Space Ops: Prospects For Safe Space Grow More Challenging

In written answers to senators, U.S. Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth said he would direct that a new National Defense Strategy “ensures that space is safe for our civil, commercial, and international partners to operate as part of a broader American push into space.”

But his own testimony and recent Pentagon documents suggest that achieving the “safe” part may be a challenge.

The Department of the Air Force, in a report released Jan. 13 that looks at its future, paints a picture of space as becoming a cold or potentially hot battlefield.

“By 2050, space will be recognized as the decisive domain for almost all military operations,“ the report says. “There will be significant numbers of adversary terrestrially based and space-based weapons that can attack space systems and ready for use with little or no warning.”

Just weeks earlier, the Pentagon, in an annual report to Congress on China’s military development, also flagged several technology advances that suggest a weaponization of space may be underway. China “has developed and probably will continue to develop weapons for use against satellites in orbit to degrade and deny adversary space capabilities,” the report says, noting those include electronic warfare and directed energy systems.

The report raised concerns that China is also looking at ways to inspect and potentially disrupt other countries’ spacecraft. That echoed comments from the head of the Royal Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Rich Knighton, who in September said a Chinese SY12-02 spacecraft maneuvered around one of Britain’s Skynet military communication satellites.

The Air and Space Force outlook to 2050 says the stationing of nuclear anti-satellite weapons in space cannot be ruled out, even if that is not the baseline assumption.

Hegseth signaled he would back efforts to ensure the U.S. would be postured to deal with that kind of operating environment. “Winning the competition in space and establishing space superiority is critical for continuing the American way of life through the 21st century,” he said, adding that would include offensive and defensive space control capabilities.

What changes could that mean? “The Space Force of 2050 must be more capable, more survivable, and more integrated than anything that precedes it. This will require a major and transformative investment in the Space Force,” the service document says.

The service will require a greater number of more sophisticated counterspace weapons that are in orbit or based on the ground, it said. Some of the issues that air defense now face with the ubiquity of battlefield drones, where large number of interceptors are needed to protect against threats, will emerge in space, the report suggests. “There will be a high premium for deep magazines that can neutralize a large number of threat satellites in a short period of time.” Just as military officials are looking at directed energy systems to deal with the abundance of drones, the report suggests DE systems—space- or terrestrially based—would be attractive for counterspace operations.

The U.S. also needs to have inventory depth in other respects, with backup systems on Earth “or concealed in orbit” that could be called into action in times of crisis or conflict.

A critical function, according to the Air and Space Force report, will be knowing what is going on through robust space domain awareness and control activities. “The potential for signature management, deception, and unwarned launches or maneuvers will make this function challenging, but it is a prerequisite for deterring or defeating an attack on U.S. and allied space assets that could be decisive.”