The operations of the U.S. military depend on space assets. Reconnaissance satellites allow us to find our adversaries; communications satellites allow us to coordinate movements against them; global positioning satellites allow us to direct our weaponry with unprecedented accuracy. In any large-scale conventional war against a near-peer adversary, our ability to maintain these capabilities would be of decisive importance. And all that is before we say even a word about the many economically vital nonmilitary uses of satellite technology.
Both Russia and China are developing and actively testing anti-satellite (ASAT) systems. Up until now, the systems they have been testing have been ground-launched, designed to orbit a few times and then collide with and destroy targets at altitudes under 1,000 kilometers. This capability is sufficient to take out U.S. reconnaissance satellites, but not the GPS and communications satellites that fly higher, at 20,000 kilometers and 36,000 kilometers respectively. It is a fairly straightforward matter for Russia and China to extend their current ASAT capabilities to threaten even those more distant satellites, presumably the R&D is already well under way.
The Obama administration sought to dissuade adversaries from developing ASAT technology by setting an example and not working on it ourselves. After the failure of this approach, some U.S. defense analysts are now advocating an aggressive push to develop ASAT systems of our own. This approach is more hardheaded than the previous policy, but it still entirely inadequate to the situation, since our dependence on space is lopsided compared to the rest of the world: The dependency of the U.S. armed forces on space assets far exceeds that of any potential opponent. Should an adversary destroy U.S. space assets, the exchange would leave our country at a comparative disadvantage.
What we need is not more ASAT technology but something more potent: fighter satellites, fully analogous to fighter aircraft.
A fighter plane has two critical functions—it destroys enemy aircraft and protects our own. An ASAT, as generally conceived today, only performs the former function. As such, it resembles an anti-aircraft missile. But the decisive weapon for achieving air supremacy has always been the fighter aircraft. Only fighters can protect bombers (and other assets) from enemy fighters while also denying the enemy the use of the air.
We now need to replicate both parts of this dynamic at a higher altitude, in space. First, the offense side: A hypothetical fighter sat would provide the United States with the crucial ability to neutralize an adversary’s reconnaissance satellites; without that ability, the entire U.S. Navy surface fleet will be visible, and therefore vulnerable to attack by enemy missiles, submarines, and other means. Without a surface fleet, it will be impossible to supply or support American forces or the forces of our allies. In a conflict, the United States will need to sweep enemy satellites from the skies, a task that cannot be left to mere ASATs.
Second, the defense side: Fighter satellites could serve not only to knock out adversarial space assets but also to patrol as escorts to reconnaissance, GPS, and communication satellites, protecting them from enemy ASATs.
In the period before World War II, many airpower theorists argued that since bombers were the air assets that had the greatest effect on ground operations, producing and operating large bomber fleets was the key to air superiority. This theory was wrong. This thinking caused the 8th Air Force, operating B-17s over Germany, to take horrendous losses. Ultimately it was long-range fighter escorts, such as the P-51 Mustang, that helped the United States achieve the air supremacy necessary for victory. America’s space power today dwindles under a fallacy comparable to the one promoted by the prewar bomber theorists.
As a thought experiment, imagine what would have transpired had the Axis powers of World War II possessed reconnaissance satellites—merely one of today’s many space-based assets—without the Allies having a matching capability. The Battle of the Atlantic would have gone to the U-boats, as they would have had infallible intelligence on the location of every convoy. Cut off from oil and other supplies, Britain would have fallen. On the Eastern front, every Soviet tank concentration would have been spotted in advance and wiped out by German air power, as would any surviving British ships or tanks in the Mediterranean and North Africa. In the Pacific, the battle of Midway would have gone the other way, as the Japanese would not have wasted their first deadly airstrike on the unsinkable island, but sunk the American carriers instead. With the carriers gone, the remaining cruisers and destroyers in Admiral Fletcher’s fleet would have lacked air cover, and every one of his ships would have been hunted down and sunk by unopposed and all-seeing Japanese air power. With the same certain fate awaiting any American ship that dared venture forth from the West Coast, Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand would then have fallen, and eventually China and India as well. With a monopoly on just one element of space power, the Axis would have won the war.
Modern space power, however, involves far more than just reconnaissance satellites. The use of space-based global positioning can endow munitions with vastly greater accuracy, while space-based communications provide an unmatched capability of command and control of forces.
Nuclear forces cannot influence the outcome of battle between major powers because they are deterred by those of the other side. But knock out an adversary’s reconnaissance satellites and he is effectively blind. Knock out his comsats, and he is deaf. Knock out his navsats, and he loses his aim. In any serious future conventional conflict, even between opponents as mismatched as Japan was against the United States in the 1940s—or as today’s Poland (with 1,000 tanks) would be attempting to defend against Russia (with 20,000)—it is space power that will prove decisive.
If the United States is to be prepared for the conflicts to come, it needs to start developing fighter sats—stat. Robert Zubrin is the president of Pioneer Astronautics and the author of The Case for Mars. His latest book is Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudoscientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.
