Taking the Highest High Ground: Strategic Prepositioning of Counter Space Weapons and Impacts to Critical Infrastructure
It is July of 2024, but Americans are looking up at the sky much the same way Americans did in 1957 after the announcement of the Sputnik launch. On May 16, 2024, a rocket bound for low Earth orbit (LEO) lifted off the Plesetsk Cosmodrome just outside Moscow. By May 21st, Pentagon officials were making public statements about the potential that the payload of this launch was a counter-space weapon deployed in the same orbit as an unnamed US government satellite. The space and defense communities have been aflutter ever since. While the prospect of satellites that can attack and disable other satellites is ominous, it should make us all ask some more critical strategic questions. One of the indicators Pentagon officials cited as a reason they assess this launch carried a counter-space weapon is that the payload resembled other payloads from 2019 and 2022, also evaluated to be counter-space weapons, meaning this is not the first time Russia has launched such weapons. The potential that Russia is engaging in strategic prepositioning on the “high ground” in the space domain is far more threatening. Placing counter-space weapons in the same orbit as a government satellite not only threatens the satellite itself but also de facto protects the counter-space weapon and limits US options to mitigate the threat. This is what being on the high ground means in space.
Before we can come up with solutions, we must diagnose the problem correctly. The problem is not limited to the presence of a single (or even three) counter space weapon in orbit. The problem is that Russia is in the process of prepositioning offensive assets in strategically valuable orbital spaces in such a way that it is limiting US options to counter the weapons. This limitation will ultimately lead to an environment the US has sought to avoid, where cyberattacks against space assets are the only option. This has dangerous implications for the viability of the commercial space economy and our terrestrial critical infrastructure.
Launching counter-space weapons into orbit is not a new concept. On April 18, 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the US would not conduct “destructive direct-ascent anti-satellite missile testing” at a speech at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The statement was in response to the creation of dangerous debris fields following a Chinese test of an anti-satellite missile in 2007 and a Russian test in 2021. As the US made a public commitment not to engage in the same behavior, questions were immediately being asked about on-orbit weapons and what the US was doing to counter that threat. Many of those questions came to me as I was the Director of Emerging Technology Policy at the US Department of Homeland Security at the time. And we did not have an answer.
Strategic High Ground
The concept of strategically valuable orbital or interplanetary space in the space domain is also familiar. The concept is covered at length in John J. Klein’s book Space Warfare from 2006, and today, we see it play out in real-time. Strategically valuable orbital space could be near another strategically valuable satellite. For example, placing a counter-space weapon next to an adversary’s intelligence or communications satellite in orbit offers the counter-space weapon a degree of protection. The adversary will not risk a kinetic attack against the counter-space weapon because it will likely damage its valuable capability. This means that the counter-space weapon can be prepositioned so that the adversary is limited in its ability to counter the threat. Done at scale, this approach creates a series of prepositioned assets that pose a constant threat to the space superiority of the US national security establishment and, by extension, to commercial space assets.
Placing counter-space weapons in such strategic locations presents a strategic threat but it also limits tactical options. Destructive direct-ascent attacks would be out of the question because of the potential to damage other strategic assets. Launching another counter-space weapon to attack the prepositioned weapon would force the adversary into a “use it or lose it” mentality and escalate the potential of an on-orbit attack. That leaves cyberattack as the only option available, opening the door for a significant increase in cyber events in space.
Critical Infrastructure Implications
A strategic picture of the space domain that includes prepositioned counter-space weapons with limited vulnerabilities to countermeasures represents another in a series of fast-moving changes in international competition in space. As we look at the macro picture, we must examine the implications for our critical infrastructure. Several satellites in orbit support critical infrastructure sectors, but the interdependencies' full scope needs to be clarified. At best, it has yet to be widely known how the loss of a single satellite or constellation will impact critical infrastructure on the ground. The strategic deployment of a counter-space weapon may be more threatening than it looks at the first analysis because understanding its proximity to a government or national security satellite is relatively easy. It gets much more complex when the counter-space weapon is also near a random Earth observation satellite that just so happens to be used for monitoring wildfires and helping to direct firefighting crews to the most critical areas. Perhaps the satellite can monitor weather patterns to help farmers plant corn at the optimal time for the best yield. In those cases, the vulnerability faced by the US is not only its national security asset but also vehicles that directly support and enable the functioning of one or more critical infrastructure sectors.
Impact and Knowledge Gaps
The strategic prepositioning of offensive assets has precedent when talking about military hardware such as the placement of tactical and medium-range nuclear weapons during the Cold War. As we contend with what strategic prepositioning means in space, we must clearly understand what is at stake. In a nuclear exchange, that is much easier to identify. When it comes to the denial or disruption of a commercial satellite being used by one or more critical infrastructure entities, we need the ability to assess our ground risk with agility. The LEO environment is getting more complex, and the new dimension of prepositioned counter-space weapons demands we implement and automate methods for measuring risk on the ground and shortening our incident response times. In short, improving our resilience.
The space community should not look up with the same eyes that Americans did in 1957, but this behavior in space should serve as an equivalent wake-up call. Clear actions must be taken, but the first step is to recognize what is happening before the prepositioned counter space assets are sitting in LEO like a cyber logic bomb on a network. Once enough of these assets are in orbit, the strategic advantage enjoyed by the US in space will, at the very least, be eroded. Our actions in the domain will be taken under threat. As such, we need to take some concrete steps now:
Get a clear understanding of the impact on critical infrastructure and national critical functions in the event of the denial or disruption of a satellite, down to the individual satellite level.
Assess what commercial satellites also share orbits with known counter-space weapons (including those not publicly acknowledged).
Create partnerships between government, private sector, and academia to study strategically important orbital and interplanetary space and develop strategies to maintain control of the “high ground.”
Russia's launch of at least a third counter-space weapon into orbit should be enough to catalyze a response from the US, given the economic growth it is leading in the domain. The intent is clear, and it is now a matter of time before we pass a threshold, after which our space assets will be held hostage, and our dominance in space begins to erode. Our adversaries certainly see it.
