It’s Time to Defend Ourselves in Space
We have entered a very dangerous time.
Our adversaries have weaponized space and are threatening our critical assets, filling themselves with a bold confidence to do mischief on a grand scale. Our strategy to deter an attack through resiliency is incomplete. To keep the peace, we also must have a credible space defense. This means the ability to fight back and stop an aggressor. If we don’t do this, we tempt and encourage conflict.
Why are our Satellites in Danger?
China has revealed itself to be an intractable authoritarian government. It has thus far proven to be impervious to the democratizing influence of trade and open exchange, using the wealth of trade to build weapons with which to threaten us, and the openness of the West to acquire technology for the same end. All the while, weakening our economies and domestic manufacturing capabilities. The Chinese government aggressively oppresses its own citizens, intimidates its neighbors, and openly seeks to become a dominant world power, exporting its form of oppression across the globe. The United States and her allies stand in the way of this ambition.
If basic human dignity is to remain our great goal, if peace between Great Powers is to be preserved, we must remain strong, because that strength will deter violence.
As China gazes across the Pacific and contemplates these ambitions, its leaders have correctly identified a weakness. Our very capable military is almost completely dependent upon space, and space is completely undefended. Consequently, even as you read this, China is placing Satellite Killers in orbit. It is also deploying Earth-based, anti-satellite missiles and other capabilities. There was a time when we worried that a terrestrial conflict might extend into space. We now know that it will begin in space.
Without our space assets, we are blind and cannot communicate or coordinate. That would be an essential opening condition for any significant military action against U.S. forces or allies. The ability to achieve this would give an adversary confidence when contemplating an attack on a target that the U.S. has reason to defend.
Fortunately, our government has a strategy. Unfortunately, it is only half the strategy we need.
Resiliency as a Strategy
A complete strategy has two parts. The first part is to make our space architecture more resilient. What does that mean? Simply put, it means that we want to be able to absorb an attack on our satellites, lose some, and continue to have a reasonable level of surveillance, communications, missile warning, etc. Resiliency is very wise and a first, high priority.
Basic Resiliency
The very basic approach to resiliency involves dispersing our assets. The chosen approach for this is currently focused on “Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (PLEO).” This takes a mission, like communications, missile tracking, or surveillance, and disaggregates it from a few satellites in high orbits (i.e. “fat juicy targets”) into a network of many satellites in low earth orbit. Being in LEO allows the use of less capable sensors that are suitable for a very small satellite but requires hundreds or thousands of satellites for continuous coverage. Which is great because, as a network, that means the adversary can destroy several individual satellites without a big impact on performance. The rest of the network will pick up the slack.
However, this type of very simple resilience, by itself, has several vulnerabilities:
1. Accessibility: The satellites are very accessible to an adversary because they are close to the Earth in LEO. Even small rockets can reach them in as little as 10 to 15 minutes.
2. Dense Spacing: The satellites orbit in thin, dense shells, making them vulnerable to a cascade attack that deliberately starts a debris field which can rapidly self-propagate through many satellites.
3. Damage Threshold: While the network’s performance falls off gracefully when the first 20 to 30% of satellites are destroyed, as the loss rate approaches 50%, the impact becomes dramatic (a PLEO constellation has lots of satellites because it needs lots of satellites…).
4. Bespoke Gaps: Very small numbers of satellites can be disabled to create specific, temporary “holes” over a target (i.e. Taiwan, Guam, or the entire Second Island Chain). This can be exploited to initiate an attack or conceal a specific action or movement.
I do not recommend this most basic form of resiliency, by itself.
Advanced Resiliency
An advanced resiliency strategy involves a blend of multiple orbits. PLEOs are utilized for their numbers, low cost, and inherent global coverage. More capable assets also are deployed in higher orbits for their inaccessibility, higher performance, and overlapping coverage with the PLEO. This provides a “defense in depth.”
It also forces an adversary to coordinate a simultaneous attack in at least three different domains. For example, an attack on Taiwan would require, at least, an attack on several dozen LEO satellites to create a hole, the placement of air and naval assets within strike range, and the disabling of one or more higher orbit assets in medium Earth orbit (MEO) or geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) that are several hours journey from Earth’s surface (or via pre-placed, in-space weapons). To achieve the element of surprise and create a sustained fog of war, all of this would have to occur covertly and simultaneously. That would be extremely difficult and very risky.
By building in two or three layers in an architecture, its effective resiliency massively increases. This is the recommended approach. It would allow the space mission to hold out and function in the face of a determined attack for a prolonged period, perhaps days.
The Rest of the Strategy
The ability to take a few punches and keep on communicating and watching is necessary, but insufficient. Resiliency alone will not stop or limit an attack.
The oft used metaphor in this arena is to “avoid presenting a Pearl Harbor.” In other words, a space architecture without resilience offers a single attack that could cripple space in one fell swoop. That would be pretty tempting to an adversary. OK, so let’s not do that. Having a robust resiliency will force the enemy to commit to a larger scale, prolonged attack. Instead of blinding us in an hour or few hours, it might take as long as several days. That would certainly be a higher threshold for them to cross.
But then what?
The non-resilient, “fat juicy targets” are actually a pretty high threshold already. Destroying SBIRS (missile warning), EHF (secure communications), and MUOS (mobile secure communications), etc. would be extremely bold and escalatory. If China is willing to do that, and then follow up with an invasion of Taiwan, a missile attack on Guam, or a Carrier Task Group assault, then it would not be a stretch to say they would be willing to spend a day or two attacking space before the terrestrial assault, even if it did cost them some level of surprise.
Resiliency alone is not a sufficient deterrent under this scenario. The only meaningful thing that a resilient space architecture does, in the face of a peer adversary, is create a temporary window of opportunity to make the attack stop.
That ability would force the adversary to be disabused of their strategy to weaken our military by depriving us of space. They would then have to face the prospect of coping with our fully space enabled and formidable terrestrial military. If China were willing to take that on, Taiwan would already be incorporated…
Counterforce
For the last seven decades, the U.S. has had a very wise and noble policy. We have been steadfast in our commitment to not be the first to place weapons in space. Sadly, this policy has been overtaken by events, now becoming obsolete. We aren’t the first, but we’ll be the last. Space has already been populated with weapons by our adversaries. Adding the capability to defend ourselves is now our only path to deterring the use of those weapons.
How to Do It
The first part of the answer is mobility.
I don’t mean the ability to move the assets we are trying to protect. That is useful and a part of resiliency. I mean a squadron of lightning fast, long range, lethal interceptors. To use a naval analogy, we need destroyers in orbit, the Greyhounds of Space.
Satellite Killers are, themselves, satellites. They are lifted to orbit by a launch vehicle like any other spacecraft and must fit within those constraints. The priority for their limited mass is given to their weapon platform. The sensors that find their target, the navigation that guides them to it, and the affecter that harms it. As a satellite, they move precisely, slowly, and not very far. With their limited supply of storable, relatively low energy propellant, and small thrusters, Satellite Killers take days or weeks to approach a target and cannot easily move from a target in one orbit to another target in a very different orbit, if at all.
A large vehicle that is naturally designed for mobility with an ample supply of high energy propellant and engines with tens of thousands of pounds of thrust, can move between orbits at will, and do so in a few hours or less.
While the adversary’s Satellite Killers will spend days approaching their target to threaten or attack, it will be detected by our space situational awareness capability (already being developed) and intercepted by a “Greyhound” before an attack can commence. In a state of active conflict, the satellite killer would be dispatched so that the defender could quickly be directed to the next threat. A handful of such vehicles could patrol all of Earth orbit.
The second part of a practical counterforce is avoiding the creation of orbital debris.
The device that disables the hostile satellite should not create a large debris field. Space is a very unique regime. Damaged and dead assets do not leave the environment like a ship that sinks or an aircraft that falls to the ground. The Satellite Killer and its debris will stay in orbit, traveling at very high velocities. Depending on the altitude of its orbit, that could last from a few weeks in very low earth orbit to several centuries in higher orbits.
There are no national borders in space. It is a common environment, shared by all. Needless to say, it wouldn’t do a lot of good to save a satellite by blasting the attacker into thousands of parts that then fly through space like cannon balls damaging everything in their path. There are a number of techniques for disabling the attacker in a safe, non-polluting manner. One of those is the right approach.
The third part of this is the ConOps.
These “Greyhounds” would be placed in useful orbits to minimize their transit times to the highest value assets needing protection. Much like a critical aircraft or ship, a security zone around the national security asset should be monitored and protected as it moves through its orbit. Unknown satellites that maneuver towards proximity with the asset should be approached and shadowed until its nature and intent are clear. If the suspicious satellite continues towards a conjunction or obvious attack vector, its registered owner would be warned off to a safe orbit. If it refuses or continues to approach, it would be physically obstructed or disabled and relocated to a disposal orbit.
An active attack would be immediately stopped with appropriate counterforce, preserving the ability of our critical assets to continue performing their mission. The resiliency of the overall space architecture would provide the time to get this done.
Summary
We find ourselves threatened in space by a peer adversary who has weaponized the domain with anti-satellite platforms. The U.S. is now vulnerable not only in space, but on the ground because of our acute dependence on space. Consequently, our ability to deter violence here on Earth is diminished.
Up until now, the U.S. has taken a very restrained posture relative to counterforce, hoping to slow and deter China and others by means of resilient space architectures alone. Sadly, the adversaries have moved beyond this posture to a point that this “Half Strategy” is no longer a sufficient deterrent to either an attack in space, or the terrestrial conflict that would follow.
It is time that we posture to defend our critical assets in the event of an attack. While resiliency is an integral element of deterring aggression in space, the ability to stop the attack by means of counterforce is now required.
