Deterrence The US military is now talking openly about going on the attack in space "We have to build capabilities that provide our leadership offensive and defensive options." Stephen Clark Dec 13, 2024 10:40 am | 157 Last year, Space Operations Command unveiled its first official painting, titled "High Ground Intercept," commissioned with artist Rick Herter. The painting illustrates a US military spaceplane intercepting an adversary's satellite, which in turn is positioning to disable a friendly satellite. Last year, Space Operations Command unveiled its first official painting, titled "High Ground Intercept," commissioned with artist Rick Herter. The painting illustrates a US military spaceplane intercepting an adversary's satellite, which in turn is positioning to disable a friendly satellite. Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreORLANDO, FloridaEarlier this year, officials at US Space Command released a list of priorities and needs, and among the routine recitation of things like cyber defense, communications, and surveillance was a relatively new term: "integrated space fires."This is a new phrase in the esoteric terminology the military uses to describe its activities. Essentially, "fires" are offensive or defensive actions against an adversary. The Army defines fires as "the use of weapon systems to create specific lethal and nonlethal effects on a target."The inclusion of this term in a Space Command planning document was another signal that Pentagon leaders, long hesitant to even mention the possibility of putting offensive weapons in space for fear of stirring up a cosmic arms race, see the taboo of talking about space warfare as a thing of the past."While we've held it close to the vest before, some of that was just kind of hand-wringing," said Gen. Chance Saltzman, the top general in the Space Force, who also serves on the joint chiefs of staff. "It wasn't really something we needed to protect."One reason for the change in how the military talks about warfare in space is that the nation's top two strategic adversariesChina and Russiaare already testing capabilities that could destroy or disable a US military satellite.The Space Force was established nearly five years ago, in December 2019, to protect US interests in space. Satellites provide the military with intelligence data, navigation, communications, and support missile defense, and in the next few years, they will become even more crucial for weapons targeting and battle management. Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force's chief of Space Operations, speaks Tuesday at the Space Force Association's Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. Credit: Space Force Association This week, Saltzman laid out the military's view of offensive weapons in space in perhaps the plainest language yet.Space is a war-fighting domain," Saltzman said at the Space Force Association's Spacepower Conference in Orlando, Florida. "Ten years ago, I couldnt say that. Thats the starting point. Think about that. In 2014, we had senior leaders start to talk about space and war in the same sentence. They got kind of berated by the senior leadership. So this is still a relatively new condition when were talking about war-fighting in space. I don't think we should underestimate the power of that."An alert postureGen. Stephen Whiting, the four-star chief of US Space Command, identified "integrated space fires"again, these are actual offensive or defensive attacks against an enemy vehicleas his organization's most pressing need. These could be based in any domainland, air, sea, or spaceand aimed against targets within and above the atmosphere.So what would these weapons look like? They might be electronic or cyber in nature, allowing US forces to hack a satellite or its ground-based support network. Russia has already done this, when hackers launched a cyberattack on a commercial European satellite communications network in 2022, the same day the country began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.Then there's directed energy, which would use a laser beam to blind or dazzle satellite sensors in orbit. Directed energy weapons could be based on the ground or in space. There's another option that would involve one satellite sidling up next to an adversary's and using a claw or robotic arm to capture it and take control.Finally, there are the kinds of space weapons that can blow a satellite out of the sky. These antisatellite weapons (ASATs) are perhaps the most low-tech solutionthe United States, China, Russia, and India have openly demonstrated thembut they come with dangerous side effects.For example, a Chinese ASAT missile test in 2007 destroyed one of the country's own satellites, creating more than 3,000 trackable debris objects in low-Earth orbit, the largest cloud of space debris in history. The United States performed a similar ASAT missile test against a satellite in 1985.Destructive ASATs, like directed energy weapons, can be based on the ground or in space. In 2021, Russia launched a ground-based direct-ascent ASAT missile to take out one of its own satellites. The year before, Space Command reported Russia tested a space-based ASAT weapons system in which a Russian military satellite released a projectile moving fast enough to destroy another satellite if it made an impact. Anti-satellite weapons are nothing new. In this photo from 1994, a woman passes by a huge mural in Tehran, Iran, depicting satellite television networks as satans and enemies of Islam. Credit: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images Most recently, news leaked from US government sources in February that Russia is developing a nuclear ASAT weapon. If used, this would render low-Earth orbit, a section of space stretching several hundred miles above Earth, unusable for a year or more, according to John Plumb, the former assistant secretary of defense for space policy.US officials said Russia hasn't placed a nuclear weapon in orbit yet, but if it did, the move would violate Article IV of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Russia is a party to the treaty, which bans weapons of mass destruction in space. Russia's representative at the UN Security Council vetoed a resolution in April to reaffirm this tenet of the Outer Space Treaty and instead proposed a resolution to ban all weapons in space, which the United States rejected. After all, US officials say Russia has already tested an ASAT weapon in orbit.And now, the US Space Force desires space weapons of its own."We need joint all-domain fires to be able to do that, everything from across the gamut of cyber, non-kinetic, kinetic, and those can come from any domain. But we need to have the ability to influence targets, just like every other domain does," Whiting said.Knowing what we haveAt the conference Tuesday, Ars asked Saltzman if the Space Force will talk more about the capabilities it is deploying in orbit. Can deterrence work if adversaries don't know how the Space Force might respond to a threat?In the film Dr. Strangelove, the titular character says that deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear of attacking. At the end of the movie (spoiler alert if you haven't seen this 60-year-old film), a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union results in the automatic activation of a secret Russian "doomsday machine" that will destroy all life on Earth.According to the plot, Russia developed the machine to dissuade a US attack on its territory. Dr. Strangelove, a zany, mercurial military adviser in the film, aptly states: "The whole point of a doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!"Saltzman made it clear that the Space Force can't stop at developing defensive countermeasures against an attack on a US satellite. One of these defensive measures is resiliency, where the Space Force puts up constellations of hundreds or thousands of satellites to provide the surveillance, communication, and missile-tracking functions previously the domain of smaller numbers of billion-dollar satellitesbig, juicy targets in the eyes of an enemy in conflict with the United States. The Pentagon is well on the way to deploying these mega-constellations, but military commands caution this is not enough."We have to build capabilities that provide our leadership offensive and defensive options," he said in response to a question from Ars. "Weapons systems aren't inherently offensive or defense. Is an aircraft carrier offensive or defense? Yes. Is an F-35 offensive or defense? Yes. So when we get in this fight about whether or not a spacecraftis this an offensive weapon? No, it's just a capability.""Then, the operations, as approved by the secretary of defense and the president, will decide the nature of those (capabilities)," Saltzman said. "It's our job to make sure that we think through the spectrum of operations, the spectrum of needs that are necessary." An operator inside the National Space Defense Center at Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado. Credit: US Space Force/Kathryn Damon These wartime scenarios in space range from a one-off cyberattack against a satellite systemlike Russia's move against a Viasat commercial satellite network in 2022to a destructive nuclear detonation in Earth orbit, something US officials fear Russia might be preparing to do. The Pentagon is also concerned with the ability of potential adversaries, particularly China, to use their satellites to bolster their land, air, and naval forces, similar to the way the US military leans on its space-based capabilities.One concept proposed by some government and industry officials is to launch roving "defender" satellites into orbit, with the sole purpose of guarding high-value US satellites against an attack. These wouldn't be able to effectively defend a spacecraft against a ground-based anti-satellite missile, which can launch without warning. But a space-based attack might involve an enemy satellite taking days or weeks to move close to a US satellite due to limitations in maneuverability and the tyranny of orbital mechanics.Any defender satellites deployed by the US military would need highly efficient propulsion or have a design that enables refueling in orbit. Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance, wrote about the defender concept in a Medium post earlier this month.Bruno added some context Thursday in a roundtable discussion with reporters, describing the defender concept as "a lightning fast, long-range, lethal, if necessary, vehicle to defend our assets on orbit."Essentially, the idea would take something like a space tug or upper stagean upgraded version of ULA's own Centaur V upper stage could do the job just fine, Bruno saidand leave it in orbit on alert to respond to any threats against US or allied satellites."You can move one of these vehicles in hours, interdict what might be an attack, and stop the attack," Bruno said. "So that becomes a very powerful deterrent because we move from what we are working toward right now, which is 'go ahead and attack me and disable several of my satellites, and I can still keep doing my job,' to a place where you say, 'Go ahead and attack. It's not going to work. You're not going to be able to disable anything.'"The case of ChinaBrig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, who leads US Space Forces in the Indo-Pacific region, has probably the closest eye on China's space program of any military commander. His area of responsibility includes the South China Sea, where China has expanded its military footprint and could one day threaten Taiwan, a US ally.Mastalir said China is "copying the US playbook" with the way it integrates satellites into more conventional military operations on land, in the air, and at sea. "Their specific goals are to be able to track and target US high-value assets at the time and place of their choosing," Mastalir said.China's strategy, known as Anti-Access/Area Denial, or A2AD, is centered on preventing US forces from accessing international waters extending hundreds or thousands of miles from mainland China. Some of the islands occupied by China within the last 15 years are closer to the Philippines, another treaty ally, than to China itself.The A2AD strategy first "extended to the first island chain (bounded by the Philippines), and now the second island chain (extending to the US territory of Guam), and eventually all the way to the West Coast of California," Mastalir said.US officials say China has based anti-ship, anti-air, and anti-ballistic weapons in the region, and many of these systems rely on satellite tracking and targeting. Mastalir said his priority at Indo-Pacific Command, headquartered in Hawaii, is to defend US and allied satellites, or "blue assets," and challenge "red assets" to break the Chinese military's "long-range kill chains and protect the joint force from space-enabled attack."What this means is the Space Force wants to have the ability to disable or destroy the satellites China would use to provide communication, command, tracking, navigation, or surveillance support during an attack against the US or its allies. Buildings and structures are seen on October 25, 2022, on an artificial island built by China on Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea. China has progressively asserted its claim of ownership over disputed islands in the region. Credit: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images Mastalir said he believes China's space-based capabilities are "sufficient" to achieve the country's military ambitions, whatever they are. "The sophistication of their sensors is certainly continuing to increasethe interconnectedness, the interoperability. They're a pacing challenge for a reason," he said."We're seeing all signs point to being able to target US aircraft carriers... high-value assets in the air like tankers, AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control System)," Mastalir said. "This is a strategy to keep the US from intervening, and that's what their space architecture is."That's not acceptable to Pentagon officials, so Space Force personnel are now training for orbital warfare. Just don't expect to know the specifics of any of these weapons systems any time soon."The details of that? No, you're not going to get that from any war-fighting organization'let me tell you precisely how I intend to attack an adversary so that they can respond and counter that'those aren't discussions we're going to have," Saltzman said. "We're still going to protect some of those (details), but broadly, from an operational concept, we are going to be ready to contest space."A new administrationThe Space Force will likely receive new policy directives after President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. The Trump transition team hasn't identified any changes coming for the Space Force, but a list of policy proposals known as Project 2025 may offer some clues.Published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Project 2025 calls for the Pentagon to pivot the Space Force from a mostly defensive posture toward offensive weapons systems. Christopher Miller, who served as acting secretary of defense in the first Trump administration, authored the military section of Project 2025.Miller wrote that the Space Force should "reestablish offensive capabilities to guarantee a favorable balance of forces, efficiently manage the full deterrence spectrum, and seriously complicate enemy calculations of a successful first strike against US space assets."Trump disavowed Project 2025 during the campaign, but since the election, he has nominated several of the policy agenda's authors and contributors to key administration posts.Saltzman met with Trump last month while attending a launch of SpaceX's Starship rocket in Texas, but he said the encounter was incidental. Saltzman was already there for discussions with SpaceX officials, and Trump's travel plans only became known the day before the launch.The conversation with Trump at the Starship launch didn't touch on any policy details, according to Saltzman. He added that the Space Force hasn't yet had any formal discussions with the Trump transition team.Regardless of the direction Trump takes with the Space Force, Saltzman said the service is already thinking about what to do to maintain what the Pentagon now calls "space superiority"a twist on the term air superiority, which might have seemed equally as fanciful at the dawn of military aviation more than a century ago."Thats the reason were the Space Force," Saltzman said. "So administration to administration, thats still going to be true. Now, its just about resourcing and the discussions about what we want to do and when we want to do it, and were ready to have those discussions."Stephen ClarkSpace ReporterStephen ClarkSpace Reporter Stephen Clark is a space reporter at Ars Technica, covering private space companies and the worlds space agencies. Stephen writes about the nexus of technology, science, policy, and business on and off the planet. 157 Comments