Space Force must prepare for all-out warfare, think tank says

The Space Force needs to better define its policies regarding conflict in space and better rehearse for various scenarios, a new research paper argues.

The paper flowed from a January workshop held by the Mitchell Institute. About 50 space experts envisioned various new ways that satellites and spacecraft might be used in gray-zone or even wartime conflicts. These included Russian cyber-attacks in Europe, jamming of U.S. satellites, the mysterious destruction of Cape Canaveral’s bridges, the “repositioning of a recently inoperable European commercial satellite without prior coordination,” the deactivation of Midwestern power grids—even an unattributed “nuclear detonation” in low earth orbit.

But determining who is behind a space-focused strike and how the U.S. military should appropriately respond is often difficult, according to the Mitchell Institute’s findings.

“Space presents a uniquely complex warfighting environment. The global and technical nature of the domain complicates the understanding of and response to hostile acts,” Mitchell Institute researchers wrote. “As a result, attribution, escalation management, and credible response selection are daunting. Further, actions taken in space rarely produce isolated or localized effects; instead, they cascade across geographic combatant commands, civilian infrastructure, and global equities.”

The U.S. Space Force is embracing a warfighting-focused identity and is pitching its largest budget in the service’s six-year history. But as the Space Force grows, there continues to be a lack of norms and laws for how the military should respond to a variety of future attacks. 

The increased ambiguity and difficulty of attribution for attacks makes it difficult for the U.S. to take decisive action, the report said. 

“Workshop discussions highlighted the inherent complexity of space as a domain that defies traditional geographic and legal constructs, complicates attribution, and enables adversaries to normalize coercive behavior below clear thresholds of armed conflict,” the report said.  “Participants emphasized that this ambiguity favors competitors by slowing decision-making and conditioning acceptance of increasingly hostile actions.”

The Asian, European, and Middle Eastern theaters could all be targeted by space attacks. Participants discussed the possibilities such as “regional GPS jamming disrupting airlines” in U.S. Central Command, or China firing an anti-satellite weapon in the Indo-Pacific, causing the orbital debris to damage the International Space Station “killing a U.S. astronaut and positioning of satellites near U.S. systems,” the report said.

More direct attacks on the U.S. could also stymie the military’s space operations. Other examples in the report included unattributed “explosions against all bridges connecting the mainland with Cape Canaveral” that would cease missions at the Florida space complex or if a submarine “launched a volley of 20 conventional ballistic and cruise missiles” at key West Coast installations such as California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Participants said space is “a decision environment characterized by uncertainty and delay,” according to the report. While determining the cause of certain space-based attacks and calculating a potential military response was complicated, Mitchell researchers said it is a necessary exercise that should inform space force policy.

“None of this can remain theoretical. Guardians, joint force leaders, allies, and partners all need to train and exercise against these scenarios,” Jennifer Reeves, a retired Air Force colonel and Mitchell Institute resident fellow said during a roundtable on Tuesday. “Repeated exercises build familiarity, improve decision making, and help translate concepts into executable options.”

An enemy’s space operations rely heavily on cyber attacks or jamming satellites, and often fall in the “gray zone” that dodges the laws of armed conflict. Participants said they believed “that U.S.-China interactions in space are firmly within the gray zone, characterized by actions that are coercive, often deniable, and deliberately calibrated to avoid triggering a decisive response.”

While the Mitchell researchers argued that the U.S. must “build combat credibility by reducing ambiguity through clearer norms and frameworks,” they also acknowledged there’s some benefit to not having defined rules for space conflict.

“While clearer expectations could help guide behavior and improve decision speed, establishing explicit thresholds presents trade-offs,” the researchers wrote. “Clearly defined red lines risk constraining U.S. decision space while incentivizing adversaries to operate just below those thresholds, achieving meaningful effects without triggering a response.”

Charles Galbreath, a retired Space Force colonel and Mitchell’s space studies director and senior resident, said during Tuesday’s roundtable that “there really isn't a lot legally prohibiting us from pursuing effective counter-space operations” and added that “we need to make sure that we understand what our policies are and why they're in place in such a way, and also not limit ourselves in terms of response options.”

The Mitchell Institute’s research paper is the think tank’s latest report advocating for the Space Force to adopt more aggressive strategies and policies. In May, researchers argued for putting troops on the moon to prepare for an in-person conflict with China and last year pitched the idea of putting guardians aboard critical assets in orbit.