Editor's note: Clayton Swope is deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project and senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC. He was previously a Congressional staffer and worked for the CIA. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion pieces on CNN.
CNN —
Earlier this month, senior U.S. officials publicly shared alarming concerns that Russian anti-satellite weapons could render parts of space critical to the U.S. economy and national security unusable for up to a year.
Center for Strategic and International Studies
clayton swope
For the United States to work with international partners to stop Russia from developing this weapon, we need to recognize an inconvenient truth. That means that the use of weapons by an enemy nation could prevent the U.S. military from accessing some or all of its space capabilities. Such a loss would be devastating to U.S. national security and, more broadly, to our way of life.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) hinted at this new national security threat in February. The White House quickly acknowledged this, noting that no such weapons were deployed and did not pose an immediate threat.
Successful U.S. military operations are predicated on the availability of space, where satellites perform all or some critical functions such as navigation, missile warning, and communications. Some of these features are specifically described as “no-fail” missions.
NASA
Destruction of the satellite would cause unimaginable disruption to our daily lives. Here, the NanoRacks-Remove Debris satellite was deployed from the International Space Station in his 2018.
The last time the military had to fight without satellite communications was during the Korean War, and the first communications satellites were launched in the 1960s during the Vietnamese occupation. GPS started in his 1970s.
If GPS satellites are jammed, Marine platoons will be forced to navigate using compasses and maps, similar to those used by their great-grandfathers on Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima during World War II. It's a method. Without satellites, the United States would have a hard time detecting intercontinental ballistic missile launches or nuclear explosions.
The disruption to our daily lives is equally unimaginable, affecting our ability to communicate with each other and move from place to place. In addition to providing location and location information for many apps on your phone, GPS is the gold standard for time. Power companies, communications networks, and financial institutions all rely on the precise timing provided by GPS.
Additionally, commercial air travel is becoming increasingly dependent on GPS. In late April, international airline Finnair suspended flights to Estonia's second city, Tartu, for a month due to suspected GPS interference from Russia. Internet access and connectivity for remote communities, planes, ships, and emergency personnel all also rely on satellites.
Even before the revelations about Russia's anti-satellite nuclear weapons program, there were signs of global recognition that the use of certain space weapons was bad for everyone. No country has conducted a destructive anti-satellite test in nearly three years.
In December 2022, with 155 countries voting in favor, the United Nations adopted a U.S.-led resolution supporting a moratorium on testing of destructive anti-satellite weapons. But these are peacetime trends related to weapons testing. In wartime, China or Russia could decide to use weapons that risk disrupting their own access to space in order to deny the United States any advantage in space.
Russia's veto and China's abstention from voting on an April U.S.- and Japan-sponsored U.N. resolution banning nuclear weapons in space indicate that both countries are considering such capabilities. may be suggesting.
Russia and China's stance on the vote is puzzling, since nuclear weapons in space are already prohibited under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which is signed by more than 130 countries, including Russia and China.
But the Russian government defended its veto, with Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzia calling the UN draft a “dirty spectacle” and a “cynical ploy”. (Russia and China proposed an unsuccessful amendment calling on all countries to ban the use of all weapons in outer space.)
To address this risk, the U.S. military and policymakers need to rethink basic assumptions about space availability and consider worst-case scenarios. You need to identify which critical missions can only be carried out in space, or which missions are best suited to be carried out only in space, and allocate limited resources to protecting and adding resiliency to the most critical space-only capabilities.
The proposed defense budget for 2025 does not reflect the scale and urgency of the need to counter space threats and protect space systems. It's also important to learn how to operate satellites in a space environment where debris can clog up and radiation levels can be increased by space weapons.
For space missions that can be performed differently, it's time to learn or relearn backup methods and integrate those backups into military operations. Government watchdogs have found that efforts to find alternatives to GPS could be improved.
When military planners identify capabilities that can only be performed by satellites, leaders must consider how to fight without those capabilities or with satellites severely degraded. Better to think about what it would be like today than to consider it in the middle of a war. And by proving that we can fight even without space, we can deter actions that would destroy space. Because the United States can maintain military effectiveness without space, adversaries may think it's not worth the hassle.
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According to the protagonist of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune, “The power to destroy something is to have absolute control over it.'' At least three countries can effectively pursue space exploration. One is the United States and his other two countries are not our friends.
If China or Russia were to win or lose, they would jeopardize their access to and use of space, cripple many of our most important national security and defense capabilities, and leave us vulnerable. The stakes are too great to think that we won't get caught up in the situation. events of armed conflict.
Preparing for the worst requires a two-pronged approach. To redouble our efforts to protect and maintain access to space in the harsh space environment, and to consider ways to operate without it.
