ISSUE AREAS:

BASIC-DEMOS

Missile Defence Conference

BASIC and Demos hosted a Missile Defence Conference in London on 9 November 2004.

Back to the main page on the Conference

Staking Out the High Ground: U.S. Air Force Plans for Space

Theresa Hitchens, Vice President, Center for Defense Information, Washington DC.

I first want to thank BASIC and Demos for inviting me to be a member of this panel, and second, to thank all of you for taking time out of your busy schedules. I've been asked to talk about the evolving U.S. policy and plans for the future of military space.

Over the past several years, it has become ever clearer that the United States, under the administration of President George W. Bush, is on a pathway to becoming the first nation to deploy space weapons. It is true that no specific policy change or system deployment has been announced by either the White House or the Pentagon. Current U.S. National Space Policy, promulgated by President Bill Clinton in 1996, traditionally has been interpreted as avoiding the deployment of anti-satellite (ASAT) and on-orbit weapons - following the Eisenhower tradition of stressing peaceful uses of space. While Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice in 2002 launched a review of the Clinton policy, it is still pending - meaning that the Clinton policy is still applicable.

Despite this fact, the U.S. military's intent to wage space warfare is not just rhetorical - based solely on the speechifying of the so-called space hawk faction within DoD and the U.S. Air Force. Space warfare operations actually are being codified into military planning, strategy and doctrine documents. These documents make clear the goal is to enable war fighting "in, from and through space" to achieve what the Air Force calls "space dominance." The key tool for achieving "space dominance" is, in Air Force parlance, "space control." Space control is defined by the U.S. Air Force and the Joint Chiefs of Staff as assuring U.S. military access to space assets and denying adversaries the use of space - both through protection measures for U.S. space systems and "negation" of adversaries' systems. [1] Negation is achieved by what the would-be U.S. space warriors call the "5 Ds" of "offensive counterspace" operations against space systems being used by enemies: "deception, disruption, denial, degradation and destruction." [2] In other words, the U.S. Air Force - which is the primary service responsible for space operations - is coming to an orbit near you, and rest assured, it will be packing heat.

The baseline document setting out the tenets of space warfare is "DoD Policy on Space Control, DODI S-3100.15," signed by Rumsfeld in January 2001. That policy, which is precedent setting as the first ever DoD-wide policy on space control, unfortunately, is classified - although various DoD officials and other documents have referred to its contents in public. It is also cited in the capstone military document on space operations, Joint Publication 3-14: Joint Doctrine for Space Operations, dated Aug. 9, 2002 and signed by the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This doctrine document "provides guidelines for planning and conducting joint space operations. It provides space doctrine fundamentals for all war-fighters - air, land, sea, space and special operations forces; describes the military operational principles associated with support from and through space and operating in space; explains U.S. Space Command relationships and responsibilities; and establishes a framework for the employment of space forces and space capabilities."[3] It is, like the DoD Space Control Policy, a first of its kind.

Other documents stemming from the DoD Space Control Policy and the JP-314 flesh out not only the definitions I've just provided, but also more specific space warfare plans.

The most recent of these, the U.S. Air Force Counterspace Operations Doctrine (AFDD 2-2.1), dated Aug. 2, 2004, explains how the Air Force intends to conduct operations, possibly preemptively, against satellite systems being used by enemies, whether they be dedicated military satellites, those with primarily commercial functions or those owned and/or operated by third parties (whether governments or commercial entities.) [4] The document, another first, lists possible targets as including weather, navigation, imaging and communications satellites as well as ground stations and command and control links. It also lists possible methods of attack, including: aircraft; missiles; Special Operations Forces; "dedicated offensive counterspace systems;" anti-satellite systems, defined as comprising "direct ascent and co-orbital systems that employ various mechanisms to affect or destroy an on-orbit spacecraft; directed energy weapons, including destructive lasers; network warfare operations, electronic warfare operations; and surface forces.[5]

The Counterspace Operations Doctrine follows the release in November 2003 of the Air Force Transformation Flight Plan, which projects future space forces through "2015 and beyond." This force planning document outlines the Air Force's perceived need for "full spectrum, sea-, air-, land- and space-based offensive counterspace systems capable of prevention of unauthorized use of friendly space services and negating adversarial space capabilities from Low Earth up to Geosynchronous orbits."[6] The Transformation Flight Plan lists specific weapon systems desired, including an Air Launched Anti-Satellite Missile, a Ground Based Laser, a Space-Based Radio Frequency Energy Weapon, and Hypervelocity Rod Bundles for hitting terrestrial targets from space (often dubbed 'Rods from God'.)[7] While this document is, of course, little more than an Air Force "wish list" of future capabilities, it nonetheless is important for understanding the service's intentions in space. And those intentions are clearly to push the edge of the 21st century battlefield from the skies above to the heavens above.

The Pentagon's rationale for a space dominance strategy is also reasonably clear - although I would argue based on overly pessimistic analyses of the threats. The United States is the world's leading space power, both commercially and militarily. And it is the world's most sophisticated when it comes to the use of space for national defense and projecting global power - using space assets for everything from high-speed battlefield communications to imagery to targeting precision-guided weapons. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States at the end of 2001 had nearly 110 operational military-related satellites, compared to 40 for Russia and 20 for the rest of the world combined. At the same time, access to space and use of space assets is growing around the world as technologies spread and decrease in cost. Many nations, and even sub-national organization/actors, now can, and do, use commercially provided satellite communications, Earth imagery, and satellite navigation capabilities once the province of only a few. Further, more and more countries are acquiring space launch capabilities of their own. The combination of the U.S. reliance on space especially for military operations and the gradual leveling of the space playing field has led to fears in U.S. national security circles about potential vulnerabilities of U.S. space assets, as well as worries about losing the "edge" in a ground war provided up to now by the U.S. military's near monopoly on space force enablers. These concerns are real, although, as I said before, official and semi-official threat analyses regarding space tend toward the apocalyptic rather than the rational.

At the same time, however, there is little recognition at today's Pentagon that there are also threats and risks to U.S. national - and greater international - security from the advent of space warfare. There are plenty of reasons to worry that a unilateral attempt by the United States to "control the high ground" of space by being the first to deploy ASAT and space-based weapons could backfire on not just Washington but also the rest of the space-faring world.

First, even though most other nations trail behind the United States in space technology, it is inconceivable that other space powers would allow Washington to establish a space hegemony. China and Russia in particular, as nations that see themselves as global balancers to U.S. power, are likely to challenge any such U.S. moves with space weapons of their own. Indeed, there is evidence that China is already attempting to hedge its long-standing position of support for a space weapons ban with research into lasers and kinetic energy ASATs. It is fairly reasonable to suspect that a U.S.-China space arms race would soon bloom into a wider competition - including India, Pakistan, Iran and Israel at a minimum. Further, the basic physics of space means that other nations with fewer assets and less sophisticated space capabilities could also join the space arms race through asymmetric means.

The negative consequences of a global space arms race are hard to exaggerate. Space-based weapons, like any other object on orbit, are inherently vulnerable to attack and best exploited as first-strike weapons. And because of the high-value (and high cost) of such weapon systems, commanders are likely to view them as "use them or lose them" assets - piquing itchy trigger fingers that could lead to rapid escalation of any crises. Indeed, any conflict involving ASAT use is likely to lead to rapid escalation of hostilities, in particular amongst nuclear states. The objective of an attacker would be to eliminate the other side's capabilities to respond either in kind or on the ground by taking out satellites providing warning, surveillance, communications and targeting, leaving the other side blind, deaf and mute. At that point, the response is very likely to be nuclear, as the U.S. Air Force found out in conducting space war games. Aviation Week and Space Technology quoted one gamer as saying "[If] I don't know what's going on, I have no choice but to hit everything, using everything I have."[8]

Another negative consequence of a space arms race would be a dramatic increase in dangerous space debris. Space is already polluted with orbiting junk, as every single space launch results in debris - even if launch providers follow the very best-known practices in mitigation. Space debris is hazardous to spacecraft and satellites because of the very high speeds at which objects orbit the Earth, leading to very high impact velocities in any collision. Thus, even tiny pieces of debris - such as bolts or even paint flecks - can damage or destroy a satellite or spacecraft such as the International Space Station. Indeed, the ISS already is moved several times a year to avoid potential debris impacts. Obviously, the testing or use of kinetic energy ASATs - whether ground-based or space-based - would result in new debris. And the debris created from an all-out space war would obviously be significant. Unfortunately, such debris does not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. It would put at risk commercially owned satellites, national civil satellites owned by neutral countries and multinational spacecraft as well as the military space systems of the two opponents.

Remembering that the global value of satellites and satellite services is huge and growing, it is also conceivable that the advent of space weapons programs (particularly those based on kinetic energy concepts) could have a negative market impact even before the first weapon system is deployed. Most commercial systems are not seriously hardened against simple jamming, much less given protections such as extra fuel for maneuvering out of the way of wayward ASATs or space debris. Thus, commercial providers might find their own costs rising as it becomes necessary to implement protections - remembering that most militaries primarily rely on commercial communications providers, making these satellites potentially "soft," more easily damaged targets in war time. Further, already exorbitant insurance rates may well skyrocket if insurers were to feel that commercial assets might be more vulnerable to debris or possible preemptive strike. Rising costs would, in turn, make it more difficult for those nations who stand the most to gain from easier, cheaper access to space - the developing world - to continue to reap the benefits space provides for economic and public development.

In conclusion, U.S. moves to weaponize space are ongoing - and come burdened with a wide array of risks that cross the boundaries from military to political to economic - and apply not only to U.S. national security but also to global security and stability.

Thank you.

Notes

[1] Joint Publication 3-14 (JP-314), Joint Doctrine for Space Operations, Aug. 9, 2004, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/new_pubs/jp3_14.pdf.

[2] Counterspace Operations, Air Force Doctrine Document 2-2.1, Aug. 2, 2004, p. 33, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/afdd2_2_1.pdf.

[3] JP-314, Preface, p. i.

[4] Counterspace Operations Doctrine, pp. 31-41.

[5] Ibid, pp. 33-34.

[6] The U.S. Air Force Transformation Flight Plan, November 2003, p. 61, http://www.af.mil/library/posture/AF_TRANS_FLIGHT_PLAN-2003.pdf.

[7] Ibid, Appendix D, p. D3.

[8] William B. Scott, "Wargames Zero In On Knotty Milspace Issues," Aviation Week & Space Technology, Jan. 29, 2001, http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20010129/avi_stor.htm.