Published Airpower Journal - Winter 1993
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GEN COLIN POWELL, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the United States learned from Operation Desert Storm that it had "to achieve total control of space if [it is] to succeed on the modern battlefield."¹ This statement may sound immoderate, but it actually ranks on the modest side of the stream of relevant prophecy. US policy in the 1990s is to maintain clear maritime and aerospace superiority, not mere advantage.² The intriguing question urgently in need of exploration is just what benefit "total control" of space yields to its possessor.

The theory and practice of US military behavior in World War II matched a less extravagant version of General Powell's claim, with air substituted for space and with the term total deleted. From Guadalcanal to Okinawa, the US theory of victory in the war with Japan was based upon the value of superior air power. The carrier-poor United States of 1942 sought compensation via air bases on land (e.g., Henderson Field on Guadalcanal in the Solomons),³ while the carrier-rich United States of 1944-45 sought island bases from which the strategic air bombardment of Japan could be conducted or escorted (e.g., Saipan, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima).⁴

Prophets often have insight, but--almost as often--zeal for anything new threatens to unbalance judgment. The past few years have seen no lack of prophecy on behalf of the military significance of space prowess. Four examples serve well enough as markers for a bold claim for the importance of space. First, writing in 1988--the penultimate year of the cold war--Simon P. Worden and Bruce P. Jackson noted that "the Soviets seem to recognize that the primary measure of national power in the decades ahead will be the ability to place large vehicles up and out of the Earth's gravity well."⁵ This comment is typical of the excessive claims for new, allegedly dominant, weapons. Similar claims have been advanced in the past for gunpowder for field artillery, for naval battle fleets, for bomber fleets, and for mechanized land power.

Second, also in 1988, Gen John L. Piotrowski--then the commander in chief of US Space Command--advised that "the side that loses the space battle will very likely be unable to meet its objectives on land, at sea, or in the atmosphere."⁶ This observation is plausible. Indeed, following the experience of Desert Storm in 1991, it assumes even a commonplace quality. As the US armed forces place ever heavier reliance upon space systems for communication, navigation, early warning, over-the-horizon intelligence gathering, and meteorology, Piotrowski's claim acquires the status of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Third, though talking still very much in a cold war context in 1987, Adm Carlisle A. H. Trost--then the chief of naval operations--made an argument of enduring interest:

Today we know that in wartime, even in a conventional war of limited duration, the two superpowers would fight a battle of attrition in space until one side or other had wrested control. And the winner would then use the surviving space systems to decide the contests on land and sea [emphasis added].⁷

That other superpower no longer exists, and 10 years or more may pass before it is functionally replaced by a superpower-quality foe to US geopolitical interests in Europe and Asia. Nonetheless, Admiral Trost's argument, or assertion, is inherently intriguing. Just what he meant, or could mean, by his claim concerning the "use [of] the surviving space systems to decide the contests on land and sea" is less than crystal clear. After all, even a mature air power has never had that degree of strategic effectiveness, though the Gulf War of 1991 might have had that character. What can be the basis for believing that space systems themselves could be wielded literally to decisive effect?⁸

Fourth, an Air Force Blue Ribbon Panel concluded in 1988 that space power will be as decisive in future conflict as air power is today.⁹ The panel is probably correct in its argument that the loss of space cover, or of space assistance in all respects, in the future would be as debilitating for ground, sea, and air forces as loss of air cover today would be for the prospect of success in terrestrial operations. Again, the analogy of air power to space power is persuasive and warrants imaginative, yet disciplined, application. One must recognize, however, that likening air power to space power carries no detailed implications for the utility of space systems. Most emphatically, this article does not suggest that satellites can substitute for aircraft in all, or even most, respects.

Bulletproof soldiers, aircraft proof against surface-to-air missiles, and tanks immune to antitank weapons have yet to be invented. Although soldiers, aircraft, and tanks are vulnerable, they remain useful in war. The operational context is always critical for evaluation of the utility of people-machine combinations in warfare.

Survivability and effectiveness in forces are qualities with strong policy, strategic, and tactical referents--in addition to the physical properties from which tactical and even strategic judgments have a way of flowing. The debate over space-system survivability has been conducted by some of the same people, of determinedly astrategic inclination, who argued vociferously about the modernization of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). From the ICBM debate of the early and mid-1980s, one might have inferred that a nominally vulnerable silo, or ICBM launcher, was tactically the equivalent of a vulnerable ICBM and that an enemy might believe he could wage war against the ICBM force alone.¹⁰

In order to avoid nonoperational thinking, one must remember the following about an enemy: he cannot assume that he will fire the first volley in a war in space; he cannot expect--even if he shoots first--that the US defensive architecture will be susceptible to instant catastrophic elimination (or fatal damage); he must anticipate that behind the shield--even the damaged shield--of our active defenses lurks a large and capable strategic nuclear offensive capability; and he is probably a careful student of Carl von Clausewitz and knows all about the composite notion of "friction" (or Murphy's Law) in war.¹¹ Commentators often are so concerned about being responsibly defense-conservative that they forget about an offense-conservative enemy. Fatal "what-ifs" for robust systems need to be balanced by consideration of enemy-oriented what-ifs. Although one must assume that the technical characteristics of rival space systems are important, war is not, in the final analysis, a technical enterprise.

The military space debate has seen a crude analytic reductionism whereby--neglecting the operational context in its many complementary dimensions--competing theorists write as though the survivability of space platforms will be the key to peace and war, victory and defeat, national extinction and survival. Fortunately, the operational realities of arms races, crises, and wars are far more complex. Survivability is always to be weighed on a range of criteria with reference to the functions of the systems in question, and in the context of the total war-fighting posture of the state. Otherwise, one is reduced to debating whether a bullet can kill a soldier or whether two SS-18 warheads can knock out an ICBM that a US president chose to leave in its silo. In decades past, generally intelligent people solemnly debated the "issue" of whether or not aircraft could sink large, heavily armored ships (to which, historical experience in 1942-45 answered, "Yes, but. . . .").¹²

Also, operational or campaign sense often has been absent from discussion of antisatellite (ASAT)/defense of satellite (DSAT) issues. Questions of ASAT and space-system survivability have meaning only in the context of the pace of military and political events on earth, which is not to deny that a space campaign could influence those events. As an operating medium necessarily adjunct to the land, space cannot sensibly be analyzed in isolation from the strategic context that gives it meaning. A maritime analogy is helpful here. Superiority at sea frequently has functioned strategically as an overall war-winning asset. But if an enemy can win the war on land in a matter of days, the slow pace of pressure from the sea is reduced to an irrelevancy. For example, consider the monumental inutility of French naval superiority in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. This is not to say that one must analyze everything in order to analyze anything, for that would constitute a case of the holistic fallacy. But it is to claim that, as one proceeds relatively narrowly, one must acknowledge the broader contours of statecraft and war.

The space policy of the US military requires that space control be asserted and exploited. Often, space control is discussed as if the concept had some self-evident and usefully precise meaning. In fact it does not. What is more, using air or sea control as an analogy is not necessarily enlightening. What if sea control is exercised on and over--but not beneath--the surface? If enemy submarines can harass and threaten to close sea lines of communications (as did Germany's U-boats in 1917 and 1941-43), what integrity remains to claims for control--let alone for command--of the sea? Space control is defined here as a condition wherein friendly space forces enjoy reliable access to orbit and are able--again reliably--to fulfill their missions there, while the enemy is denied those benefits. Space control does not imply the ability to operate in space without harassment, and neither does it imply the ability totally to exclude the enemy's vehicles from orbit. By way of analogy, consider these words of Alfred Thayer Mahan:

The control of the sea, however real, does not imply that an enemy's single ships or small squadrons cannot steal out of port, cannot cross more or less frequented tracts of ocean, make harassing descents upon unprotected points of a long coastline, enter blockaded harbors.¹³

In practice, control usually is to some degree disputed, though it is rarely in genuine dispute by rival battle fleets. Maritime control or command may be thought of as moving zones, not as permanently occupied and defended regions.¹⁴ The military geography of space implies that access to--and relatively secure and long-enduring use of--low earth orbit would be improbable in time of war between major powers. But that same geography suggests that space denial would be much more difficult to achieve for semisynchronous, geosynchronous, and high earth orbits.¹⁵

Modesty is a sensible approach to the question of space control. Bearing in mind that a space campaign is not of interest except with regard to war as a whole, the key question has to be what degree of control is judged essential--as contrasted with merely desirable. The United States requires reliable access to orbit for missions that cannot be performed well enough in other ways (e.g., by high-flying aircraft or by radar picket ships). Similarly, the United States should be able to deny mission survivability to enemy space systems. The sky would not need to be swept clear of all enemy space platforms, but--for the purpose of prewar deterrence--the enemy should be led to expect the reasonably prompt demise of his platforms in orbit and the prompt interception of replacement (reconstitution) platforms.¹⁶

In the context of war--particularly war of a protracted character--space control is likely to be permanently in dispute, with both sides able to make some use of space systems. Many assets critical for space surveillance, acquisition, tracking, and kill assessment (SATKA) will be damaged and destroyed in war--especially those in known terrestrial locations--though some mobile surveillance platforms (particularly those based in very high orbit) certainly would survive. Given the variety of SATKA capabilities, at least for low earth orbit, space denial would be a more usual condition than one of space control or of disputed command and shared--but reliable--use. The military space community strongly suspects that space denial, at least for low orbits, would be a great deal easier to achieve than would a quality of space control that permits positive exploitation of the space ways. People of goodwill and equal knowledge disagree on this subject, for which there is no direct historical evidence.

As space systems assume greater significance for terrestrial combat, the stakes in a space campaign must rise. By analogy, in 1918 air superiority was useful but not strictly essential.¹⁷ By 1939-45, however, winning a campaign on the ground or at sea in the absence of such superiority had become all but impossible. Disputed command was not good enough.

If a space campaign includes a shoot-out between the orbital elements of missile defense architectures, then that campaign--in and of itself--might be able to dictate the course and outcome of a war (i.e., if defenses in an ASAT mode could destroy or fatally degrade an enemy's ballistic missile defenses [BMD] and retain sufficient potency to eliminate the long-range missile threat). In this case, the space campaign would wield a decisive influence over the course and outcome of a war. Nonetheless, space control is not the key to victory or defeat in war. Whatever the nominal utility of the working control of space, questions remain. What do we plan to do with such control? Can our terrestrial forces be assisted usefully from space?

The purposes of a space campaign would be both positive and negative. On the positive side, one might attempt to change the balance of relative advantage in space so that the enemy would face the prospect of fighting under permanently hostile skies. The measure of intimidation achieved by early success against space systems must depend upon the enemy's weighting of the significance of net prowess from orbit. However, one should not allow oneself to be captured too easily by 1960s-era strategic concepts. The overriding purpose served by securing an early military advantage in space would be war fighting--not deterrent--in nature.

On the negative side, one could attempt to launch a space campaign against assets believed critical for the orderly and coherent conduct of terrestrial enterprises. As an "operational disintegrator," a space campaign would contribute vitally to the disruption of enemy communications and the destruction of key platforms for surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting. Needless to say, adversaries will vary widely in the measure of their dependence upon space systems and their systems' vulnerability to damage.

Opinions vary widely as to when a space campaign would be conducted. At least three clear alternatives present themselves: (1) as a precursor to war, (2) as the first campaign in war, and (3) as contributor to a long struggle conducted in all environments. One can hypothesize that in time of crisis a precursor ASAT campaign could so damage a country's ability to fight efficiently that that country or coalition would be intimidated into surrender. On balance, this possibility is improbable, if only because of the strategic warning it would provide. The damage wreaked by a war-precursor space campaign would be too modest to satisfy the operational taste of some strategic cultures (certainly the Soviet-that-was and probably the Russian-that-will-be). A more credible argument is that a space campaign would be waged promptly on the outbreak of general hostilities, as forces are deploying to their war stations and maneuvering for the first round. If a great war were protracted in time and global in scope, one should think of space systems and of space campaigning as permanent--or perhaps recurring--elements influencing the course and outcome of events.

Threats to Space Systems

Although space-system survivability--hence availability--is a fundamental issue, the rather abrupt demise of the cold war in 1989 has lowered the position of this issue on the priority list of official concerns. Nevertheless, how should one characterize questions of space-system survivability over the long term? (For today's US defense planner, the long term begins arbitrarily--as well as symbolically--in the year 2000.) Such questions include survivability to do what, for how long, and with what benefits-to-costs. Notwithstanding the strategically permissive context of the 1990s, what do we believe we understand about the terms and conditions of actual combat in and from the space ways? What is encompassed by ASAT and DSAT capabilities? How do the two relate to each other? Bluntly posed, what would war in and for space be like, and how much would it matter for the course of war elsewhere? Could two sides' space systems suffer some attrition yet coexist in an important sense? After all, rival navies and air forces, albeit often in clear relations of superiority-inferiority, frequently have coexisted. Or, because of the very nature of the space environment, must one party be able to succeed in sweeping the space ways? Does the inherently global and featureless character of space yield all-or-nothing stakes to space warfare? Perhaps one should pay particular attention to the likely terms of coexistence for superior-inferior space forces.

For active missile defenses, a strategic issue of concern is not whether space platform A or B--or even whether space-platform constellation A or B--could survive in some absolute sense. Rather, the question is whether the space-based and space-dependent elements of a multilayered (possibly ground-, sea-, air-, and space-based, or rapidly space-deployable) architecture of strategic defense could survive in their essentials long enough to perform the deterrence--or war fighting for deterrence and denial--missions for which they were designed. What is the context for space combat? Is it precrisis maneuvering, harassment, and raiding? Crisis-time attrition of geographically isolated, important military assets? Regional or global nonnuclear or nuclear war (far distant though some of these dreadful possibilities are from the political conditions of the early 1990s)? Is the launching of an ASAT campaign a coordinated step in the immediate execution of a plan for general war? What are the stakes in space--stalemate or victory? In the latter case, does an ASAT assault have as its immediate goal the rough equalization of the strategic balance for reciprocal counterdeterrence (in a hypothetical context of superior US BMD capabilities) or the achievement of a major military advantage?

Impregnable defenses have never been constructed. The function of defenses--whatever the geographical environment and whatever the historical period, level of technology, and polities in hostile contention--is to complement the offense for positive goals in war.¹⁸ Defenses may work well enough if they delay an attacker, compel him to devote a disproportionate expenditure of scarce assets to unrewarding assault, and generally unbalance him for the defender's riposte.

The worth of space-based military assets must always be a value relative to assets otherwise deployed. The less the unique value of space-based or space-dependent systems, the less the potential value in assaulting them. Space systems for BMD functions, for example, would be protected if--in enemy campaign prediction--friendly forces are postured competently. Enemy war planners would have to calculate how an ASAT/DSAT duel likely would proceed, how the outcome of that possibly protracted duel would influence the result of an "exchange" between offensive forces, and--to make policy sense of the entire enterprise--how the combat in and for space and the strategic exchange would translate for war termination into a tolerable political outcome.

Plainly, this article does not speak to the new world regional disorder of the 1990s, but it does address what can be termed key structural aspects of war in and from space in the future. Threats and issues of space-system mission survivability have a whole-war context, regardless of specific historical circumstances. Missile defenses erected to anticipate regional problems in the 1990s (for protection against limited strikes)¹⁹ cannot fail to have investment value for the return of major balance-of-power struggles in the twenty-first century.

Both small- and large-scale errors in defense plans, posture, and military doctrine are inevitable. It is not useful, however, to postulate worst-case threats involving an improbably supercompetent foe and extraordinarily foolish Americans. Most things are possible, but history tells us that military success attends the side that can best recover its balance from past errors, since both sides will err. Some overexcited rhetoric in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) debate of the 1980s produced truly superhypothetical threats in the face of which no US space-based BMD architecture possibly could survive. For example, how can one consider space-based boost or early midcourse BMD if the enemy is permitted a sky-sweeping first ASAT volley by some mix of space mines on active trailing station and directed-energy weapons? This is the never-never land of what-if. In a similar vein, alarmists postulated the blitzkrieg assault that unraveled (beyond recovery) NATO's central front in a week; the "first salvo" at sea that reduced the US Navy to a coastal defense force; and the strike that paralyzed command, control, communications, and intelligence (C³I), thereby precluding the national command authorities from issuing emergency action messages.²⁰

The United States endeavors to design systems--not individual platforms--to survive, and to survive in a functional sense, which is the only sense that really matters. System effectiveness will degrade over time, as ammunition or power supply is depleted in some cases and as enemy action takes its toll. Precedents have been set with the planning of the defense satellite communications system (DSCS) III, navigation satellite timing and ranging (NAVSTAR), and military strategic and tactical relay (MILSTAR) satellite constellations (involving such survival technologies as proliferation of platforms for redundancy, substantial autonomy of operation, choice of orbits distant from threats, variety of orbital planes, hardening, ASAT attack-warning sensors, and irregular phasing in orbit). Further, the US defense community has only begun to plan for space deployments on the assumption of a hostile environment (an assumption difficult to sustain now that the Soviet Union has collapsed). It is, therefore, premature to assert axioms concerning what can and cannot be done to ensure the tolerably graceful degradation in effectiveness of critically important space-system architectures.

Unless there are excellent grounds for arguing that space warfare would be a one-salvo battle rather than a campaign, one should allow that such warfare--and associated measures--would be a two-way street. Space-based BMD capability, for example, would be designed to function synergistically with ground-, air-, and sea-based system elements, as well as with the actions of offensive forces (of many different kinds). An enemy's attack planners have to consider such questions as, What might or would the other side do? Even if we do well, how well do we do? How badly might events proceed? What might be the consequences? Unless a superpower has been extravagantly unwise in making defense preparations, it is not going to be functionally disarmed by adverse ASAT action (unless one adheres to a simpleminded "King of the [Gravity] Mountain" or "Lord of the Gravity Well" theory of victory).

Questions of space-system survivability all too often attract dramatic judgments of the worst reductionist kind. The mindless assertion that there are no places to hide in space jostles with claims to immortality for platforms in distant orbits. In the absence of any historical experience of space campaigning and in the face of so much technical, tactical, and strategic complexity, the debate on space-system survivability is not easy to subject to analytical discipline. Indefinite survivability of every unit in every space system important in wartime is neither possible nor necessary. Policymakers have to consider how much survivability they need, for how long, and with what confidence. With few exceptions, the debate over space-system survivability has been conducted via the method of contrasting "Chinese menus."

The problems are threefold, at least. First, in the wise--if unhelpful--words of a 1985 report by Congress's Office of Technology Assessment,

Whether the means of protecting satellites will be adequate to ensure the survivability of particular space-based BMD systems will depend in part on the kind of systems deployed and in part on future Soviet antisatellite capabilities. Insufficient information is now available to resolve the survivability question [emphasis added].²¹

If the evidential base was insufficient in 1985 in the context of a known adversary, how much less satisfactory must it be in the 1990s, when the adversary is unknown?

Second, there will be a never-ending technological, tactical, and strategic dialectic between ASAT and DSAT measures. For every menu offering in the threat column, innovative and imaginative engineers and military operations planners can devise or invent a counter.

Third--remote though this point may seem from the imaginative technical debate on ASAT/DSAT--the subject is war writ large, not only war in and from space. At the level strictly of technical and tactical possibilities, there can be no absolute showstoppers for the wartime utility of space platforms, provided no true technical shortfalls appear. In principle, at least, by far the most formidable ASAT weapons would be space-based particle-beam battle stations or space mines. But even these all-function debate stoppers over ASAT and boost and early midcourse BMD possibilities have their vulnerabilities. A direct-energy ASAT weapon would require command and information from the ground, as well as external SATKA assistance. Interference with the C³I net for space-based weapons should render them harmless and vulnerable to assault.

The humble space mine (whether designed to destroy by conventional explosion, kinetic impact, or nuclear detonation) would need to be active--indeed, very noticeably active--in quite large numbers. It is difficult to believe that a country willing to assign critical wartime missions to space platforms would acquiesce passively in the face of unmistakable notice that enemy space mines (or unidentified maneuvering objects in orbits not easily explained) were in the process of prepositioning themselves for a comprehensive assault on key elements among those platforms.

At the barest minimum, five levels of challenges and responses affect the survivability of space systems: (1) technology, (2) tactics, (3) operational art, (4) strategy, and (5) policy. Public debate, analysis, planning, and material preparation can acquire an unhealthy and unnecessary fixation upon one or two of these levels at the expense of the others, with the result that valuable synergies and alternatives are neglected. Space-system design and operation, as well as campaign plans or arms control policy, for example, inadvertently can be required to exceed reasonable expectations of performance if the true structure of the subject--hence, the scope for assistance--is not well appreciated.

Help for space-system survivability--let alone assured help of the required quality and quantity--cannot be secured reliably at each of the five levels alone. Indeed, recognition of the theoretical availability of all five levels may be important precisely because technology or perhaps policy cannot accomplish much towards alleviation of a particular problem. As the focus shifts from technology--through tactics, operations, and strategy--to policy, the context assumes ever greater importance. For example, one would look for different kinds of answers if the problem at hand were the survivability of a tank; an armored brigade or division; tanks as part of a combined-arms team on campaign missions; or the feasibility of achieving deterrent or war-fighting goals via a military instrument with a significant tank component.

Technology can provide physical hardening, stealthy design, and the means for some agility in tactical functioning (table 1). Strictly speaking, technology drives tactics, but tactical imagination also can direct technology. Making decisions on how, when, and where an individual space platform or space system would be used is the realm of tactics. Prospective ASAT/DSAT combat of all kinds, embracing all three segments of space systems (i.e., ground uplink, ground downlink, and orbital) is the immediate subject for tactical choices. The technological decisions incorporated in system design must be critical for tactical feasibility. Similarly, the technical-tactical mission for which a space system has been designed must impose more or less severe restrictions upon the range of practicable technological and tactical choices (table 1).

Many of these survival aids and techniques would be militarily infeasible or prohibitively costly for particular space systems. Design for the survival and effectiveness of space assets must deny an enemy prompt, cheap shots that would have a major unfavorable impact on the balance of military power. Enough of the military space assets must be sufficiently effective to perform their missions for the time span of relevance for those missions. Beyond passive protection (deception, hardening, maneuver, proliferation, reconstitution, autonomy, and the like), space-war planners must consider more active measures and the space campaign as a whole in conjunction with the war in other environments that the space campaign is intended to influence. In the best tradition of systems analysis, one should seek to avoid becoming locked into a problem/solution fit that is focused upon how space systems might achieve mission survivability in the face of an imaginative, skillful, and well-funded enemy. In addition, one should be open to the possibility that the answer--or a part of the answer--may be in the joint realm rather than with truly super space systems.

The term operations refers to the theater level, insofar as land power and "tactical" air power are concerned.²² Because the near-earth space environment is by definition a global envelope, the ideas of operations and operational art can be applied only with great care. In practice, the whole of near-earth space is the space theater of operations, even though military space systems would have their effect upon particular terrestrial theaters. There is nothing novel about that point. After all, both air power and sea power have their effect upon the course and outcome of war via their effect upon land operations in distinctive theaters. But the campaigns for control of the air and the sea take place according to a rhythm unique to the air and sea environments. So must it be for the space environment also.

With operational-level choices, a state will select the complete architecture of its military space assets. Technological-tactical decisions will be made in the clear light of operational-level understanding of the missions to be accomplished from space. Indeed, according to the classical formula, tactical matters will have meaning only in relation to the total operational performance of the space architecture. Operational success can be built only on the basis of tactical success, but some percentage of tactical failures in military engagement--as always happens, in all environments--is inevitable and predictable. At the operational level, decisions will be made on such subjects as whether and when to take active measures of different kinds against different elements of enemy space systems. Considerations of space control will loom large, but strategic demand from terrestrial theater commanders for space denial will help shape the conduct of space operations in real time.

The importance of, and scale of challenges to, space-system survivability must be influenced massively by strategy writ large and by policy. Policy choices--what we seek to achieve--substantially determine the ends in the means-ends nexus that is strategy. The character of those ends (deter an attack on Saudi Arabia, defeat and punish Iraqi military power, defend Israel, and so forth) specifies what is required of military space systems, as well as how much and for how long. The probability of combat to, in, for--and one day even from--space is a variable largely determined by the total context for a conflict provided by policy and strategy.

Mission survivability overrides system survivability. Consequently, wherever it can usefully do so at reasonable cost, the United States duplicates in terrestrial systems some of the functions performed by space systems. Redundancy in the ability to accomplish the mission acts as a survivability measure. Clearly, all systems and all missions are not equally important. The more important the mission and the more important the system to the accomplishment of the mission (in theory at least), the greater the attention paid to system survivability. Since all systems are not equally important, it follows that all do not require equal attention to survivability. As a consequence, many programs do not include specific survivability measures. US space policy explicitly recognizes this logic. For example, a 1988 White House statement mandated that

the DoD must provide for the survivability of selected, critical, national security space assets (including associated terrestrial components) to a degree commensurate with the value and utility of the support they provide to national level decision functions, and military operational forces across the spectrum of conflict.²³

Survivability measures apply to those parts of the system that are earth-based--the uplinks and downlinks between the ground and satellites and between satellites--as well as to the satellites themselves. The most effective approach is to apply redundant survivability techniques to each part of the entire system so that systems cannot be defeated by a single countermeasure and so that if they should fail, they will fail gracefully--not catastrophically. In this way, it is possible that mission accomplishment can be ensured, even with degraded systems. Broadly speaking, threats to the mission survivability of space systems can be categorized as physical or electronic in kind, and--with particular regard to the orbital segment--these threats invite different responses at semisynchronous or geosynchronous (as contrasted with low) altitudes. Above all else, perhaps--though far from exclusively--space-system survivability reduces to a set of problems in the conduct of defensive electronic warfare. Efforts to achieve the actual physical destruction or disablement of critical elements of space systems--while always possible--have some distinctive disadvantages, most noticeably that of lead time.

The arms control community has pressed for a variety of ill-considered ASAT control measures. As a general rule, these measures have failed every test that a prudent US national security policy has posed. The arms controllers have had an open agenda item of seeking to protect benign space platforms (i.e., those performing surveillance, early warning, and communication functions) and a barely concealed agenda item of complicating life for strategic defense by denying space basing to some BMD platforms. Critics of ASAT arms control have stressed the substantial overlap of ASAT and BMD capability, which is to say that if a state has even a modest exoatmospheric BMD capability, it should have--as a bonus--an excellent low-earth-orbit ASAT. The interface between ASAT and BMD capabilities is subject to constant movement as technologies evolve.

The United States needs to protect ASAT deployment options for the prospective value of those options as active DSAT--possibly, though improbably, to deter attack on US spacecraft but more likely to help deny an enemy reliable access to critical orbits. For the long term, regardless of whether or not the United States proceeds to deploy some space-based elements of a BMD architecture, it will be vitally important that any enemy be denied working control of space. Ground-, sea-, and air-based ASAT weapons would not likely be a fair match for the active and passive self-defense capabilities of a space-based BMD system. Moreover, if any enemy could bid seriously to be "King of the Mountain" with space-based weapon deployments, he should stand a better-than-even chance of being able to deny the United States the reliable ability to enter orbit (any orbit, that is). Analysts have speculated on the possibility of devising an ASAT arms control regime that would prohibit weapon deployments potentially threatening to satellites in high earth (including geosynchronous) orbit. Specific suggestions include prohibition of the deployment of directed-energy weapon platforms at an orbital altitude in excess of 1,000 kilometers; defined "keep-out" zones around space platforms (vis-a-vis possible space mines); and a variety of "rules of the road" for space operations to avoid or minimize perceptions of threats (and their consequences).²⁴

On balance, the prospects for ASAT arms control are distinctly dim, even in these post-cold-war years. Great powers do not bar themselves from being able to do something that could be very important militarily. Space is a geographically distinctive environment but is dominated militarily by the same policy impulses that produce conflict on earth. The incentive to cheat on agreements would likely be matched by the ease with which cheating could be effected. The more critical space becomes as a field of competitive military endeavor, the greater the incentives to avoid legal constraints on (peacetime) behavior. The massive overlap between civilian and military space technologies (e.g., common transportation systems) and space activities would complicate any endeavor to write arms control treaties. Also, opinions vary as to the quality of space surveillance that will be available at different times in the future. Suffice it to say that there would be a problem in verifying space activity/capability exceeded in severity only by the traditional difficulty of a democracy in designing and executing a sanctions policy for noncompliance with treaties.

Notwithstanding the politically permissive international climate of the 1990s, space arms control is unlikely to succeed for many of the same reasons that foredoom naval arms control. In the geographical realms of both sea and space, the United States is not seriously threatened at present but recognizes a prospectively permanent need for military superiority.

Facing the Future

The argument that space power will be as important as sea power or air power is likely to be true one day. As with all such assertions, however, it has to refer to specific situations between specific enemies in a specific period. The US armed forces could accelerate the trend to dependence upon space systems, but if they do that, they need to be well satisfied with their space control. By analogy, dependence upon seaborne supply is ill advised without sea control. Also, one should not forget that air power's visibility and audibility have an effect on enemy morale that space power cannot duplicate. The absence of reliable air cover would be particularly devastating to a US Army that--except briefly in the Solomon Islands and in North Africa and Sicily in 1942-43--has never known that condition and whose tactical style is airland in character. For space power to begin to approximate air power in strategic effectiveness, space systems for force application would need to be added to the familiar space-based force enhancement assets. Quite aside from military, technological, and economic arguments, the political dimension of long-range (nonnuclear) force application from orbit is unlikely to be trivial.

Eventually, space will witness a full transition from being a convenient place to perform useful force-enhancement tasks to being key to mission accomplishment. As with the maritime environment in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and with air in this century, the space environment will not be reliably usable in future major conflict unless it is first secured for the passage of friendly vehicles. The ending of the cold war has slowed the pace of the military exploitation of space, but it cannot redirect the historical course of technological change in its relation to physical geography.

Overall, planning for space-system effectiveness and survivability to date has focused heavily not upon providing an architecture of space assets and forces organized and commanded for a combat environment but upon individual space systems (for example, NAVSTAR global positioning system [GPS]). The arrival of political peace among the superpowers, followed by the new status of the United States in the 1990s as the solitary superpower, threatens to slow prudent adaptation to the space age. The purse strings in democracies are held by people who tend to be moved only by the arrival of a danger that is both clear and present. Although the Gulf War of 1991 showed skeptics the value of space systems in war,²⁵ it did little to encourage realistic thinking or planning for a strategic context wherein both sides would enjoy access to orbit.

The space environment is different from the other environments, and that difference matters for technology, tactics, and operations. But space power, no matter how different, is of interest only because it can contribute strategic effectiveness to the deterrence or conduct of war as a whole. More and more defense professionals and commentators are coming to appreciate that the right to use space will need to be fought for, no more and no less than the right to use the sea and the right to fly. However, the US defense community is not used to thinking of space as a theater for combat, just as it is not used to overlaying space campaigns upon terrestrial campaigns for a coherent view of war.

A great deal can be learned from the military history of war on earth (on land, at sea, and in the air), but some of what is on offer could mislead. The theorist and military planner for space power need to know how space resembles, and how it differs from, the other environments. The era of great, simple assertions remains alive and well with respect to the survivability of space platforms and the mission survivability of space systems. (Only to those people who are truly reductionist in their approach is space-system survivability a simple set of issues.)

The defense enjoys a major advantage over the offense at very high altitudes. The great distance that the offense has to cover, not to mention the multidimensional costs of climbing out of earth's gravity well, yields critical initiative for defensive technology and tactical choices. However, the claim that the defense is the stronger form of war in geosynchronous orbit may well be only a relatively brief, technology-driven operational judgment and not a lasting truth.

Notes

1. House, Prepared Statement by Gen Colin L. Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the Committee on the Budget, 102d Cong., 2d sess., 5 February 1992, 23.

2. "Achieving and maintaining preeminence in the air, in space, and at sea is key to our continued success as a global leader. In peace, maritime and aerospace superiority enhance our deterrence capabilities. In war, they are critical to the conduct and successful termination of conflict." Colin L. Powell, National Military Strategy of the United States, January 1992 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992), 9. The concept, or shotgun marriage, of air and space that is rendered as aerospace remains controversial. Geographically speaking, the composite superenvironment of aerospace certainly lacks integrity. See Maj Grover E. Myers, "Aerospace Doctrine: We're Not There Yet," Air University Review 37, no. 6 (September-October 1986): 91-93; and Lt Col Frank W. Jennings, "Doctrinal Conflict over the Word Aerospace," Airpower Journal 4, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 46-58.

3. See Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle (New York: Penguin, 1992), 16, 499, 606.

4. A reliable recent treatment of the war in the Pacific is Dan van der Vat, The Pacific Campaign: World War II, the U.S.-Japanese Naval War, 1941-1945 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991).

5. Simon P. Worden and Bruce P. Jackson, "Space, Power, and Strategy," The National Interest, no. 13 (Fall 1988): 50.

6. Gen John L. Piotrowski, "Space Warfare Principles" (Unpublished paper, 1988), 39. At the time, General Piotrowski was commander in chief of US Space Command.

7. Adm Carlisle A. H. Trost, "Antisubmarine Warfare: The Challenge in Space," Vital Speeches of the Day 53, no. 18 (1 July 1987): 552.

8. For this claim for the potential decisive effect of space power to begin to be plausible, that power would have to be of the "full-service" variety. Specifically, it would have to include some capabilities for force application from space, which is to say terrestrial bombardment. Needless to add, perhaps, terrestrial bombardment from orbit long has been an extraordinarily politically sensitive topic. In the mid-1980s, Soviet spokesmen routinely claimed that the United States was seeking to acquire "space-strike weapons" via its Strategic Defense Initiative.

9. This verbal formula has been blessed by repetition over the years. For example, see House, Prepared Statement by James F. McGovern, Acting Secretary of the Air Force, and Gen Larry D. Welch, Air Force Chief of Staff, before the Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Defense, 101st Cong., 1st sess., February 1989, 15.

10. For details of this issue, see Colin S. Gray, "ICBMs and Deterrence: The Controversy over Prompt Launch," The Journal of Strategic Studies 10, no. 3 (September 1987): 285-309.

11. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 119-21.

12. When the tactical issue was as stark as that posed by British surface vessels against German aircraft in the Mediterranean, or Japanese aircraft off Malaya, there could be no doubt that ships were vulnerable. But when surface vessels multiplied their antiaircraft artillery, were protected by friendly fighter forces, and were available in large numbers, the "issue" began to acquire its due complexity. In theory, any individual ship might be vulnerable, but the power-projection capability of a whole fleet or navy need not be.

13. Capt A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1890), 14.

14. "The aim of maritime strategy is therefore not so much to establish complete control of all sea communications, which would be an ideal hardly attainable until final victory was almost won, as to develop the ability to establish zones of maritime control wherever and whenever they may be necessary. . . . And a zone of maritime control means no more than an ability to pass ships safely across an area of water which may be quite small in extent or may cover many thousands of square miles of ocean." Capt S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939-1945, vol. 1, The Defensive (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1954), 3.

15. On the question of space-system survivability, see Col Robert B. Giffen, US Space System Survivability: Strategic Alternatives for the 1990s, National Security Affairs Monograph Series 82-4 (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1982).

16. See Capt Lawrence A. Cooper, "Assured Access to Space: The Dilemma of Reconstitution and Launch-on-Demand," Airpower Journal 6, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 47-56.

17. The author of an excellent recent history of the airplane in World War I concludes that its "role was not a major one." Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918 (New York: Free Press, 1991), 220.

18. This argument is explored in detail in Colin S. Gray, Weapons Don't Make War: Policy, Strategy, and Military Technology (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 1993).

19. See Keith B. Payne, Missile Defense in the 21st Century: Protection against Limited Threats, Including Lessons from the Gulf War (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991).

20. For a classic example of how a good idea (ensure secure command and control) can become a much less good idea (worry about fine-tuned, supercompetent threats), see Bruce G. Blair, Strategic Command and Control: Redefining the Nuclear Threat (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985).

21. US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Ballistic Missile Defense Technologies, OTA-ISC-254 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, September 1985), 26.

22. See Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987), for a generally compelling conceptual treatment of the different levels of conflict (all, according to Luttwak, united by the distinctively paradoxical behavior that uniquely characterizes "strategic" effort). It is agreeable to note that the US Air Force in the 1990s has abandoned its near-half-century-long organization by purportedly "tactical" or "strategic" duties.

23. "Presidential Directive on National Space Policy" (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, 11 February 1988), 8.

24. For a sampling of the literature on space arms control, see Ashton B. Carter, "Satellites and Anti-Satellites: The Limits of the Possible," International Security 10, no. 4 (Spring 1986): 46-98; H. Guyford Stever and Heinz R. Pagels, eds., The High Technologies and Reducing the Risk of War (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1986), pt. 1; and Paul B. Stares, Space and National Security (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1987), especially chap. 6.

25. See Sir Peter Anson and Dennis Cummings, "The First Space War: The Contribution of Satellites to the Gulf War," RUSI [Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies] Journal 136, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 45-53; and Vice Adm William A. Dougherty, "Storm from Space," US Naval Institute Proceedings 118, no. 8 (August 1992): 48-52.

Colin S. Gray (BA, Manchester University; DPhil, Oxford University) is European director of the National Institute for Public Policy, Fairfax, Virginia, and professor of international politics at the University of Hull (England). He served for five years on the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament and served as president of the National Institute for Public Policy. Dr Gray is the author of 12 books, most recently Weapons Don't Make War (1993) and House of Cards: Why Arms Control Must Fail (1992). This year, he completed a major study on the future of aerospace power for Headquarters USAF, Directorate of Plans.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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