From resilience to response
A recent CSIS paper by retired Space Force Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt and senior fellow Kari Bingen notes that for much of its short history, the Space Force concentrated on the first two elements of its “competitive endurance” strategy: avoiding surprise by improving space-domain awareness and denying an adversary a first-mover advantage through resilient, proliferated satellite architectures.
The third element, “responsible counterspace campaigning,” was less visible. The acknowledgment of orbital weapons changes that equation, they wrote, giving the service a publicly acknowledged ability to respond rather than merely absorb an attack.
But disclosure is only the beginning. Burt and Bingen make the case that turning orbital weapons into a credible military capability will require better intelligence, targeting and battle-management systems; operational concepts for how the weapons would be used; exercises and potentially on-orbit demonstrations; and clearer rules on who has authority to employ them. They also say classification barriers will have to come down enough for the rest of the joint force and U.S. allies to incorporate the systems into military planning.
A weapon kept completely secret may preserve operational advantage, but it has limited deterrent value if an adversary does not understand broadly what it can do.
Schiess said the Space Force was monitoring in real time a recent close approach by a Russian spacecraft to a U.S. commercial satellite, a reference to the Russian Cosmos 2612 satellite’s maneuver near an Iceye imaging satellite supporting Ukraine. Schiess described the episode as an example of potential adversaries using activity in orbit to signal that “we have a capability,” and said the service is studying the encounter for lessons about what such behavior means for U.S. assets and those of allies and partners.
Schiess said some critics questioned whether the U.S. acknowledgment would encourage Russia and China to put weapons in orbit. His response was essentially that the competition is already underway as Beijing and Moscow have been developing counterspace capabilities for years.
The escalation problem
The harder question is what happens once those weapons are actually used.
Schiess acknowledged that the Space Force is still working through the escalation implications. Satellites once divided relatively neatly between strategic nuclear missions and conventional military operations increasingly serve both. Missile warning and communications systems, for example, can support both nuclear deterrence and conventional forces.
That means an attack intended to degrade conventional military operations could be interpreted as threatening nuclear command and control.
Schiess said the service is having those discussions with U.S. Strategic Command and senior Pentagon leaders but is still “working through what that exactly looks like and how that affects every operation.”
Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall put the problem more starkly during a recent Nuclear Threat Initiative discussion.
Kendall said space creates an “enormous first mover advantage” because adversaries can watch each other continuously. “The fight for space would be immediate, and it might be decisive,” he said. Regarding anti-satellite systems, Kendall said China is “well ahead,” although he cautioned that the U.S. has capabilities, including “soft kill” systems, that remain largely undisclosed.
Kendall argued that the increasingly blurred boundary between conventional and nuclear space systems raises the danger of unintended escalation. He suggested there could eventually be value in the U.S., China and Russia identifying some strategic satellites as effectively off limits, although doing so would require a level of dialogue that does not currently exist.
The U.S. spent years quietly building capabilities for a conflict in space. But the unresolved question is how much the Pentagon needs to reveal for that deterrence strategy to work without making an already unstable military competition in orbit even harder to manage.
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