The newest U.S. military budget goes all-in on the notion that resilience might be a core feature of space programs. As evidence, the term surpasses 300 mentions within the Space Force’s 2024 budget documents.
“It’s amazing how repeatedly you see the word resiliency within the budget justification materials,” said analyst Sam Wilson of the Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy.
The emphasis on resilience — or adaptability within the face of attacks — reflects the priorities set by the brand new chief of space operations Gen. Probability Saltzman. The running theme within the budget is the necessity to ensure U.S. access to space and shore up capabilities to compete with space powers like China and Russia.
“China, our pacing challenge, is essentially the most immediate threat in, to, and from space for which the Space Force must maintain technological advantage,” Saltzman said in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this yr.
“Russia, while less capable, stays an acute threat that’s developing asymmetric counter-space systems meant to neutralize American satellites,” said Saltzman.
‘Competitive endurance’
A push for resilience is a component of a multifaceted strategy Saltzman rolled out in March called “competitive endurance” to guide Space Force plans to discourage and combat adversaries.
Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. David “DT” Thompson said the Space Force’s central responsibility is ensuring U.S. military forces and allies have access to satellite services.
And that’s the reason resilience is so critical, he said June 15 on the Defense One Tech Summit.
“Ukraine showed that proliferation works. It results in resilient architectures,” Thompson said, referring to Russia’s repelled attempts to jam SpaceX’s Starlink web satellite service utilized by Ukrainian forces.
The U.S. armed forces and allies today depend on a secure space infrastructure — for communications, early warnings of ballistic missile attacks and other services — that the Space Force provides from a comparatively small variety of geostationary satellites in harder to succeed in orbits. “And we’ve to proceed to grasp learn how to defend and protect those against counter-space attacks,” he said.
“I feel that’s probably the largest concern immediately,” Thompson said, “ensuring we’ve enough resilience in each proliferated constellations, and people small numbers of larger systems to find a way to defend them.”
A shift to proliferated constellations is already under way.
The Space Development Agency — a procurement organization under the Space Force — is moving forward with a multibillion dollar plan to field a mesh network of satellites in low Earth orbit for missile warning and for data transport. The agency in April launched its first batch of 10 satellites and announced plans to launch its next 13 spacecraft in late July.
Proliferation and redundancy make the lack of a number of satellites tolerable, said Thompson, and bolster deterrence because targeting them imposes increased cost on an adversary.
That is how the Space Force plans to cope with China’s threats in the long run, he said. “We’re in a protracted competition with China. They absolutely consider that.”
“We are able to’t have a look at a finish line on this competition,” Thompson added. “We now have to think what we’d like to do to compete for the following 10 to 50 years.”
Avoid surprises
Space Force’s competitive endurance strategy has three tenets: avoid operational surprise, deny first-mover advantage, and conduct responsible counter-space campaigns that don’t create long-lasting debris in orbit.
“If we get this right we’ll deter a crisis or conflict from extending into space,” Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, deputy chief of space operations, cyber and nuclear, said in an interview.
“But when needed, we’ll ensure space access for the joint force in a fashion that maintains safety within the space domain for all responsible actors.”
Avoiding unwelcome surprises in space requires continuous awareness of what adversaries are doing in orbit, she said.
The U.S. wants to forestall a Pearl Harbor-style attack in space, which is why the Space Force is popping more attention to space domain awareness, Burt said. “I actually have to find a way to attribute any actions which are nefarious; I actually have to trace and maintain custody of things I consider threats, and supply indications and warnings to other people.”
The second tenet, denying first mover advantage in space, is where resilient architectures play a central role, she explained.
“If the enemy knows that attacking U.S. interests in space would require such an enormous effort that it’s going to grow to be impractical or self-defeating, we might be deterring such actions in the primary place,” she said. “It could be a case when the juice isn’t well worth the squeeze.”
The ultimate tenet, conducting responsible counter-space campaigns, is about the concept that, if American assets were threatened, the U.S. would respond appropriately and would try to reduce the creation of debris in orbit.
“Polluting the domain is just not what I need to do,” said Burt. There are ongoing discussions with allies about how operations may very well be conducted in a responsible manner, she said.
The Space Force has been secretive about what technologies it is perhaps developing to attack adversaries’ satellites without creating significant debris.
“General Saltzman has publicly talked about deliveries that can are available in the 2026 timeframe,” Burt said. “And I feel that’s whenever you’re going to see us begin to determine how we’re going to message that.”
Access to space
China and Russia have adopted strategies based on disabling adversaries’ space communications and navigation systems, said Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, commander of U.S. Space Forces Indo-Pacific, a subordinate unit to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
It’s stunning how briskly China has modernized its space infrastructure to enable military capabilities like precision-guided missiles, Mastalir wrote in a June 14 article published by the Air University’s Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs.
“China has made unprecedented investments in its on-orbit capabilities over the past three years,” Mastalir noted.
The U.S. military has been particularly wary of China’s secretive spaceplane — which has been described as a knockoff of the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B that may remain in orbit for years. China’s spaceplane has flown two long-endurance missions, and conducted proximity and capture maneuvers with a subsatellite, in line with data from the industrial space-tracking firm LeoLabs.
Mastalir identified that China deployed about 160 satellites in 2022, lots of which is able to support military operations. By some estimates, China plans to launch 200 spacecraft in 2023.
“While many strategists are rightly concerned about China’s and Russia’s fielding of anti-satellite weapons designed to degrade or destroy U.S. satellites in space, it is vital to notice that much of China’s space investment enables its long-range precision strike capability,” he wrote.
Space Force leaders also worry that a breakdown in U.S.-China communication and an underlying distrust that goes each ways may lead to miscalculations.
China’s lack of transparency about its own space activities makes it difficult to cut back those risks, Burt warned in May at an area policy conference hosted by Arizona State University.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin cautioned June 1 that China’s reluctance to have interaction with U.S. defense leaders could end in “an incident that might very, in a short time spiral uncontrolled.”
More recently, Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command, said the “biggest dynamic immediately in our relationship with China with regard to space is a scarcity of communication and virtually zero transparency.”
The absence of dialogue and interaction creates conditions for “miscommunication, misperception, misinterpretation, after which things could go mistaken. And that may occur in any domain,” Shaw said June 14 on the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability.
U.S. Space Command traffic watchers at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California issue warnings of close approaches in orbit or potential collision to satellite operations and national agencies, including the Chinese government. But when warnings are sent to Chinese email addresses, Shaw said, “We never get a response. Never.”
“Even the Russians know learn how to communicate with us,” Shaw said. “We don’t have anything like that with the Chinese and that’s the largest hindrance to transparent operations.”
‘Gray zone’ competition
Experts agree that space powers are almost certainly to attack rival satellites in a conflict through “non kinetic” means.
Still, each China and Russia have demonstrated they will blow up satellites by striking them with kinetic weapons similar to ground-based missiles. Nevertheless, the US must be more concerned about activities that fall below the brink of an act of war but are damaging nonetheless, said Todd Harrison, aerospace industry analyst and managing director of Metrea Strategic Insights.
Cyber and electronic jamming attacks are within the murky category of “gray zone” provocations that fall somewhere between low-intensity conflict and all-out war.
These non-kinetic attacks could still do lasting damage to satellites and their ground systems. A satellite that may’t see, think or communicate is nearly as good as dead. “It’s probably going to be in the bottom segment that you simply’ve got to be essentially the most frightened about, nevertheless it may very well be on the space side in addition to there at the moment are lasers that may blind sensors,” Harrison said.
“An adversary like China or others might think that they will get away with using that,” he said, “and will severely hamper our ability to sense and to speak from space.”
The U.S. military “historically has not likely had response to gray zone activities” and that ought to concern the Space Force, said John Klein, a senior fellow and strategist at Falcon Research, and adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute.
“We form of let it occur with no repercussions,” Klein said. “It doesn’t need to be a military response. However the U.S. has to make it known it’s unacceptable behavior, and that there might be consequences.”
It’s notable, though, that the Space Force is openly talking about deterring China and concerning the importance of resilience in U.S. space networks, Klein said.
He observed that space resilience is just not a brand new concept, because the Pentagon for many years has studied the difficulty of learn how to reduce the vulnerability of U.S. satellites.
“What’s recent is that the U.S. Space Force more specifically recognizes resilience as a part of deterrence. It’s deterrence by denial of advantages,” Klein said. “It’s telling enemies that irrespective of what you do, it’s not going to matter. You’re not going to stop me.”
U.S. still vulnerable
A move to more diversified constellations is mandatory but might still not be enough to discourage China, warned Charles Galbreath, senior fellow for space power studies on the Air and Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute.
“While the proliferated LEO approach garners an awesome deal of attention, it is just not the one method the Space Force can employ to extend the resiliency of its architecture,” Galbreath, former deputy chief technology and innovation officer of the U.S. Space Force, said June 26 at a Mitchell Institute event.
In a white paper titled “Constructing U.S. Space Force Counter-Space Capabilities,” Galbreath suggested the Space Force consider the “enduring military practice of deception to confuse adversaries and complicate their ability to focus on U.S. satellites.”
For instance, the U.S. could construct satellite payloads or components in ways that will camouflage their functions.
The Space Force also should expand its use of protection measures similar to nuclear hardening and anti-jam systems, Galbreath said.
Speaking June 12 on the Mitchell Institute, Thompson, the vice chief of space operations, recognized that deterrence may go in theory but not in practice. And if diplomacy and deterrence fail, the military has to arrange for the worstcase scenario.
“That is where we’ve spent loads of time working with the opposite services,” said Thompson, to be sure that they understand their dependence on space assets and determine learn how to make sure the Army, Navy and Air Force can proceed operating if U.S. satellites were targeted.
Other discussions on this subject are going down with the private sector, because the Space Force tries to determine contracting options to secure access to industrial space services during conflicts.
Under an initiative generally known as Business Augmentation Space Reserves, the Space Force is taking a look at establishing agreements with firms to make sure that services like satellite communication and distant sensing are prioritized for U.S. government use during national security emergencies.
The role of the private space sector in national security is important, said Thompson. “When you consider proliferation and variety, it’s not only the variety of satellites, it’s also allies and industrial partners.”
Must keep space usable
Even when the U.S. has superior space technology, a vibrant private space sector and more powerful weaponry, the truth is that rival nations have the means today to destroy satellites and create “devastating impacts on the environment that might be harmful to using space for many years and maybe centuries to return,” Thompson said.
“As we have a look at the proliferation of space capabilities, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to disclaim some level of use of space to an adversary,” he added.
While preparing for a protracted competition with rival powers, said Thompson, the Space Force has to be sure that the U.S. government has accurate intelligence so diplomats and military leaders know what’s happening within the space domain.
“If we’re operationally or strategically surprised, shame on us.”