Issue 81

15 Sep 2023: The United States Department of Defense (DoD) released an unclassified whitepaper, “Space Policy Review and Strategy on Protection of Satellites.” The 19 page document <editor’s note: recommend reading this yourselves as well> provides a review of space policy and describes the Department of Defense’s approach to protecting and defending space systems and protecting the Joint Force from adversary hostile use of space.

– The 2022 and 2023 National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) mandated the review of the US space policy and the report. The report itself outlines the United States’ preparations to defend its space assets from attack if war breaks out in space.

-DoD Assistant Secretary for Space Policy John Plumb noted that releasing the report in an unclassified format is “a key step towards normalizing space as an operational domain.”

– The report identifies DoD’s key priorities in regards to space systems:

• Assure critical space-based missions by accelerating the transition to more resilient architectures and by protecting and defending critical systems against counterspace threats
• Strengthen the ability to detect and attribute hostile acts in, from, and to space (improve Space Domain Awareness)
• Protect the Joint Force from adversary hostile uses of space.

– The report identifies China as the strongest adversary and risk to US operations in space, followed by Russia. Both nations have extensive counterspace capabilities, including direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons and jamming technology.

– Importantly, the report also addresses adversary use of their own space systems to threaten allied forces operating in other domains.

– As potential adversaries increase their use of space-based services to support their combat capability, operations to deny hostile use of space could reduce an adversary’s ability to conduct attacks against the United States and its allies and partners.

– Specific to China the report notes: The PRC is building a space architecture to enhance its ability to fight and win a modern military conflict. The PLA owns and operates roughly half of the world’s space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites. Recent improvements to the PLA’s ISR fleet enhance its ability to monitor forces across the globe, including U.S. expeditionary forces, increasing the PLA’s ability to conduct long-range strikes against U.S. and allied forces. The PRC likely intends to leverage these advancements to challenge the U.S. military’s ability to conduct joint operations in the Indo-Pacific region.

– Joint Force space operations could deny an adversary’s space and counterspace capabilities and services using a variety of reversible and irreversible means, reducing the effectiveness and lethality of adversary forces across all domains. Operations to deny adversary hostile use of space could originate in any domain and target on-orbit, ground, cyber, and/or link segments to reduce the full spectrum of an adversary’s ability to exploit the space domain

-The report states, “DoD will leverage a breadth of options across all operational domains to deter aggression and, if deterrence fails, to prevail in conflict.”