The 5-year-old U.S. Space Force is moving quickly to confront what is becoming its priority challenge: the threat of anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) from foreign adversaries, including Russia and China.
The Space Force is building up its space defense architecture to help modernize the Space Surveillance Network (SSN), which monitors objects and potential threats in space. It comes as the military branch has struggled to close gaps in space domain awareness.
Officials are also exploring a myriad of other ways to improve detection and defenses, including launching hundreds of military satellites into low-Earth orbit, all part of an effort to get the Space Force ready by 2026 for a more contested environment above Earth. The U.S. has warned that Moscow is even developing a nuclear ASAT.
Charles Galbreath, a senior resident fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the American public should “understand what’s at stake if we go to conflict and an adversary starts attacking our space capabilities.”
“It’s not just going to be impacting the lives of our military members. It’s going to be impacting the lives of all of our citizens and people around the world,” he said. “There’s so much riding on protecting those space capabilities and the way of life that they enable.”
Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, commander of Space Systems Command, which is focused on acquiring new weapons systems at the Space Force, said earlier this year the efforts across the military branch are a “call to action.”
“The idea is a big sense of urgency. The adversary isn’t stopping,” he said at a May event. “We need to be prepared and we need to make sure the [defense systems] we have we can use.”
Experts warn that the threats from space are extremely worrying because they could knock out communications infrastructure and GPS, threatening systems for travel, banking and more that people use every day around the world.
And there are some 48,000 objects in space, a global space economy that is worth around $447 billion and only growing.
The Space Force has unveiled a strategy called “Competitive Endurance” that presents three tenets: The first two are focused on space domain awareness, while the third centers on developing technology to defend satellites and other at-risk space architecture.
The first two tenets are critical, and rely on the SSN, a global system of ground-based radars, optical sensors and six high-orbiting satellites. First developed in the late 1950s, it is now a legacy system in need of modernization, although it has been incrementally upgraded over the years.
The Space Force offered this month a roughly $100 million contract to Anduril Industries, a defense technology company looking to meet the 2026 deadline for a more modernized space defense architecture and command and control networks, something the U.S. has struggled to update for years at high costs.
Anduril, which has other contracts related to SSN building, wants to deploy its Lattice software platform to swap out aging communication systems with a more integrated and meshed network for enhanced data sharing across the sensor and radar network.
That will help against both ASATs and ballistic missile threats that the SSN detects through its wide array of systems and data feeds.
“All of that information has got to come together and be integrated into a coherent picture, and this is where we really need to do a significant upgrade,” said Galbreath of the Mitchell Institute. “In my opinion, the system that has done this for years has been out of date.”
But there are significant challenges. Bruce McClintock, lead of the RAND Corporation’s space enterprise initiative, said there have been “decades of delays and cost overruns with attempts to modernize the Space Surveillance Network.”
“I do see a need to accelerate progress and move past these underperforming past efforts,” he said. “The two steps to do that, to accelerate progress, are to increase accountability and increase resources for the Space Force.”
The Space Force has also put out a request to the private industry to mesh commercial satellites with government systems. It would allow the U.S. to leverage commercial systems for military reasons if needed.
Both the Defense Department and Space Force have outlined strategies to use commercial satellites, and there is already a working system with private industry under the Joint Commercial Operations office that would be significantly expanded under the new strategies unveiled this year.
“The speed and the innovation in the commercial sector, especially at this time in our history, is just incredible,” said John Plumb, assistant secretary of Defense for space policy, in April. “Shouldn’t we be trying to harness that?”
Other efforts include the Space Development Agency, another Space Force acquisition arm, which is pushing to deploy hundreds of small, cheap satellites in low-Earth orbit to enhance military satellite networks.
The smaller satellites would replace the current system of the six larger, high-orbiting satellites in geosynchronous Earth orbit that are expensive and easy targets.
But even in high orbit, the Space Force is developing a new system called Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC) for deep space tracking. DARC, which involves ground-based radar, aims to open three sites by the end of the decade, the first in western Australia.
Patrick Binning, mission area executive for national security space at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said his team helped research and develop the technology now being used for DARC, which he called a critical asset to keep tabs on adversaries in space.
Binning explained that space domain awareness is, for now, the most important aspect of above-Earth defense.
“If we don’t know where our competitor nations are operating, how fast they’re going, or where they’re going, we can’t even begin to defend ourselves, and so that’s step one,” he said.
The Space Force, however, has also acknowledged that it must be able to defend against threats in orbit like ASATs.
Four countries have developed ASATs: the U.S., Russia, India and China. The U.S. has a moratorium on future ASAT tests.
China has emphasized space deterrence in its strategic documents and has fielded capabilities to target satellites, including kill vehicles for a kinetic strike, robots, cyber and electronic warfare technology and even laser systems.
In 2021, Russia tested an ASAT that shattered one of its own satellites into some 1,500 pieces of debris. And earlier this year, U.S. officials publicly warned for the first time that Russia was developing a nuclear ASAT.
Diplomacy would likely be the best option in the event of a nuclear ASAT, experts say. The United Nations Security Council has tried to take action to restrain Russia’s potential nuclear weapon in space but faced resistance from Moscow, which has veto power. If Russia were to deploy such a weapon, it would be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 preventing weapons of mass destruction in space.
There are limited existing options to defending against such a threat, as space has long been viewed as a sanctuary, with heightened concern only amplifying in the past decade. As of now, satellites have limited fuel and maneuverability to avoid threats, and there are no deployed defense systems to take out an ASAT.
Still, ideas are out there: A space system or satellite could be equipped with a laser to target potential threats, or the U.S. could increase propulsion for satellites to avoid an attack.
While the Space Force is aiming to counter these emerging threats, it also faces an uphill battle in Washington.
The Space Force says it needs a lot more funding than its roughly $30 billion budget to meet the pacing challenge and expanded mission.
McClintock, of RAND Corporation, said for the Space Force to develop space defense systems, that needs to change.
“The Space Force does need an increased budget because it’s underfunded to accomplish the missions it’s assigned,” he said. But “it doesn’t happen overnight, so it’s going to take some time to grow to be able to use those kind of capabilities.”
