Think tank games out how to respond to disaster scenarios in space warfare

The result is that we risk seeding initiative to competitors who are shaping the environment before open conflict ever begins,” she continued. “The core takeaway here is simple: If we want space superiority in crisis or conflict, we have to think and act earlier in the competition phase.” The workshop also explored how potential adversaries might work together during coordinated assaults. For example, how should the US respond as attacks escalate from GPS jamming to a missile strike in the Middle East, then to an attack on bridges at Cape Canaveral, Florida, grinding launch activity to a halt at the world’s busiest spaceport? “Participants viewed coordinated behavior by multiple states as significantly more escalatory than isolated actions by a single actor when space-related pressure occurs alongside other regional or global crises,” Reeves said. “The challenge of maintaining escalation control simply becomes much harder.” But there’s more to it than military response options. Galbreath and Reeves, along with their coauthor, Kyle Pumroy, emphasized the importance of “strategic messaging” for US officials to define norms of behavior and set the narrative for future conflict. The workshop’s participants also stressed that the US military has a broad set of response options, coupled with more resilient space architectures to deter an attack in the first place. The US Space Force is already moving in this direction with its use of mega-constellations for communications and surveillance. “If our architectures are more survivable and if we can reconstitute capability faster than an adversary can degrade it, then we reduce any first-mover advantage,” Reeves said. “So the bottom line here is that legitimacy, capability, resilience, and speed all work together.” The authors recommended that the US government and its commercial and international partners establish benchmarks for interpreting hostile behavior in space. This would “eliminate some of the ambiguity, as well as delay, in formulating response options,” Galbreath said. “There needs to be an active campaign of what is acceptable, what isn’t acceptable, what we consider to be critical elements of our infrastructure, a reminder to everybody of why space capabilities are so critical to our national security and our way of life,” Galbreath said. They also recommended that the Space Force continue conducting war games and enhancing the protection of US space infrastructure on the ground and in space. Perhaps, Galbreath said, the Space Force should consider improved radiation shielding for its satellites in low-Earth orbit to protect them against a potential nuclear detonation. US officials should also better define the importance of satellites. “Are they just unmanned vehicles, or are they critical elements of our infrastructure that are interwoven to every aspect of our daily lives? I vote for that one,” Galbreath said. So where do the world’s leading space powers stand on the spectrum of competition today? “It was really one of the clearest takeaways from the workshop that so many people believe we’re already there,” Reeves said. “We’re already in the gray zone because of these hostile actions, and they’re genuinely hostile, but they’re more isolated. They happen every so often. Jamming, lasing, cyberattacks are happening, and even some coercive maneuvers, like when we’re not exactly sure why a particular asset got moved up next to another non-aligned asset in space.” “Individually, it feels like that these actions don’t necessarily cross the traditional threshold for war, but… we’re getting used to these things happening,” Reeves said. “These actions are being normalized to some extent, so now, where does that line live? Where does the threshold live that an action necessitates some proportional reaction? I think this deserves a lot more conversation on the policy level than we may be giving it. We’re just getting used to it. We’re boiling that frog.”