is described as,

“Geosynchronous Regimes … defined by clear orbital parameters. So if you can imagine a fixed spot in Space at the Geosynchronous Region, about … [35,405 kilometres] … away. We can set up longitudinal bounds, altitude bounds associated with that, and create a three-dimensional space where vehicles can operate and manoeuvre … as part of our Orbital Warfare tactics and techniques. So we set up that space, and we set up that control volume that gives us a control mechanism of what vehicles we want … [and want to keep out] … that physical space.” [Getrost, 2024]

Being an orbital area, “[the range] … does move overtime … which creates some complications and forces our planners to be creative and intuitive about how on orbit operations go.” [Getrost, 2024]

The United States Space Force website describes the “toys” in the sandbox, “[as] … residual assets, such as research and development satellites that are past their standard lifespan” [United States Space Force, 2024]. Satellites used are past their design life, that still have, “significant utility in giving them new life within the range for a variety of experimentation purposes … that can do manoeuvres, and that makes a great surrogate for us to utilize.” [United States Space Force, 2024] One of the residual assets in use as a training aid is a small 27U Satellite, about the size of two shoeboxes taped together, set out 36,000 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, as this is a very small space object, that can be used to determine, “if that small thing just maneuvered” [United States Space Force, 2024] For instance, the alignment of, “sensors to … accurately and quickly enough to capture the movement.” [United States Space Force, 2024]

The ground component of the orbital range: “[is a] … suite of ground-based centers … able to observe that range during a key test activity or during a key training activity.” [Getrost, 2024] Data collected is fed into an operation center where; “[it can be used] … in near real time and make decisions related to the safety and security and the conduct of the test or training activity on that range.” [Getrost, 2024]

It is also reasonable to assume perhaps one of the long-duration missions of the X-37B spaceplane may have been used to help establish and test the setup of the orbital range.