Evidence: Recently Added
Space debris moves at a speed of 56,000 kilometers per hour.9 It can cause great damage to other objects in outer space. Space debris also presents a risk of damage to activities on the surface of the Earth. This deterioration is growing rapidly. The Iridium 33 collision with a defunct Cosmos satellite in 2009 added more than 2,000 large pieces of debris.10 An even larger amount of debris was caused in 2007 by China’s deliberate destruction of a defunct weather satellite.11 That resulted in about 3,000 pieces of debris, most of which are still in orbit.12 One expert predicts that collisions with functioning satellites will begin to happen regularly beginning about the year 2036 and that the rate of collisions can then be expected to increase gradually, ending eventually with foreclosure to outer space.13 ESA’s 2017 Over- view of Space Debris states that there may be as many as 750,000 space debris objects larger than one centimeter in outer space, and the ESA Overview observes:
At typical collision speeds of 10km/s in low orbits, impacts by millimetre-sized objects could cause local damage or disable a subsystem of an operating satellite. Collisions with debris larger than 1 cm could disable an operational satellite or could cause the break-up of a satellite or rocket body. And impact by debris larger than about 10 cm can lead to a catastrophic break-up: the complete destruction of a spacecraft and generation of a debris cloud.14
In late 2015 and early 2016, Central Military Commission chairman and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping announced the most wideranging restructuring of the PLA since 1949 (see fig. 3).6 The reforms included the establishment of the Strategic Support Force (SSF) charged with overseeing Chinese military space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities.7 Rather than treating space as a standalone military domain, the SSF focused on how space, along with electronic warfare and cyber, can be used to increase jointness for military effects. The SSF is organized with four subsidiary departments: General Staff, General Armament, Network Systems, and Space Systems. The Space Systems department is responsible for the launch and operation of satellites to provide the PLA with C2, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. However, what is less certain is the scope of the force’s counterspace mission. Based on its launch and satellite operations functions, the SSF’s Space Systems Department would be responsible for the coorbital counterspace mission. The SSF’s Network Systems could use radio frequency signals to jam satellite communications and Global Positioning System signals, and the use of malicious software would be capable of disrupting computer network operations in satellite tracking and control ground systems.8
The most effective way to keep the US ahead of our adversaries in providing, operating, and defending space capabilities is the re-establishment of USSPACECOM. The model to create USCYBERCOM should be used again as the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps all have space experts that can be pulled to draft the mission theory, doctrine, and strategy. Using the CCMD structure would eliminate the immediate bureaucratic minutia required for creating a new organization and would build on the existing integration and jointness of multiservice operations. This would also give the organization the opportunity to determine how, if when, intelligence (e.g., National Reconnaissance Office), governmental (e.g., National Aeronautics and Space Administration or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) or commercial (e.g., SpaceX or the United Launch Alliance) space entities will be integrated with this organization.
The other organizational options would distract from the need for a warfighting focus with space now. As the former Secretary of the Air Force, the Honorable Deborah James explained in a 30 July 2018 Brookings Institution panel, a service branch organizes, trains, and equips the military force but it doesn’t conduct the war fighting, which is the CCMD’s function.21 The last time an independent branch was created was when the Air Force separated from the Army in 1947. But the USAF relied on the almost two decades that the leadership had between World War I and II to develop their airpower strategy and technology. We have the opportunity to form a force without an extreme crisis like a space or regional conflict to drive its implementation but instead based on our ability to anticipate. While more progress still needs to be made on the theory of space domain-specific war fighting (doctrine, strategy, operational concepts/principles, and tactics),22 the technology required to be effective is still very much in the developmental phase. The DOD needs the structure of a CCMD to outpace real and present threats to America’s reliance on space for defense and commerce.
To counter the US in the space domain, Russia has focused on both kinetic and nonkinetic physical weapon capabilities. The Soviet Union conducted multiple successful destructive ASAT test using the Istrebitel Sputnikov missile system between the late 1960s and early 1980s.12 While the Russians are not believed to have an operational kinetic ASAT capability right now, they continue to develop their PL-19 Nudol missile that is capable of striking a satellite in low-earth orbit (LEO) and is expected to be operational within the next several years.13 Similar to the Chinese, Russia is also raising the threat level by advancing the development of high-maneuverability or “killer” satellites. Most notably, in September 2014 Russia’s Olymp-K satellite reached orbit and then undertook a series of irregular maneuvers, which came within seven miles of a pair of Intelsat communications satellites.14 While this on-orbit technology demonstration of proximity operations could have peaceful applications such as satellite refueling or repair, it can just as easily be used against an adversary.
Russian space forces were subordinated under the Russian Aerospace Forces in 2015 with the stated missions of monitoring space objects for the identification and prevention of potential threats to the Russian Federation in and from space, spacecraft launches, controlling and managing their satellite systems (including integrated ones intended to be used for both military and civilian purposes,) and a number of other tasks.10 In contrast to President Trump’s direction, Russia is following the current USAF organizational model of keeping a majority of its space forces integrated with the air force (see fig. 4). Maxim Shepovalenko, an analyst at the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, attributed this unified aerospace theater structure to the evolving aerospace technologies and its decision to move away from maintaining an operational dividing line for fighting in the air and space theaters. This strategic viewpoint of their offensive and defensive strategic goals requires a unity of effort and command to adapt to the changing nature of war.11
The president’s direction emphasizes the ongoing, status-quo mentality that our current strategy for the national security of space cannot hold and that in the coming decade the US’s reliance on space-enabled capabilities will be challenged. In 2010, USAF Gen C. Robert Kehler, then the commander of the US Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), noted that our strategic approach has not changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and we need to safeguard our military, intelligence, and commercial space assets against China, Russia, and other state actors’ (i.e., Iran or North Korea) space and counterspace capabilities that will threaten de facto US superiority in space, effectively how the US wages war.1 As the US’s space war-fighting capabilities continue to be challenged by near-peer countries, we must reestablish the US Space Command (USSPACECOM) as a unified combatant command (CCMD) to coordinate our efforts to avoid and prepare for conflicts in space.
In the area of space situational awareness agreements, US Strategic Command has now established 83 international data-sharing agreements to expand its network of satellite and debris information to improve space safety and the effectiveness of US operations.48 Also, the Air Force announced the opening of the Combined Space Operations Center in the summer of 2018 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, complet- ing a multiyear process of consultations and exercises that eventually led to the center.49 The initial foreign military partners will include Aus- tralia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The point of this effort is to allow more rapid sharing of information among countries and the actual conduct of joint missions involving the commercial sector and the in- telligence community. A supporting process—the Multinational Space Collaboration (MSC) initiative—is working with additional countries toward future cooperation in space situational awareness and operations, including Germany and France, with future participation expected from Italy, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, and Spain.50 Another example of emerging military space cooperation is the Enhanced Polar System re- capitalization, in which US military communications payloads are being hosted on Norwegian polar-orbiting satellites, saving the United States some $900 million.51 US military space war games now also regularly include US allies. Notably, such military space partnerships have not yet emerged in either Russian or Chinese space policies or architectures. Neither country has significant military allies that are space-capable, and the two sides, despite other forms of military cooperation, have thus far exhibited inadequate trust for real cooperation in military space.
Conditions for the creation of net-centric space power are emerging from the so-called “NewSpace” revolution, where venture capital, dynamic entrepreneurs, scientific innovators, and a supportive political and legal infrastructure are combining to bring a whole range of new space technologies to the marketplace. Critical in this process is an environment that supports the free flow of ideas and people and protects intellectual property. Otherwise, innovators may develop to a certain stage and then move elsewhere for a more favorable business climate. Notably, such innovation “hubs” are present in some areas of the United States, due to a combination of technological factors, human capital, and political/legal mechanisms that have made rapid start-up formation possible and have assured investors that successful companies will be al- lowed to keep profits and expand their businesses. Such conditions do not exist in Russia today and are only partly present in China, creating significant potential advantages for the United States.
Russia’s space resurgence reached a high-water mark in 2014 when Roscosmos’s annual budget totaled a healthy $4.2 billion, and Russia conducted 35 successful launches, far surpassing both the United States and China.34 However, the combined effects of corruption, Western sanctions after Russia’s seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine, and falling state oil and gas revenues eventually began to put pressure on Roscosmos. President Putin’s prized project—the Vostochny Far Eastern launch site—failed to meet its operational goal of a 2015 launch due to rampant corruption, which resulted in politically em- barrassing hunger strikes by unpaid workers, the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars, and the firing of two successive managers.35 Putin eventually took the unusual step of putting the project directly under the control of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin. In late 2015, to eradicate corruption and raise quality control after a series of Roscosmos launch failures, President Putin abolished the space agency altogether and established the eponymous “State Space Corporation Roscosmos” in early 2016. It was described as a commercial unit of the Russian government intended to reduce corruption and run the consolidated space industry according to best business practices. However, Roscosmos remained much more like a state enterprise than a commercial one. Vostochny finally conducted its first launch in April 2016. However, after a failed launch in November 2017, even Russian analysts began to downplay previously rosy prospects for the facility, discounting the possibility of any near-term cosmonaut launches.
Traditional, state-run approaches to space security have led authors to three assumptions: (1) that war in space is inevitable, (2) that nations will have to rely exclusively on their assets for fighting in space, and (3) that space wars will be dominated by offensive strategies, as opposed to space- based defensive or deterrent approaches. One of the leading realist scholars on space power, Everett Dolman, makes this case, “if some state or organization should desire to contest or control space, denying the fruits thereof to another state, there is simply no defense against such action—there is only deterrence through the threat of asymmetric, Earth-centered retaliation.”10
However, new conditions may facilitate other options, such as space- based deterrence by denial. A state may, over time, create a resilient con- stellation of hundreds of networked satellites (national, commercial, and allied) that may be able to convince an adversary that its forces will not be able to accomplish their objective of denying space-derived informa- tion. In 2016, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Loverro stated in congressional testimony, “we must remove the likelihood that attacks in space will succeed. Strangely enough, there are those who believe that we cannot do this... That conclusion would be untrue.”11