In a recent 60 Minutes story about U.S. Air Force Space Command and the threat to American satellites, correspondent David Martin intones, “Another thing that surprised us is that there’s no way to effectively armor an important satellite like this or to conceal its location from attack.” The program went on to note that China demonstrated an anti-satellite system in 2007 in a test that became one of the worst debris-generating events in space history. Several thousand fragments were generated when China fired a kinetic kill vehicle and hit an old Chinese weather satellite. The Chinese demonstration should have brought home that not only are American satellites vulnerable, they are in the crosshairs of other powers.
In addition to highlighting the vulnerability of American space systems (and indeed, all space systems, whatever their nationality, suffer from the same basic fragility), the story demonstrated the simultaneous heavy dependence of the United States upon those space systems. And that dependence extends not only to the U.S. military, but also to banks, power stations, and even farmers.
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is reportedly seeking to replace the Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) that provide the U.S. with navigation and timing data, but so long as the U.S. military expects to fight most of its wars on distant shores, there will be an asymmetric dependence upon space systems. The reality is that the U.S. relies on satellites for not only communications, but also for weather data and intelligence information because it is the only way that it can access that information constantly and on demand from the other side of the planet.
By contrast, the People’s Republic of China, Russia, and Iran are largely focused on operations in nearby territories, allowing them to rely much more heavily on more Earth-bound sources, such as listening posts, aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, fishing boats, special operations forces, or spies. While the U.S. can reduce its reliance on satellites for some of its needed information, it will still need to access space more than potential adversaries for the foreseeable future.
Under these circumstances, it is essential to make clear that attacks or interference with American satellites is as much a threat to America’s national security and interests as attacks on American naval vessels or interference with key parts of American national infrastructure. No potential adversary should think that they can threaten American space systems with impunity.
