4.11.2024
Offensive weapons to hold adversaries’ space systems at risk are top priorities for both the U.S. Space Force and U.S. Space Command, leaders made clear at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September.
Yet details on what kinds of weapons they want remain scarce, and the implications of a space war still gave some officials pause when discussing counterspace and space dominance—reflecting a persistent tension between deterrence, classification, and deep-rooted fears of weaponizing space.
For years, talk of developing, let alone using, offensive weapons in space was taboo in U.S. military circles. Although the U.S. was the first to demonstrate destructive power in space, official policy made clear such capabilities were for defensive purposes only, given the long-lasting effects of debris in orbit and the U.S. commitment to keeping space a peaceful domain. But as China and Russia have tested anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons and built up rival space capabilities designed to counter U.S. advantages in the heavens, those basic premises have changed.
The creation of the Space Force in 2019 cracked the door open for wider discussions about China’s and Russia’s militarization of space, and since his appointment as Chief of Space Operations in 2023, Gen. B. Chance Saltzman has shifted the conversation about establishing the structures and processes of a Space Force to the operational employment of space as a competitive, contested domain in which the United States must deter rivals from threatening U.S. advantages in space.
Saltzman made “responsible counterspace campaigning” part of his “Theory of Competitive Endurance” and said in September that his fiscal 2026 budget request will put dollars behind that theory.
“The priorities that we have submitted—still early in the deliberation process—are counterspace capabilities and the space domain awareness that underpins it,” Saltzman said. “We have to understand what’s going on in the domain to effectively employ counterspace capability.”
Saltzman went on to classify six general types of counterspace weapons, three in orbit and three terrestrial:
- Kinetic, destructive weapons;
- Directed energy; and
- Radio frequency energy and jamming.
But when asked to discuss specifically what the Space Force is doing in offensive space, Saltzman demurred. The Space Force is comfortable talking about counterspace in theoretical terms, but not ready yet to speak openly about specifics.
As CSO, Saltzman is responsible for recruiting, training, and equipping Guardians to be effective space warfare operators. Applying their capabilities is the responsibility of U.S. Space Command—and its leaders want counterspace weapons too.
“For us to have the ability to get after somebody else’s capability, so that they cannot use space to target our joint warfighters—how do we do that?” asked Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Schiess, commander of U.S. Space Forces-Space, the USSF component that presents forces to SPACECOM. “We need kit to be able to do that, to be able to keep those forces at bay.”
Schiess noted that his boss at SPACECOM, Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, listed space fires at the top of his Integrated Priorities List, which he submitted to the Pentagon to summarize the operational needs of his combatant command.
“We have to be able to protect the Airmen that I have on the stage here from space-enabled attack,” Schiess said, referring to the two Air Force three-star generals who were his co-panelists. “So our risk is, how fast can we get to the capabilities that we need?”
The risk is real, other officials noted. Space Force intelligence boss Maj. Gen. Gregory J. Gagnon noted at the conference that in the last few weeks, China launched its 1,000th active satellite into orbit. And just a few days before the conference, Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein warned that China and Russia are fielding enough satellites to develop sophisticated “kill webs.”
Yet like Saltzman, Schiess did not explain precisely what kinds of space fires SPACECOM wants.
Retired Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, Explorer Chair at the Mitchell Institute’s Space Center of Excellence (MI-SPACE), told Air & Space Forces Magazine that leaders’ reluctance to talk about offensive space in specifics undermines its value as a deterrent.
“You can’t deter solely by defense,” he said. “Defense is really important. Disaggregation [by increasing the number of satellites in a constellation] to make the problem harder for them to eliminate a capability, that’s a really good way to go. … But you also have to have offense if you really want to deter somebody. I can’t think of a castle wall thick enough or high enough that it ever deterred an adversary from attacking it. It is offensive capability that deters them. It’s the threat of losing their forces.”
Whether it’s policymakers or military leaders that are holding back in speaking more plainly about space weapons is not entirely clear. Whether military leaders are “being allowed” to field offensive space weapons is something Chilton wants brought out in the open. A nation can’t deter another without exposing some sense of its capability.
“No one is talking about capabilities that can do this beyond cyber,” he said. “I don’t think you should tell everybody everything, but they need to understand that we have the will to do this. We must have the will to do this, and then we can show them a little bit of capability.”
Other Ways
The requirement for U.S. Space Command to hold adversaries at risk in space does not need to be answered by the Space Force alone. This can be done from land, sea, air, and with cyber technology, as well.
“This is a joint military requirement,” Chilton said. “It’s something that we should have a naval option [for]. We should have an air option, a land-based option right, and a space-based option.”
Rear Adm. Heidi K. Berg, deputy commander of Navy Space Command, did not speak to any specific weapon her service is developing to target space assets, but she did endorse the need for offensive space and argued the Navy can provide U.S. Space Command with opportunities to use ground-based weapons for space operations.
“In accordance with deterrence theory, it makes good sense that you develop credible counterspace capabilities to deter your adversaries from the employment of those capabilities,” said Berg. “The Navy, we play the away game … specifically in that forward deployment, and that allows for that terrestrial force to have the terrestrial point to be able to execute.”
Chilton said the key is to have options. “You can have multiple problem sets to present to the adversary: lasers, direct-ascent, co-orbital—they have to fear that the U.S. can actually gain and maintain space superiority.”
Space is a crucial enabler no matter the domain, and its use can be attacked in space, with electronic warfare by means of spectrum jamming, and by attacking the ground stations and networks needed to use them.
RAF Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, a British officer assigned to U.S. Space Force Headquarters as the first-ever assistant chief of space operations for future concepts and partnerships, said there will be times when the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps will have to support USSPACECOM, rather than the other way around. “The other services need to understand the criticality of space in everything that they are doing on a daily basis, so that when asked to support and look at what they might need to target, then it does make an integrated priority list,” he said.
Schiess echoed that point in describing ways the terrestrial combatant commands can help Space Command attack adversaries’ counterspace weapons.
“One way for us to do that is to get really good at geo-locating where those jamming sources are coming and then putting them on a joint target list, for action by some of my other service components, to be able to get after so that we can get to attribution as quickly as possible,” he said. “Put them on a target list and then take them out, so that we can continue to be able to do our mission.”
Continued Reluctance
But while Saltzman and Whiting call for space fires, others fear pushing the counterspace argument too far, too fast, at the risk of befouling the domain with clouds of post-attack kinetic debris.
“When you start talking about the [anti-satellite] side of things, we are then reducing our own ability to work in space as well, because those debris clouds continue to orbit,” Godfrey warned. “It doesn’t mean you can’t think about these sorts of things or understand how the adversary might do these things, but I think collectively, we all need policy discussions, understanding the risk of throwing all of that debris out there. Do we really want to do that? And actually is that the element that deters anyone from going to war in space? And does that mean that we’re more aligned on the left-hand edge of the scale of reversible effects?”
Chilton points out that the choice facing a combatant commander could be between risking service members’ lives as a result of not defending against an adversary’s space-based attack and generating space debris as a result of that defense. The risk of potentially catastrophic economic and societal impacts of losing the GPS constellation raise the stakes higher.
Scientists have warned of excessive space debris for decades, but the growing threats in space are raising a whole new set of questions and discussions, Godfrey argued. And during a later panel he moderated on space dominance, industry officials seemed to agree.
“We’re very comfortable in the maritime domain and in the air domain with ‘deny, disrupt, and destroy,’ and we know what those mean … in terms of policy, in terms of capability, and budgets,” said Dan Ourada, vice president at Amentum. “But when you mean to talk about those three items in the space domain, the unintended consequences, the second- and third-order effects have much greater implications. The policy just hasn’t kept up with it yet.”
The failure to develop clear policy and the weapons to back up that policy is itself a risk, however. “There’s a dearth of support for offensive counterspace capabilities, and I say ‘capabilities’ because it’s not just about satellites,” Chilton said. “Although it’s an important and easy target if you take out the satellite, you can interdict with electronic warfare, … you could interdict their ability to track our satellites by going after their SOSI [Space Object Surveillance and Identification] networks, their ground-based and space-based networks that give them predictive information they need to launch their counterspace weapons.”
Without programs specifically designed to hold an adversary’s space assets at risk, the U.S. cedes options that could influence future conflict in its favor. “I don’t know of a single Air Force program coming down the acquisition pipeline designed specifically to hold at risk adversary space assets,” Chilton said. “The Air Force should be holding at risk adversary space assets, because there are some unique things about airplanes and counterspace.”
The U.S. demonstrated it could shoot down a satellite with an ASAT test in 1985, he noted, and in 2008, the U.S. Navy-guided missile cruiser Lake Erie fired a Standard Missile 3 into space to destroy a U.S. intelligence satellite that had failed to deploy as intended and was posing a potential threat to Earth. Dubbed Operation Burnt Frost, it was seen by some as a U.S. response to China’s ASAT test two years earlier.
“If you have them, you need to show a little bit,” Chilton said. “They have to fear that we can gain and maintain space superiority, not just survive their attack. And in order for them to fear, we have to be talking about it.”
To be effective, the U.S. needs a combination of land-, sea-, air-, and space-based counterspace options under the control of U.S. Space Command, Chilton said. “You don’t want people willy-nilly shooting down satellites, you want that to be part of an integrated plan that’s supporting the regional commanders’ war plans in the event of war.”
From Merchant Marine to Navy
Since early this year, Saltzman has used the analogy of the U.S. Merchant Marine to explain the transition he’s trying to bring about with the Space Force. Prior to World War II, the Merchant Marine was a peaceful maritime service, but once the war was underway, it was effectively a part of the military operating in a hostile world.
Matt Brown, executive technical director for Air & Space Defense Systems at RTX, extended the metaphor in describing how the Space Force is learning to defend itself from attacks—and developing capabilities of its own.
“When I think about what’s happening in space, I think about the first carrier that we had, back in 1920 that, when we built it, we thought this is a great capability, and then we realized we have to defend it,” Brown said. “And so we had to come up with carrier strike groups. We had to build battleships. We had to build destroyers to support that mission. And I think that is about where we are in space today.”
Saltzman, for his part, also referenced the changes when talking about the Space Force’s budget and how it needs to grow in the coming years.
“The counterspace mission to overcome the space-enabled targeting that our adversaries have put in place is kind of a new mission. It’s a key aspect of space superiority. A new mission requires new resources, new funding,” he said.
Systems designated for counterspace purposes ranked low among all other mission areas in the Space Force 2025 budget request, according to an analysis by the Aerospace Center for Space Policy and Strategy.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the mission area is not a priority; classified programs remained at the top in terms of resources.
Offensive counterspace should not be seen as solely a Space Force mission, however. Chilton noted that the Air Force demonstrated nearly 40 years ago it could shoot a satellite from an aircraft, and the Navy proved its capability in 2008 with Operation Burnt Frost. Other options should be explored. “I think directed energy, executed off a high-altitude aircraft, has a real ability to degrade, deny, or destroy, without creating a lot of debris,” Chilton said.
Quelle: Air & Space Forces Magazine