AURORA, Colo.—The Space Force “will do whatever it takes” to control the space domain, including destroying adversaries’ satellites when and if necessary, vowed Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman in a keynote address kicking off the AFA Warfare Symposium.
“Space superiority is our prime imperative,” Saltzman declared, “and we do not yet have the service we need.”
In perhaps the most direct message yet from a senior leader on offensive capability in space, Saltzman said March 3 that the Pentagon is pressing forward with offensive space operations and capabilities, a sea change after years of reluctance to discuss the topic publicly.
Saltzman used the term “space superiority” more than a dozen times in his 26-minute talk, hammering home the role of the Space Force as a warfighting service while warning that more change and resources are needed to fulfill that role.
Citing his six “core truths” about space and warfighting, Saltzman defined space superiority as being able to defend U.S. and allied assets in orbit and at the same time protect U.S. forces in all other domains from space-enabled attack—and the Space Force must be ready and able to do so with force if necessary.
“Space superiority is the fundamental difference between a civil space agency and a warfighting space service,” he said. “It is the distinction between a company’s employees operating commercial satellites and Guardians conducting combat operations to achieve joint objectives.”
Saltzman reiterated his oft-expressed view that the Space Force must not be seen as merely an enabler of the other services, but that it must be a warfighting service that controls its domain through a range of capabilities.
“Space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain, employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities by disruptions and degradation—even destruction if necessary,” he said. “It includes things like orbital warfare, electromagnetic warfare. Its counter-space operations can be employed for both offensive and defensive purposes, at the direction of the combatant commands.”
Analysts and academics have noted the need for offensive space weapons and senior Space Force leaders have been more willing to comment on the topic in the recent past. Saltzman has referred to “responsible counter-space campaigning,” for example, while U.S. Space Command boss Gen. Stephen N. Whiting has said “space fires” is among his top priorities.
But hesitations about openly discussing offensive space persist among Space Force personnel who grew up believing long-lasting, destructive actions in space—which produce clouds of orbiting debris—as the actions of reckless rogue states rather than responsible nations.
Saltzman acknowledged those concerns in a media roundtable after his speech. The destruction left behind after land, air, or sea battles doesn’t continue to move at 17,000 miles per hour as it will in space, he said. Yet there can be times when destruction in space could be warrented, he said.
“I am far more enamored by systems that deny, disrupt, degrade. I think there’s a lot of room to leverage systems focused on those ‘D’ words, if you will,” he said. “The destroy word comes at a cost in terms of debris, if you think about space, and so we may get pushed into the corner where we need to execute some of those options. But I’m really focused on weapons that deny, disrupt, degrade. Those can have tremendous mission impacts with far less degradation than a way that could affect blue systems.” (Blue systems refer to friendly forces in military exercises, while red systems refer to adversaries.)
In the past, Saltzman has classified counter-space capabilities is either on orbit or terrestrial represented by these categories:
- Kinetic, destructive weapons
- Directed energy weapons
- Radio frequency energy and jamming systems
China is pursuing all of these, while the U.S. is not, he told reporters, but he did not specify which capabilities the Space Force doesn’t have.
Asked if he would like to have all six kinds of weapons at his disposal for space control and superiority, Saltzman said his “personal preference about it doesn’t matter,” but hinted that it could be beneficial.
“The mix of weapons based on the targets is always a military consideration, and when I look at the space-enabled targeting architecture that [China] has built, it’s pretty impressive,” he said. “It’s in all orbital regimes. It’s in the hundreds of satellites. And to give the president options requires a mix of systems to be able to go across the full spectrum of operations to all orbital regimes. There are some things that are purpose-built for low-Earth orbit effects, others in GEO. And so the more weapons in the mix we have, the more options we can offer.”
Many of those weapons, if they exist, remain classified, and Saltzman admitted to being “cagey” when asked what the Space Force does and doesn’t have. He was not cagey, however, about the need for space superiority—and for the Space Force to be able to achieve it.
“We need to conduct day-to-day operations while we prepare for the high-end fight,” he said from the podium. “Everything we’re doing, every new initiative, every project, every task, is designed to get us what we need, where we need to go while threading that needle.”
Among those initiatives, Saltzman highlighted the service’s new Mission Deltas, Officer Training Course, Operational Test and Training Infrastructure, component commands, and Space Futures Command. It’s a sizable list, he acknowledged, and one that is putting a “heavy strain” on Guardians. But the efforts are critical.
“Other senior leaders will say, ‘Hey, the Space Force has so many things going on. We need to catch our breath. Why can’t we just slow down, wait a while, consolidate some of our gains?’” Saltzman said. “And I really do wish it was that easy. … But the answer is, the Space Force we have is still not the Space Force we need.”
