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COVER STORY
Space and Global Stability
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| The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation system. |
Our Orbiting Achilles’ Heel
A Cold War-style deterrence mentality has generally kept satellites safe from physical attack, with the security of satellites usually ensured by the force of international law and the implicit threat of retaliation.
Deterrence and law might have worked when the only space powers were either industrialized democracies or one-party regimes that operated within a general set of rules. But in the post-Cold War age of rogue regimes and insurgencies, an increasingly bold Chinese government has attacked American satellites and demonstrated a commitment to antisatellite capabilities. The lowering of launch costs that make space flight affordable to individuals with a modest amount of cash—to say nothing of electronic hack attacks and denial-of-service operations from the ground— have changed the rules.
Governments and organizations are building cheap, asymmetrical capabilities to threaten our space vulnerabilities. Deputy Director for National Intelligence (DNI) Thomas Fingar says that “growing counterspace threats” are among the top broad dangers confronting the United States. Threats to American space assets rank with terrorism, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, cyber attacks on computer networks, and rogue regime nuclear missile programs, according to Fingar.
“Our adversaries understand our dependence on space-based capabilities, and we must be ready to detect, track, characterize, attribute, predict, and respond to any threat to our space infrastructure,” Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, recently told the House Armed Services Committee.
The safety of civilian and military satellites is increasingly imperiled as rogue regimes like North Korea, dictatorships with no civil checks and balances like the People’s Republic of China, and state sponsors of terrorism like Iran become space powers.
Without U.S. dominance of space, global stability efforts will be at the mercy of states that don’t play by the rules.
Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Space?
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| Global Hawk provides global stability. The U.S. increasingly relies on unmanned aerial vehicles to operate worldwide. UAV operations depend on the security of space satellites. |
The presence of new actors in space is prompting policymakers to readjust their Cold War space strategy to the age of insurgency.
The lowering barrier to space entry makes it possible for terrorists and others to wage space insurgency. North Korea’s ballistic missile capability shows a strong potential to wage the equivalent of insurgent IED attacks in space. Such an attack would be characterized by cheap, low-tech delivery systems that pack lethal but militarily insignificant punches; their power lies in the ability to disrupt normal operations, intimidate through propaganda, and deny areas of operation to the United States and its allies. Think of the mayhem in the world’s cities and financial markets if the communication satellites that relay financial transactions and internet services were suddenly disrupted.
Acting like a Hezbollah suicide vest in space, a shrapnel warhead could send thousands of shards of metal or other particles into the lanes of low-orbit satellites (between about 200 and 900 miles up) that circle the Earth at 17,000 miles an hour. At such speeds, even grains of sand could destroy a spacecraft. Concerns about shrapnel contamination of low-earth orbit paths helped prompt the Clinton administration to cancel a missile defense system in the 1990s that would have thrown “pebbles” into the paths of incoming Soviet nuclear warheads.
Conceptual Lag
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| Iraqi boys check out an American serviceman’s global positioning systems device. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images) |
The U.S. military has lagged behind new military space security developments. In 1999, Congress created a bipartisan Space Commission to issue findings and recommendations on military challenges in space. The commission’s unanimous report appeared in January 2001, but the new Bush administration had barely named its own appointees to most senior defense posts when al-Qaeda attacked on September 11. Though Bush’s new defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had chaired the Space Commission and strongly endorsed its report, observers say the 9/11 attacks diverted American attention from threats in space to the more immediate terrorist threat on the ground.
Since its creation in 1947, the U.S. Air Force has been heavily involved in military space matters. However, congressional dissatisfaction with the Air Force’s handling of space developments prompted the creation of the Space Commission. The commission unanimously concluded that the Defense Department was “not yet on a course to develop the space cadre the nation needs.”
In 2003, an Air Force-funded study by the RAND Corporation found that “some conceptual and organizational roadblocks both within and outside the Air Force… have long impeded a more rapid growth of U.S. military space capability.”
“Outside” the Air Force included Congress. No law existed to give any military service the statutory responsibility to lead space operations. “While some would say that the Air Force has not been a good steward of space,” Brig. Gen. Simon “Pete” Worden, planning directorate chief of the Air Force Space Command, said in early 2001, “the Air Force does not have an assigned responsibility to be the ‘steward’ of space.” Nor did it have the budget to do so. Meanwhile the Navy, applying its maritime traditions to space, maintained a large role for itself.
As defense secretary, Rumsfeld worked with Congress to iron out some of those problems after 9/11.
Power Projection from Space
Currently, U.S. space assets simply support military operations and global stability activity on the ground. They do not directly project power. As the RAND report noted, “U.S. space capabilities today are more analogous to the nascent air power of the pre-World War I era, when the missions of military aviation were limited to such support functions as battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance, than to the more developed state of the AAF [Army Air Force] on the eve of its attainment of independence from the Army.”
The Air Force, Navy, Army, and U.S. Space Command are developing precision weapons systems that can strike any point on earth from space within 60 minutes of an order. The Air Force calls the concept of operations Global Strike or Global Persistent Attack, and seeks the capability within the next seven years. A related Navy program would develop a conventionally armed Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile for global strike capability. The Army is developing the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, which can fly 3,700 miles in 35 minutes.
Senior U.S. officials want a speedy precision weapon to deter or retaliate against attacks on satellites. Asked by Rep. Terry Everett (R-AL) what could be done if China continued to try to blind American spacecraft with lasers, Assistant Secretary of Defense Vickers referred to a prompt global strike capability.
Most of the envisioned global strike systems are launched into the upper atmosphere from sea or land, and are not based in permanent orbit. An orbiting constellation of satellites armed with titanium, uranium, or tungsten rods that can strike any surface target has not been tested. In theory, such rods, propelled toward Earth at more than 7,000 miles per hour, would strike targets with a bunker-busting shockwave equivalent to a small nuclear bomb. Though no law or treaty prevents the U.S. military from deploying weapons in space since President Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty in 2002, no political consensus exists for the United States to project kinetic power from space. European allies oppose the Air Force’s doctrine of space superiority, but they do not say who they would like to see reign supreme in space or who would counter any threats in space.
Rival Space Forces
Several governments that lack public accountability mechanisms are developing space systems that can challenge and even destroy American and Western satellites.
“If present trends in the global development of counter-space capabilities continue, Russia and China will have an increasing ability to target U.S. military, intelligence and navigation satellites to degrade our command and control systems, and our ability to effectively use our precision weapons systems,” Deputy DNI Fingar said in testimony to Congress.
“We’ve seen the Chinese… demonstrate at least a threshold capability to take a satellite down because they’ve done that,” according to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the ranking minority member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Moscow could cripple Western space assets within hours. “The Russians demonstrated this capability several years ago, and given our dependence on that overhead architecture [in space], serious damage to our capabilities could result over the couple-of-day period,” says Fingar.
The Chinese government places antisatellite capabilities near the top of its list. In 2006, Beijing fired high-powered lasers to blind American intelligence satellites. In January 2007, China publicly demonstrated a powerful antisatellite capability when it destroyed one of its own inactive weather satellites with a ground-based kinetic kill vehicle, polluting an orbiting field with thousands of pieces of dangerous space junk and creating a navigational hazard in space. Some observers have noted the coincidence between the altitude of the dead satellite and that of certain American and allied spy satellites. The Chinese destroyed a target that orbited about 530 miles above the Earth at the operational altitude of U.S. and Japanese imagery intelligence satellites, according to Globalsecurity.org.
“Counter-command, control, and sensor systems, to include communications satellite jammers and ASAT [antisatellite] weapons, are among Beijing’s highest military priorities,” DNI J. Michael McConnell said in recent testimony before the Senate.
State sponsors of terrorism are developing their own space capabilities. North Korea is believed to have had space launch capability for a decade. On February 5, 2008, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad personally launched what he called a “space launch vehicle.” Tehran plans to send a domestically made satellite, called Omid, into orbit by mid-2009.
Private Contractors Play Important Roles
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| A former combatant of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) uses his cell phone to check on the market price for seaweed from a remote island in the Southern Philippines. He is one of 28,000 former MNLF fighters that USAID helped make the successful transition to productive enterprise. |
The United States is the most heavily space-dependent nation in the world, according to the Department of Defense (DoD), and the private sector is central to what the Pentagon calls the “space defense sector.” That sector includes both space- and ground-based systems and facilities that support launch, operation, maintenance, specialized logistics, control systems, and other functions for Department of Defense users.
With its growing appetite for bandwidth, the Pentagon increasingly relies on private contractors and satellite services to provide its space assets. Commercial satellites carry the overwhelming load of the U.S. military’s communication, a reversal from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, often dubbed the “first space war,” in which DoD and NATO satellites bore about 85 percent of the traffic. The ratio is inverse today, with the Pentagon relying on private satellites for most of its space communication needs.
Even highly classified military information is channeled through private satellites. Contractors include Intelsat, Ltd., of Bermuda; PanAmSat Corporation of Connecticut (now an Intelsat subsidiary); and Inmarsat, a London-based mobile satellite services provider. Satellite builder Orbital Sciences Corporation of Virginia, which pioneered the private space-launch vehicle, provides missile defense support for the U.S. military, among other services.
Intelsat is the world’s largest provider of fixed satellite services, with a global fleet of 53 satellites and seven teleports and terrestrial facilities. The satellite fleets cover more than 99 percent of the world’s population. “Our customers include some of the world’s leading media and communications companies, multinational corporations, Internet service providers, and government/military organizations,” according to a corporate fact sheet. Intelsat began as an international organization and was privatized in 2001. A British private equity firm owns 76 percent of the stock.
In 2003, the DoD awarded a contract to Eutelsat S.A. of France. Eutelsat’s 23 satellites provide coverage of the Middle East, Africa, Europe, India, and much of the Americas. Industry analysts say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq helped save the private communication satellite sector from its capacity glut, with more modern transponders able to transmit compressed data.
The threat to U.S. security, and global stability, industry sources say, is the potential for third parties to cut off American access to foreign-owned satellites and ground stations for political or military reasons. French satellite service provider Eutelsat, for example, is reported to give excellent service to the U.S. military, even in support of politically contentious military operations as in Iraq.
Privatization of satellite services is a positive trend, but the downside is that almost anyone with money can become a space power. Washington has yet to devise doctrinal, legal, and practical countermeasures to stop the access of undesirable parties to space.
The Rise of a Private Space Launch Sector
Commercialization of space has increased communications capability and lowered costs for business and governments. Industry sources say that commercial satellites are extremely cost-effective for the taxpayer. Leasing a transponder on a private satellite costs about 1 percent of the $200 million it takes to build a military satellite and place it in orbit. An activity-based costing study would probably show additional savings, meaning that the Pentagon could dramatically lower its costs or exponentially increase its space assets for the same amount of money as it now spends building and launching its own orbiters.
As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has backed away from its leadership role in orbital space issues, private companies have teamed with foreign governments to build space launch facilities abroad. One example is Space Adventures, a Virginia-based company that partnered with the Russian government and one of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on separate businesses. The firm transported businessmen to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and is building a spaceport in Ras al-Khaimah, the northernmost emirate in the UAE.
When Adversaries Use Our Space Assets
Terrorists do not even need their own rockets or satellites to exploit space power. They simply use existing U.S., European, Russian, and other assets currently in orbit. Insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan already use GPS to attack coalition forces. Terrorist exploitation of the Internet is well known. Wahhabi Islamists at Qatar’s Al Jazeera, the Iranian government, and the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela all use American and European satellites for their global TV propaganda networks. Terrorists also reportedly use Google Earth imagery for their planning and operations.
The military has invested in satellite security, but Congress isn’t convinced that enough is being done. “Do military contingency plans and exercises consider satellite attack scenarios?” Rep. Terry Everett (R-AL), ranking member on the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee, asked U.S. military and intelligence leaders. “I am told we have workarounds and alternatives, but I have found that when I pull the thread, there is little detail.”
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From the May/June 2008 issue of Serviam.
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