Washington: United States and its allies have conceded as never before around fears of growing Russian and Chinese threats to space, Department of Defense (DoD) and outside experts say. But fundamental disagreements about how best to respond to the threats remain, with US allies facing much stronger domestic political resistance to the idea of space war.
This is creating a bit of schizophrenia in public messaging by Pentagon space leaders.
Maj John Shaw, head of Space Force’s Space Operations Command, walked that tightrope during a panel discussion on allied space activities by stressing the need for the US to focus in the near-term on ensuring resiliency of current space systems to resist and deter attacks.
“The biggest challenge we have right now is protecting and defending capabilities that were built for a benign domain. And so the focus has to be on making those more resilient, so they are there for the warfighter and they are not an easy target,” Shaw told the Secure World Foundation (SWF) Summit for Space Sustainability.
To be sure, Shaw reiterated the Trump administration’s mantra that the new US military space organizations are needed because Russia and China have moved first to threaten US space assets and weaponize space.
“Pretty much in any domain in human history, from a military perspective you invite conflict when there’s weakness, and I believe you deter conflict when there is strength,” he said.
Indeed, the US contention that Russia and China are ‘at fault’ in creating a military space race is a subject of some debate, given that from a technological viewpoint both countries have until recently lagged behind US military space capabilities. The same can be said for the repeated DoD assertions that up to now space was a wholly “benign” domain.
The military officers from France, Canada and Japan on the SWF panel agreed with Shaw that threats from Russia and China are growing, and asserted that those threats are the drivers of their own pursuit of new military space capabilities. But they also were united in asserting that their own military build-ups (and their efforts to cooperate with the United States) should in no way be seen as aggressive or offence-focused.
“I would say that it’s not the fact, in itself, that we have Space Forces or Space Commands which is concerning. It is what you do with this,” said Maj. Gen. Michel Friedling, the first commander of France’s new Space Command, created in September 2019.
Japan’s new 20-person Space Operations Squadron is also focused on Space Situational Awareness (SSA), said Maj. Gen. Hiroaki Sakanashi, director general of the Project Promotion Group for Emerging Domains and Programs, Air Staff Office, in Japan’s Self Defence Force. The new unit is completely in line with Tokyo’s long-standing peace-oriented foreign and defence policies, he stressed.
Brig. Gen. Mike Adamson, director general for space at Canada’s Department of National Defence, said the increased importance of satellites to the economy and civil well-being has been a key driver for Canada in shaping its space operations. This is reflected, he said, in Ottawa’s emphasis on SSA capabilities and sharing information with allied nations.
