Evidence: Recently Added
The most intense period of US and Soviet research into this technology lasted until the 1980s and the end of the Cold War. Development continued after that but at a slower pace. Since the end of the 1980s, technology has emerged that enhances accuracy (to some degree) and enables new types of attacks on increasingly critical space resources. Many of the technological advances that raise concerns about threats to space assets have come directly from missile-defence programmes. Notably, ABM systems provide key components like radars and delivery vehicles that enable ASAT capabilities. Likewise, it is impossible to verify if new on-orbit servicing drones, such as those being developed by China and the United States, are for peaceful, civilian purposes or for destructive ones, since the “dual-use” technology involved is virtually the same for both applications.17 Yet for all these developments and testing of various counter-space capabilities, the United States and the Russian Federation have never used ASATs to physically destroy an enemy target.18
Anti-access/area denial strategies are designed to limit the ability of the United States to introduce and employ forces within a region by emphasizing denial of command, control and communications as well as the operability of airbases and ports.61 A key strategic objective for China is to deny the United States access to the Indo-Pacific theater. These operations would likely start with disruption and destruction of C4I capabilities with cyber and kinetic attacks on satellites and ground assets in support of other Chinese kinetic capabilities. This would be followed by large raid size ballistic missile attacks on regional bases and potentially on carrier battle groups.
The strategy of denying access requires counterforce targeting, which includes target detection, delivery of weapons precisely on target, and tracking and conducting hit assessment (understanding what is happening on the battlefield). This requires a significant command, control, communications network and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, much of which is reliant on space systems. China’s control over the Asia-Pacific region requires an integrated system of real-time satellite imagery and target location (including mobile targets) and data fusion. China’s ballistic missile development program is also tied to a space presence, as space capabilities are necessary to ensure launch warning and precision targeting, to include reportedly precision targeting against U.S. carriers and other naval assets in the Asia-Pacific region.62 China operates a space-tracking facility in Argentina, which provides a southern hemisphere node to communicate with satellites and download images.63
China’s military modernization program is designed to improve its capability to prevail in regional con- flicts, to include conflicts involving Taiwan and in the East and South China Seas. China has made expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea while building, seizing, and militarizing islands in disputed sea areas. China also has been steadily building up air, sea, and space capabilities to succeed in operational environments that are not necessarily adjacent to Chinese territory, to include combat insertions, island landing operations, humanitarian operations, and evacuations. These capabilities (e.g., increasingly sophisticated space-based sensors, ASAT capabilities, attack submarines, large cargo aircraft and fueling ships, and amphibious transports) also will strengthen China’s traditional warfighting capabilities.51 Military modernization and the ability to challenge U.S. information supremacy have been high on China’s priority list, and space assets clearly have contributed to the realization of both.52 A critical part of the anti-access/area denial strategy pursued by China is the ability to oppose other military forces from a distance, which would not be possible without the aid of space. Space allows China to identify and target distant forces and communicate with its forces.
According to a former Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, counter-space operations would “deny U.S. forces the advantages of space, which have enabled us to favorably shape events in all cor- ners of the globe.”44 Satellite jamming activities are on the rise, with incidents of interference against satellites rising from 5% in 2010 to 15% in 2013, with a significant amount of jamming activity occurring over the Middle East and Africa regions. According to Air Force Space Command, U.S. forces should expect to face pervasive satellite jamming and dazzling threats when involved in a conflict with a major power.45 Low-power GPS satellite jammers have proliferated to such an extent that they are now available on-line, and nations have invested in the development of higher power jammers that would increase the size of the jammed area with the potential for a substantial degradation of U.S. accuracy in GPS-guided weapons. Radar satellites may also be jammed and imagery satellites are vulnerable to both dazzling and, because of their low orbiting altitude, destruction by ground-based ASAT weapons (with launch-to-kill in as few as 10 minutes). With respect to communications satellites, which are no longer protected by their high orbital altitude, the loss of one satellite, either through jamming or destruction, would “open a geographic hole in a constellation, preventing normal communication in that region.”46 Thus far, all that has been done to make the jammers pay the consequences of their interference is “naming and shaming.”47 Ground stations for transmitting data to and from satellites are also vulnerable to kinetic and cyber attack as well as interference.
The proliferation of space technologies offers foreign governments and non-state entities unparalleled opportunities to enhance diplomatic influence (perhaps giving them “eyes” to see otherwise unknown events in a remote part of the world) and military effectiveness over the United States and, over time, will enable them to strike with strategic effect. Potential enemies of the United States today have improved “vision” over the U.S. homeland and battlefield activities, a better sense of direction and geographic position, greatly improved long-range precision strike weapons which utilize GPS-like guidance, and an improved ability to mobilize forces and coordinate activities. No longer can the United States expect to conduct large-scale operational activities on the ground or at sea outside the view of other nations or even private organizations without using camouflage, concealment, and deception techniques to defeat enemy surveillance and reconnaissance satellites.34
Indeed, over the past few years, threats have evolved to the point where defense officials are now deeply concerned about the U.S. ability to operate freely in space and deliver “space effects.” According to the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
It is very unlikely that future adversaries will allow U.S. forces to move through the commons to forward positions and await a set-piece U.S. onslaught, as for example, the Serbs or Iraqis did in the past. The next two decades will see adversaries building the capacity to control approaches to their homelands through the commons, and later, translat- ing command of the nearby commons into the connective architecture for their own power projection capabilities.4
According to a 2015 Defense Intelligence Agency report, “Chinese and Russian military leaders under- stand the unique information advantages afforded by space systems and are developing capabilities to deny U.S. use of space in the event of a conflict.”5 U.S defense officials are watching the growth in counter-space programs within potential adversary nations, especially Russia and China, whose leaders are expanding their abilities to defend, attack, and control space. As the then-Air Combat Command Commander General noted: “Our adversaries are sinking massive resources into denying our forces access to tools such as Position Navigation and Timing (GPS) data links, communication networks and radars.”6 This is highly disconcerting, according to the former Commander of Air Force Space Command and current Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, General John Hyten, who holds that “[s]pace is critical to everything that we do in the military.”7
Start with the way space is characterized in China’s military strategy: the “new commanding heights in strategic competition.” Once a sanctuary for U.S. satellites that have fostered unparalleled military capability, space is now recognized by Chinese military strategists as a critical U.S. vulnerability. Without reliable space support, U.S. capabilities for global C4ISR and precision strike will fail, and the U.S. military could be reduced to a level of merely mechanized warfare, by the assessment of one Chinese defense academic.
This recognition has motivated the development of a range of “trump card” weapons (杀手锏). Some, like various cyber or electronic warfare attacks, could remain plausibly deniable in a crisis or conflict. But the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has also been developing direct-ascent and co-orbital kinetic kill capabilities that could be directly damaging. These include the DN-2 ASAT missile, whose 2013 test first demonstrated a potential capability to target U.S. satellites in geosynchronous orbit, and the DN-3 hit-to-kill midcourse interceptor, tested successfully as recently as February 2018.
The PLA’s focus on the criticality of C4ISR has been informed by close study of U.S. ways of warfare, and the structure of the PLASSF is designed to be superior to the U.S. model. The current U.S. approach is seen as hindered by the lack of integration, coordination, and resourcing, as well as certain redundancies, in its own space systems and support capabilities, by the characterization of a Chinese military expert.
By contrast, the PLASSF’s Space Systems Department (航天系统部), evidently a de facto ‘Space Force’ for the Chinese military, has consolidated control over a critical mass of China’s space-based and space-related capabilities. The establishment of a unified structure through the Space Systems Department seems to reflect a response to organizational challenges that resulted from the prior dispersal of these forces, systems, and authorities across the former General Armament Department and General Staff Department.
Within the PLA, debates about whether to build a space force date back to the mid-2000s; both the PLA Air Force and Rocket Force appeared to seek the lead in this new domain. For instance, in 2009, then-PLA Air Force Commander Xu Qiliang had argued for the creation of a space force in response to increasing competition in space. In certain respects, its structure may thus reflect an organizational compromise, creating a new structure that centralized the control of these strategic capabilities directly under the Central Military Commission.
The PLA recognizes the importance of space-based information support to enable joint operations and expand power projection. This prioritization was shown by the 2015 establishment of the Strategic Support Force (PLASSF, 战略支援部队), which has integrated PLA space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities. This reflects a unique innovation in force structure – and a paradigm that PLA thinkers believe could be superior to the current U.S. approach.
In particular, the PLASSF will be integral to enabling the integration of the PLA’s system of systems (体系) that will undergird its joint operations. Its commander, Gen. Gao Jin (高津), has emphasized the PLASSF will provide a vital ‘information umbrella’ (信息伞) for the whole military’s system of systems, recognizing this as a “key force for victory in war.” Xi Jinping himself has declared that the Strategic Support Force will be “an important growth point for our military’s new-quality combat capabilities.”
Indeed, the Strategic Support Force’s design and structure are meant to enable the integrated development of the battle networks that are critical to today’s “informatized” (信息化) warfare. In particular, the PLASSF is intended to enable the “information chain” that connects the initial intelligence, reconnaissance, and early warning capabilities with information transmission, processing, and distribution, and then, after an attack on an adversary, with the options for guidance, damage assessment, and follow-on strikes.
Also, it is not only US allies who require better SSA in order to operate satellites safely and securely. More than seventy countries operate satellites, with 1,381 operating satellites in orbit at the end of 2015.61 Many of these operators lack sufficient SSA. In the July 2013 report adopted by the UN General Assembly in October 2013, the Group of Governmental Experts on Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures in Outer Space Activities cited the need for improved global access to space data, both for safety purposes and for building trust. The report stated that, beyond a lack of space capacity, “the inability of many States to acquire significant space-based information” is a factor “contributing to the lack of confidence.”62 Russia has proposed to the COPUOS Scientific and Technical Subcommittee that the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs consider the development of an international, open database of on-orbit objects (both operational satellites and debris) to fill this gap.63 The United States and its allies have rejected the Russian proposal, largely for budgetary reasons, but the United States has been internally mulling over a possible proposition to create an informal international group to discuss the challenges to sharing SSA data and how to overcome them. This would be a promising first step, and a testimony to continued leadership in SSA by the United States, consistent with a national space strategy aimed at reducing risks. Inevitably, some form of open-access space-object database is going to be required, simply to ensure on-orbit safety—particularly in LEO, as the number of so-called Cubesats (very small satellites) rises dramatically. The United States should take the lead on developing a workable space-traffic management regime underpinned by SSA.