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Just as integral as airplanes in the 20th century and merchant ships between the 15th and 17th centuries, the modern world economy is now completely dependent on satellite systems orbiting the earth. Today, access and freedom to operate in space is vital to nearly every aspect of modern life as we leverage space-based technologies to improve our lives and expand our businesses. These satellites provide the essential capabilities that enable precision navigation and communication, anticipate and help react to natural disasters, ensure treaty compliance, enhance scientific understanding, and so much more.
Yet the orbital domain that we find ourselves increasingly reliant upon is constantly changing, bringing in new challenges to security, safety and sustainability. Chief among these challenges is China's rapidly increasing presence in space for both civilian and defense purposes.
China’s most recent space ambition would drastically accelerate the red dragon's presence in outer space, with its satellite industry expected to witness explosive growth in the next three to five years, reports Space News. The country's next great leap forward has been dubbed "satellite internet," a part of its "new infrastructures" initiative that will pump millions into the Chinese space industry and has resulted in a flurry of activity within its commercial satellite sector in recent weeks. The push toward building space infrastructure has had an overwhelmingly stimulating effect on China's industrial base and has increased momentum for economic development in the sector. Which begs the question, "why doesn't America have an industrial plan for national security space?"
The Pentagon, mind you, is endlessly panicked by these increasingly frequent incidences. While our government's political maestros leverage these events to bolster support for the newest billion-dollar initiative that needs their support and our journalists grow weary of writing about almost weekly Chinese advances in space, a select few are wringing their hands over U.S. resiliency in space. Sober-minded national security policymakers of all stripes have long said that we need to make our acquisition programs more resilient. Through all of this, however, we seem unable to quantify, measure, or buy more resilience. Yet everyone agrees we need it – lots of it.
What if resilience is just not something that can be specifically acquired? What if it doesn’t fit neatly into a set requirements and acquisition process? The answer to those questions points to the vague and elusive nature of sustainability and security in space.
National security resilience has to take the form of a mindset that is continually improved upon, rather than just a singular product or discrete event. It ought to be something that we train into our military from the jump, and possibly even recruit for as we awaken to the critical nature of the 21st century all-domain future.
Can buying more expensive gear really get us to greater resilience? Maybe a little bit, but probably not cost effectively. In the history of warfare, innovations around the application of technology have certainly been a deciding force when tallying up wins and losses in battle. But it has been a relentless, resilient mindset, epitomized by the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War, the Russian soldiers on Germany’s Eastern Front and the Taliban in Afghanistan that actually makes the difference in victory. An unabated, deep-rooted cultural mindset of resilience is essential to securing freedom in the space domain.
In the modern American way of war, military power has often been spearheaded by technological development, acquired in some fashion by military (versus civil) engineers. This has been a deliberate and strategic effort to ensure the resilience necessary against enemies with more manpower. Today, our allies and enemies are almost equally able to leverage technology advances in information and satellite technology, AI, and ML, because they are developed more quickly in the commercial sector than by the military. To set ourselves apart in a world that is flattening technologically, America should adopt a greater degree of resilience and establish it as a fundamental core value, on par with the more traditional principles of duty, integrity, and service.
To guarantee freedom of access in space, we must reclaim the resilient mindset of our ancestors. Resiliency and self-reliance must again become core to the identity of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen and be rewarded at every level - from private or airman to service secretary. Inculcating this mindset into every aspect of how our 21st century U.S. Space Force organizes, trains, acquires, and operates is now the best way to ensure America’s best long-term chance of keeping access and exploitation of the space domain free and fair for mankind’s next great leap. Technology is no longer the key to dominance, as it is regularly stolen and proliferated internationally. But an unshakeable, resilient ethos is the key to the U.S. preventing space tyranny by our ever-evolving adversaries in the near future.
China, true to its history, is executing a long-term strategy that reflects both the communist party that controls it and the deep-rooted value of individual submission of its people for the benefit of the state. Irrespective of who will someday replace Xi, the U.S. Space Force should not expect any change in China's strategic direction. With this in mind, we must seek to put the relationship on a more constructive path, while also deterring adversarial threats in space in the coming years. Our best bet is to proactively reinforce resilience deeply into our country's newest agency. By exemplifying this core value, our new Space Force will hopefully inspire the rest of the government and impart a relentless mentality that will carry freedom into the final domain and beyond.
