How the US is preparing to fight — and win — a war in space

Tim Fernholz 

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Capt. Even Rogers had the best job at the first large-scale war games focused on space, conducted by the US military in 2017. He got to be the bad guy.

Most of the military’s work in space had been about maintaining infrastructure in orbit, not reacting to attacks in real time. Worried about deepening tensions with Russia and China in 2016, Congress had asked the Pentagon to up its readiness. Serving in what was then the US Air Force’s 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, Rogers was the Red Team lead — tasked with studying how America’s rivals might fight a war in space and turning those tactics against his comrades to prepare them for potential conflicts.

What Rogers remembers about the first “Space Flag” exercise, modeled after the Air Force exercises that stage aerial combat on a massive scale in Nevada, was that it didn’t reflect the conditions of actual combat as they would have been. To be fair, those conditions would be sitting in front of computer workstations, but these fake workstations weren’t even connected. The US military builds its satellites in siloed programs and hadn’t bothered to ask its contractors for simulators to create realistic combined training scenarios. The joke among participants, Rogers says now, was that they had to cover up the positions of their opponents with sticky notes on a computer screen to avoid cheating.

It would be funnier if the world wasn’t entering a new and more dangerous era of space conflict. The same economic and technological trends that have made smartphones ubiquitous have made access to space cheaper than ever. Thanks largely to low-cost rockets by SpaceX, there were a record 212 launches to orbit in 2023, compared to just 55 in 2005. Government and private investors are spending billions to build new communications and sensor networks in orbit and plotting new activities ranging from in-space manufacturing to tourism. Today, the environment around our planet is teeming with more spacecraft — a term for any vehicle in space, from satellites and robots to crewed vehicles and habitats — than at any time in history.

And that technology is available to anyone: The first-ever ballistic missile strike on a ship at sea was conducted not by a superpower but by Houthi rebels (with Iran’s help) in Yemen in December. A pariah state like North Korea is taking pictures of the White House with its new spy satellite. Russia, India, and China have conducted anti-satellite missile tests and demonstrated advanced military space tech. You won’t be surprised to learn that the US military’s real worry centers on Beijing: Geopolitical trends that have pushed the US and China into a trade war and a series of escalating disputes about human rights and sovereignty have put the possibility of a conflict with a major spacefaring power firmly back on the Pentagon’s priority list for the first time since the Cold War.

There’s more than just US national security at stake in space. The growing importance of space to the global economy makes a safe and predictable orbital environment vital for anyone looking for directions on their phone, farmers trying to maximize crop yields, and, of course, scientists seeking to explore the universe. The people who depend on space are already fretting about traffic rules in orbit and the potential for costly collisions with space junk.

Those stakes get much higher when you think about war in space. When Russia destroyed a satellite with a missile in 2021 to demonstrate its capabilities, 1,783 pieces of debris were tracked flying around our planet at more than 17,500 miles per hour, each capable of damaging or even destroying a spacecraft. The consequences of conflict in space would be worse: Rogers says stability in orbit “has potential existential consequences to humanity; if we don’t defend the domain sustainably, you end up with cascading generational effects that can lock us down on the planet.” He’s talking about a worst-case scenario where destroyed spacecraft create a storm of junk that makes leaving Earth’s atmosphere impossible.

Those concerns were magnified this week when intelligence reports began to drip out of Washington describing Russian advances in space-based nuclear weapons, according to reporting from ABC News and others. Such a weapon wouldn’t be used to strike targets on the ground, but it could threaten America’s extensive military and civilian satellite network. Nuclear weapons are banned in space according to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which both the US and Russia are a party. Although there are no signs a weapon has been deployed, it does raise questions about whether Russia might be preparing to abandon the treaty. The bottom line is that, at the moment, the US would have no real way to counter such a threat.

It was fears about US readiness for orbital conflict that led to the Space Force being created during the Trump administration. The reorganization of the space-focused units across the military into a new service has succeeded in directing more focus toward dealing with war in space — and training for combat in a world where the enemy can fight back.

“In the past, we may have practiced punching a punching bag,” says US Space Force Brig. Gen. Todd Moore, the deputy commander of Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM). Starcom is in charge of developing the ideas and tools that will define future wars in space. Moore’s top priority is building a new National Space Test and Training Complex (NSTTC) that is intended to “give us a place where we have a sparring partner.”

After leaving the military in 2022, Rogers co-founded True Anomaly, a venture-backed startup with aspirations to be that sparring partner. True Anomaly is the contractor that helps the US Space Force, itself a bit of a startup, figure out how to train for and fight a war that has never been fought before. He wants to build platforms and training systems “designed for operators, by operators,” and has won more than $20 million in contracts from the Pentagon to do so.

True Anomaly has raised $125 million, including a $100 million round in December, and hired nearly 100 engineers, scientists, and tacticians. The company’s first goal is to develop realistic simulators and other training tools for the Space Force. Its primary aspiration, however, is to build the spacecraft that the service will operate to deter — or win — future conflicts.

A brief history of space weaponry

Space was once something of a career killer for a military officer like Rogers, a place for nerds and science fiction fans — not folks headed to major command positions.

That’s because, over most of the past 20 years, America’s enemies have generally been earthbound. The likes of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS did not have any assets in orbit. A post-Cold War Russia could no longer challenge the US on the ground, let alone in space, while China lacked the technology and cash to do so.

But space still mattered because America’s unquestioned military superiority depended on its equally superior technology in space. More than any other country, the US relies on fleets of orbital spacecraft to communicate with its far-flung military forces, to guide precision weaponry against enemy targets, and to discover those targets through high-altitude surveillance using cameras, radar, and sensors that can intercept radio and other forms of communication. And just as the US military seemed untouchable on Earth, the same seemed true for its orbital assets.A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-6) stands ready on May 15, 2020, for a scheduled launch at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images

That hasn’t always been the case. During the Cold War, when the Soviet Union’s capability in orbit threatened the US, actual war in space seemed a real possibility. Military strategists around the world contemplated how to gain the ultimate high ground. While the Outer Space Treaty forbade stationing weapons of mass destruction n space, it didn’t ban conventional weapons or other forms of military activity in orbit.

The first US spy satellite was launched in 1962; the Soviets demonstrated a spacecraft that could fly to a target in orbit and explode next to it in 1968 — the first weapon expressly designed to destroy a satellite. But George Washington University history professor Aaron Bateman, who studies space security, notes that until the mid-1970s, the US didn’t have the technology to precisely target a satellite with a weapon; its main concept for anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons was to detonate a nuclear warhead as close as possible to the enemy spacecraft.

By the Ford administration in the mid-1970s, US technology had improved to where building realistic anti-satellite weapons had become feasible. Now declassified documents reveal a debate at the National Security Council over the question of creating them. The administration concluded that the answer was yes — not to deter Soviet potential attacks, but because Soviet spy satellites would be critical targets in case of real conflict.

This policy, continued by President Jimmy Carter, led to the creation of a missile that could be launched from an F-15 against a satellite. It was demonstrated in 1985, before the program was canceled in 1988. By then, the Reagan administration had launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), popularly known as “Star Wars,” an assortment of space and missile technology development programs designed to make a nuclear war winnable. Most of SDI’s plans never got off the ground, though some analysts credit the program, which cost $64.6 billion in 2023 dollars, with straining the Soviet economy and contributing to the collapse of communism.

Without a true rival, US military planners didn’t worry too much about space. (China, for one, didn’t put its first person in orbit until 2003.) But as tensions have risen between the US and its rivals, things have changed. Moscow’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 was a turning point for US-Russia relations, while China’s military buildup has alarmed US allies like Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.

The nightmare scenario contemplated by military planners involves China seeking to gain control of Taiwan by force, using a rain of missiles to clear out the island nation’s defenses and, presumably, any attempt by the US Navy to prevent an invasion. Satellite photos show the Chinese military re-creating silhouettes of American ships in the desert for apparent target practice. But conducting missile warfare at long distance is a space-based enterprise, as finding targets in real time and guiding missiles their way requires satellite sensors. And in recent years, China’s military has launched over 290 spacecraft for just these purposes.

Now, American generals have realized that rivals like China are no longer merely focused on being able to attack US space assets; they are building the tools they need in space to fight the same way the US does — to “find, fix, track targets and attack our joint terrestrial forces,” as Gen. Moore puts it. And that calls for a different set of tactics for an organization that once seemed to fly above the fray.

In recent years, Russia and China made a point of noisily demonstrating their own ability to destroy satellites in orbit around the planet using missiles. These explosive tests, besides creating a Sargasso Sea of space junk, reminded Americans that any future conflict would also be fought in space. Both countries are also investigating the use of ground-based lasers and electronic warfare against satellites, according to the Secure World Foundation’s annual report on counterspace weapons development.

The US, though, is a bit more circumspect about its capabilities. The Pentagon has admitted that it has systems that can jam and dazzle the transmissions and sensors of enemy spacecraft. And, like China and Russia, it has missiles that can shoot down satellites from the Earth below, though the last time it demonstrated that particular form of punching up was in 2008. Now, US diplomats are pushing a moratorium on the testing of anti-satellite weapons that generate space debris in an effort to bring international condemnation down on Russia’s and China’s recent efforts.

What’s next in space warfare?

During his Air Force career, Rogers gained some notoriety for his novel ideas about how military spacecraft should operate. He coined the term “orbital engagement maneuvers,” which Space Force Lt. Col. William Sanders simplified in one essay to “dogfighting with satellites.” Rogers’s ultimate expectation, one shared by some other warfare visionaries, is mosaic warfare — swarms of autonomous orbital weapons platforms, coordinated and directed by AI-assisted service members.People watch as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launch pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on February 27, 2023, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

But the world’s militaries are still far from making that rather terrifying vision a reality; today, the Space Force needs to get the operators of its existing spacecraft working on the same page. That requires significant coordination and communication between operators in a dynamic environment — hence True Anomaly’s focus on creating realistic training environments.

The Space Force has a similar vision. It wants its new training complex, the NSTTC, to bring together the infrastructure required to “play on the same range ... when airplanes go to Nellis and fly on the Nevada Training Range, they learn how to do that in the context of what the people to their left and right are doing. That is what we’re trying to create,” according to Col. Paul Freeman, chief of staff at the headquarters of Starcom.

But the technology for dogfighting with satellites is trickier than many imagine. The physics of space travel means that propellant for rocket engines is a precious resource. Satellites are designed to carry the bare minimum of fuel to maximize the amount of useful payload — their sensors or transmitters — and each kilogram of additional fuel mass on any spacecraft would mean tens of thousands of dollars in additional cost. Many satellites rely on high-efficiency electric thrusters that carry them to their target orbit over a period of months — hardly Top Gun in space. Giving a spacecraft the ability to maneuver rapidly with chemical rocket thrusters requires expensive engineering.

That’s why most of the birds that the Space Force is flying now don’t have the capabilities to do much in response to a potential attack. And that’s why True Anomaly is also trying to make hardware for the Space Force to deploy. Brian Weeden, an expert in space policy at the Secure World Foundation, makes an analogy with how military aircraft respond to attacks, saying that True Anomaly “is trying to figure out what are the flares, chaffs, electronic countermeasures, and wingman analogies to space.”

And they’ll be needed: Space Force officers highlight that Russia has launched what are sometimes referred to as inspector satellites, part of a program known as Burevestnik. These spacecraft can fly to a certain orbit and then deploy smaller vehicles that maneuver more quickly in close range. This technology was first demonstrated in 2017, and by 2020, one of these spacecraft had approached an American spy satellite — then deployed a smaller spacecraft to maneuver even closer. The most likely purpose is surveillance, but the US military considers these inspectors to be weapons. That’s because satellites are surprisingly delicate, and an appropriately executed ramming maneuver by even a tiny spacecraft could disable one.

China, too, has deployed a spacecraft that can maneuver around geostationary satellites and is seen as a weapon by the US Space Force; notably, vehicles in the Shijian series have a robotic grappling arm that allows them to grab another satellite. In 2022, one of these spacecraft captured a defunct satellite that had been part of China’s Global Positioning System and dragged it to a graveyard orbit — an internationally recognized area around the planet where defunct spacecraft can be abandoned. But US officials worry that such capability may not just be for civil purposes: If you can approach and grapple a satellite, you can slew it off course or damage its delicate solar panels.

But asserting that these vehicles are weapons can be a bit tricky. For example, the US defense contractor Northrop Grumman builds and sells robotic spacecraft called Mission Extension Vehicles (MEVs). When communications satellites in high orbit run low on propellant and other consumables, they are typically abandoned, left as floating garbage dumps in space. Now, though, companies like Intelsat hire MEVs to fly up, seize their satellites, and use the MEV’s engines and power systems to keep them functioning for years more. Maneuvering autonomously so close to another satellite and so far from Earth requires advanced AI and precise sensors to avoid a collision. That’s also the kind of technology you could use to cause a crash.

Similarly, the Space Force operates a vehicle called the X-37B. This semi-classified spacecraft looks like a shrunken-down Space Shuttle, complete with cargo bay. It’s considered a test platform by the military, at least publicly, used to assess different kinds of technology in the harsh environment of space. Once launched into space, it can stay there for a long time — more than 900 days in one mission. Its precise maneuvering capabilities are unknown, but former Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has suggested that it can change orbit and pop up in unexpected places, surprising anyone trying to track it. It’s also capable of deploying small satellites, though it’s not clear if it ever carried a payload like those of the Russian inspector satellites.

The idea that it might, though, has likely occurred to strategists in Beijing.A Long March-3B carrier rocket carrying Shijian-21 satellite blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center on October 24, 2021, in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province of China. Li Jieyi/VCG via Getty Images

All of this underscores the need for clearer rules of the road in space, just as there are norms for how rival military planes encounter each other inside the atmosphere. Weeden says that setting terms for “uncoordinated close approaches” is a top priority for diplomats focused on space.

“Having an adversary satellite maneuver to inspect us is interesting,” Gen. Moore says, drawing out an analogy that, “I can get close to you to inspect you, I can approach you on the street and get close to you to look at your haircut, but that’s not the only thing I can do when I get close. In a peacetime scenario, if you knew my intent, you’d have no concerns. If my intent is unknown, you’d have reason for concern.”

What will the US do about Chinese space weapons?

In 2021, rumors trickled out that the US was about to declassify a new space weapon, an effort to remind its feisty rivals who was in charge. What might be on the menu was the subject of frenzied speculation among Twitter warriors, military analysts, science fiction fans, and aerospace contractors attempting to divine what they should invest in building next.

Space, notably, is the most classified of all military sectors, even more so than the nuclear program. “The US military will tell the US how many B-2s and F-22s that we have; we do not tell the world what we have up in orbit,” Bateman says. Even Space Force commanders complain about overclassification, but it is difficult to build consensus about what should be revealed.

Breaking Defense, the outlet that delivered the scoop, reported that President Joe Biden was considering a demonstration to degrade or destroy a target satellite at the urging of then-vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten. No such demonstration took place, but the report highlighted the debate within the government over just what ASAT weapons can do. Echoing the Ford administration’s internal divide, some think that US space weapons can deter rivals from attacking American satellites by threatening the space assets of rivals, while others see them as unlikely to prevent conflict because those rivals don’t depend as much on space. Publicly, Space Force officers are circumspect, but they are clear on the need for additional tools.

One thing is for sure: The current evolution of space technology has changed what deterrence looks like. The new paradigm for satellite architecture is to build many low-cost spacecraft that can be easily replaced, instead of making a handful of hugely expensive satellites to do the same job. Now, a weapon that could potentially deter a rival by threatening a single satellite would need to be able to destroy dozens, if not more, to have the same effect. This is what SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation is demonstrating at commercial scale: tens of thousands of satellites acting in concert. If Vladimir Putin ever got upset that Starlink was helping Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion, he could order anti-satellite missiles to destroy individual Starlink spacecraft, but it would be incredibly costly to destroy enough of the network to degrade its capabilities.

The US is pursuing similar architectures for its own satellite networks through a Defense Department organization called the Space Development Agency (SDA), but so far it is only preparing a proof of concept. China, on the other hand, developed its space capabilities later than the US, thus skipping past similar dependence on expensive bespoke systems. “China was not dumb enough to build a handful of multibillion-dollar satellites that need 10 years to develop,” Weeden says. “SDA is doing the proof of concept we should have done 10 to 15 years ago.”

That logic suggests expensive investments in new counterspace weapons may not be necessary. But there is still the problem of figuring out what we’re going to do about China’s growing space capability. “We have an obligation to protect the joint force from adversary space capabilities as well,” Moore says. “Defending our [spacecraft] isn’t good enough. Defending ourselves isn’t going to keep an aircraft carrier off the bottom of the ocean.”

One consistent problem with all of this is intent. True Anomaly’s Rogers suggests, in keeping with Moore’s theoretical close inspection of my haircut, that it helps to know what’s going on in space. Much of our understanding of China and Russia’s inspector satellites comes from radar data or blurry telescope images — we don’t even have a clear idea of what they look like. And when it comes to bringing people to the table to create norms for close encounters in space, it helps to be able to perform close encounters of your own.

That’s why the first major piece of hardware on his company’s agenda is the Jackal Autonomous Orbital Vehicle, a low-cost imaging satellite intended for “uncooperative proximity operations” — flying close to other spacecraft that may not expect or want them around. (It was originally branded the Jackal Autonomous Orbital Pursuit Vehicle, which gives you an idea of the tensions in branding dual-use technology.) It’s not yet clear whether the Space Force is interested in buying it, but True Anomaly is building it, and the first two prototypes are scheduled to launch in March aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.A man watches Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the nation on television, at Daryaganj on March 27, 2019, in New Delhi, India. India had just shot down one of its satellites in space with an anti-satellite missile. Sanchit Khanna/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Such a vehicle, Rogers says, would be useful for many purposes. It would greatly increase space situational awareness, allowing the US to perform its own satellite inspections and understand enemy capabilities. It could be the vehicle of choice for an on-orbit training range, where Space Force Guardians operate actual spacecraft. And, unspoken by Rogers, it could be a platform for weapons in space. It would likely be all three of these things: Picture Tom Cruise flying an F-14 over the Pacific in the original Top Gun, “observing” an enemy jet fighter during an inverted aerial maneuver. Now picture that, but with robots in space.

The US “is committed to establishing a rules-based order, operating in a way that’s safe and professional and consistent over time; doing these kinds of prox ops activities [maneuvers where two spacecraft are close together] safely means you get some sort of advance warning. ... The consequences of not doing that are pretty significant. Intelligence has always been a critical enabler of stability globally,” Rogers says, discussing how reconnaissance satellites played a key role during the Cold War in revealing the US and Soviet nuclear stockpiles to each other.

In that sense, conflict in space remains more deeply shrouded in the fog of war than conflict on Earth was half a century ago. That breeds paranoia — and it might not be unjustified.

“Our adversaries have every reason to take a combined arms approach to space conflict,” the True Anomaly CEO says, referring to coordination between weapons across multiple domains, now including space. ”We need to expect the unexpected.”