Why The United States Space Force Is Not Equipped To Use Force In Space

Emphasis on equilibrium, non-kinetic weapons limits American deterrence

According to Col. Charles Galbreath, retired from the US Space Force, and Col. Jennifer Reeves, retired from the US Air Force, military space operations have yet to be “normalized,” while “establishing a warfighting mindset of Guardians” — space soldiers — is “a persistent challenge.”

In their report published this month by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Galbreath and Reeves write that the culture of Space Force must change. “Space is no longer a benign field of operations” as the orbitals become crowded. “Warfighting operations in space must be treated like those in any other warfighting domain.”

The first problem is political. Space Force must come up with a warfighting concept, including weapons of war, then explain itself to America and the legislators who fund them. Congress must buy weapons for Space Force to use and “loosen policy restrictions to authorize the fielding of offensive and defensive weapons to ensure our nation’s interest in space.”

Currently, Space Force sees its mission as a kind of peacekeeping. Galbreath and Reeves base their recommendations on the results of a Space Endurance Workshop that “presented four teams of experts with a series of crises that sequentially led to a desired future state in space — a peaceful resultion to the ongoing competition.”

But not everyone wants peace in space. China in particular has displayed a belligerent disregard for peaceful rules in space. The authors take pains to emphasize that “that this is not a course the U.S. wanted, but instead something our adversaries drove.”

While the United States, allies, and partners may want to preserve space as a peaceful domain, our adversaries have made it a warfighting domain. The best way to ensure no overt conflict erupts in space is to field offensive and defensive space warfighting capabilities that can hold adversary space capabilities at risk with weapons deployed in space and from the terrestrial domains. This creates compounding dilemmas across multiple domains for a would-be adversary to deter hostile enemy actions. Should deterrence fail, the U.S. must be postured to win. Too much is at stake, given the daily impact space capabilities have on military force structure and modern life.

Kessler Syndrome, a runaway chain reaction of debris collisions that might make orbital space unusable for everyone, is the the biggest worry for most space policy experts. Undeterred, China has developed a number of anti-satellite missile systems.

However, most weapons envisaged for outer space warfare are non-kinetic jamming, signal spoofing, cyberattack, or even direct energy devices designed to short out the electronics in a satellite. The more salient point is that Space Force doesn’t already have the sort of armory they would need in a war.

It’s not as if the Pentagon is unaware of the problem. The Department of Defense changed its classification policy to make space weapon programming easier more than a year ago, but “not a single weapon system has yet made it through the process,” Space Force commander Gen. Stephen Whiting said in December.

Instead, the Space Development Agency has focused on putting hundreds of new satellites into orbit so that the cost of destroying America’s space-based sensing capabilities becomes prohibitive. Space Force has also developed “ways for satellites to defend and protect themselves, from both kinetic (physical attacks such as missiles) and non-kinetic (electronic or cyber attacks) attacks.” While these are sensible measures, they are not enough.

“Dealing with this reality in a competent, responsible fashion requires the United States to develop a national policy that allows the Space Force to possess and employ weapon systems capable of defending its vital interests in space and denying potential adversaries the means to close their space-enabled kill chains,” the report authors conclude.

But what could explain the lack of a warrior ethos at Space Force? Perhaps full-time transgender policy advocate and part-time Space Force acquisitions officer Col. Bree Fram gave us a clue in 2023 when he extolled a kinder, gentler military ethos in which “vulnerability” is a good thing.

Fram highlighted the Guardian Spirits document which guides Space Force, saying it is what the military agency believes in. “It has words you wouldn't expect to see in a military leadership document,” Fram said.

“It talks about embracing diversity and engaging inclusively. It talks about the value of openness, authenticity, and vulnerability. I mean vulnerability? In a military leadership document? That's wild to think of. Because vulnerability, the ability to show ourselves that we're human is that opening to connection, and embracing that connection with our teams makes us all better,” Fram said.

Showing the enemy that you are human is a fantastic way to start wars and lose them. In space warfare, showing your enemy a vulnerability is asking them to impose costs on you by blinding your sensors and cutting your command and control networks. The American bodies will stack up down on earth thanks to all the nice, lovely human vulnerability you created.

If Guardians do not have a warrior mindset, that is because the high-tech domain of space warfare is unattractive to people with a warrior mindset. It rather attracts the highly-educated technical professional with a management mindset. In turn, the modern American managerial class has bloated with DEI officers. Space Force reflects this new kind of nerd culture more than the other, more kinetic, branches.

The non-kinetic nature of the Space Force mission amplifies this institutional character trait. This is not even a criticism of Space Force. Electronic, electromagnetic, and cyber warfare are in fact most useful in the deterrence phase of any conflict, so ideally the Space Force should be designed to mitigate enemy action and convince them to de-escalate. In the ideal, that ought to be their first mission.

But effective strategy cannot depend on the goodness of the enemy’s heart or the reasonableness of their leadership. Defeating China in a real war would require blinding Beijing to what is going on out at sea while disrupting the PLAN’s centralized command of ships, planes, and missiles. Deterring China requires that Space Force show they are both able and willing to do that if necessary, even with kinetic means.