Standoff strike. Defensive escorts. Deception and dispersal.
The Space Force spelled out how it plans to fight a war in space in a new document last week, defining and refreshing many terms already familiar to military planners as USSF leaders seek to “normalize” orbital warfare.
“There’s been this undercurrent of ‘Space is special’ for decades—it’s classified,” said retired Air Force Col. Jennifer Reeves, now a fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “And I think this is trying to do the exact opposite. It’s saying, ‘No, no, we are a warfighting service the way everybody else is a warfighting service. There is a joint lexicon here that applies to us as well, and this is what it is.’ And then they go into a deeper dive on some of the things on how it’s specific in space.”
The new “Space Warfighting: A Framework for Planners” lays out Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman’s vision as proclaimed at the AFA Warfare Symposium that the service would do “whatever it takes” to achieve space superiority.
“Space control comprises the activities required to contest and control the space domain,” the framework states. “The desired outcome of space control operations is space superiority. Space control consists of offensive and defensive actions, referred to as counterspace operations.”
The document lists more than a dozen types of counterspace operation:
- Orbital pursuit, or maneuvering close to an adversary spacecraft before employing weapons
- Standoff strike, or space- or terrestrial-based long-range fires that can attack without needing to get close to the target
- Electromagnetic or cyber attacks on the networks that link an adversary on Earth to their satellites in orbit
- Strikes on terrestrial facilities an adversary needs to access space or control its assets in space
- Escort, or “Dedicated protection for friendly spacecraft using space-to-space capabilities.”
- Suppression of adversary targeting
- Passive defensive operations like deception, dispersal, and mobility
The Space Force does not yet have the ability to perform all the operations it lists—the framework mentions hitting terrestrial targets with space-based fires, for example—but by taking an expansive approach, the service is preparing Guardians—and the rest of the Pentagon—to think differently about how they use space, said retired Space Force Col. Charles Galbreath, also a fellow with the Mitchell Institute.
“In five years, we’ll look back at this document and say, ‘We have evolved our thinking even further,’” Galbreath said. “So this is a good snapshot and a forward vector, because some of these things are not here today, but they are things that people are thinking about and that might be essential. And they’re also things that our adversaries could do to us.”
The document dives into the functions necessary to perform counterspace operations, such as communication, maneuver, intelligence, command and control, and targeting—all familiar terms in joint doctrine.
“It’s trying to say, ‘OK, Space Force planners, these are the terms you should be using when we’re talking about warfighting in space,’ and to help organize our thinking and our plans and strategies,” Galbreath said.
At the same time, it acknowledges space-specific considerations. Planners have to develop new rules of engagement and measures of effectiveness, and consider the physics of spaceflight and the impact of debris in orbit.
“It’s this balance of trying to use the common lexicon so everyone understands where we are,” Reeves said. “But then on the other side, there are some unique characteristics of the domain, much like there are unique characteristics of every domain … that we have to take into consideration.”
Space Superiority
The new framework defines terms and their importance for the joint force.
“Space superiority allows military forces in all domains to operate at a time and place of their choosing without prohibitive interference from space or counterspace threats, while also denying the same to an adversary,” the document states.
Given the vastness of space, it is unlikely any actor will achieve complete superiority at all times. So the framework calls for “concentrating effects” and doing so at“the time and place of our choosing,” just as Air Force leaders do for air superiority.
Achieving superiority is fundamental to the rest of the U.S. military, Saltzman asserts in the document. “Space superiority is not only a necessary precondition for Joint Force success but also something for which we must be prepared to fight,” Saltzman wrote. “Gained and maintained, it unlocks superiority in other domains, fuels Coalition lethality, and fortifies troop survivability. It is therefore the basis from which the Joint Force projects power, deters aggression, and secures the homeland.”