Defending Against Space War

The U.S, Space Command has released a “Framework for Planners” addressing conflict above the atmosphere. We present the executive summary of the document.

United States Space Force Space Warfighting: A Framework for Planners

Access to and the ability to operate freely in space are vital to U.S. national interests. This framework presents the United States Space Force (USSF) current body of knowledge pertaining to space warfighting. It provides the Guardian’s perspective on the best way to approach warfare in the space domain throughout the competition continuum.

This framework is informed by Chief of Space Operations Notes, USSF doctrine, joint doctrine, and USSF Commercial Space Strategy (2024).

Space superiority is a joint force priority. This is especially important whenever the enemy is capable of threatening friendly forces in the space domain or inhibiting a Joint Force Commander’s (JFC’s) ability to conduct operations. Whether directly in the space domain, or through advances in space superiority capabilities, peer and near-peer competitors are capable of challenging or denying control of the space domain. These capabilities, supported by cyberspace and space advancements, present growing challenges to the Joint Force’s ability to exercise space superiority. Not only are space operations global, they are also multi-domain. A successful attack against the terrestrial, link, or orbital segment can neutralize a space capability; therefore, space domain access, maneuver, and utilization require deliberate and synchronized offensive and defensive operations across all segments.

Space superiority may shift from defense to offense and be conducted within the vicinity of enemy, friendly, and commercial spacecraft, or along shared lines of communication in both space and cyberspace. Space superiority may involve seeking out and destroying an enemy’s spacecraft, systems, and networks through measures designed to minimize the Space Warfighting.

It is a rule in strategy, one derived empirically from the evidence of two and a half millennia, that anything of great strategic importance to one belligerent, for that reason has to be worth attacking by others. And the greater the importance, the greater has to be the incentive to damage, disable, capture, or destroy it. In the bluntest of statements: space warfare is a certainty in the future because the use of space in war has become vital. —Colin S. Gray

Because warfare serves political aims, warfare is fundamentally a human activity. The same holds true for space warfare. Credible-combat space forces support U.S. deterrence efforts, which seek to affect the decision calculus of would-be aggressors. The USSF organizes, trains, equips forces, and is ready to conduct the operations that provide offensive and defensive actions that deny, degrade, or disrupt an adversary’s decision-making cycle and ability to observe, orient, decide, and act.

While space warfare—like all warfare—is a human activity, the character of warfare in the space domain features highly automated systems that filter or reduce human decision making. These systems are necessary for space vehicles to operate in the domain featuring high speeds, long distances, and congested orbital regimes.

Detailed analysis must help us characterize how and when humans interact with these systems.

Space Superiority

Space superiority allows military forces in all domains to operate at a time and place of their choosing without prohibitive interference from space or counterspace threats, while also denying the same to an adversary.

Space superiority extends beyond protecting friendly space capabilities from attack, it also encompasses protection of friendly forces in all domains from space-enabled attack.

Adversary exploitation of the space domain enables adversaries to communicate and to find, engage, and conduct post-attack assessments against joint forces and partners; space superiority enables the denial of these key adversary advantages. The ability to establish space superiority at the time and place of our choosing enables joint lethality in all domains.

Space superiority options for the United States against a potential Adversary: The condition where both have full capability is undesirable and results in prohibitive interference to the Joint Force during conflict. The condition where neither have full capability is undesirable because the Joint Force relies heavily on space to achieve joint effects. The desired condition is to maximize U.S. advantage while minimizing that of a potential adversary. Importantly, actions taken to achieve space superiority should not completely jeopardize the long-term safety, security, stability, or sustainability of the space domain.

In some situations, an actor may not be able to control the domain by operating how it wishes but may have the power to deny use of the domain to others. This is known as a denial. Denial could also be achieved with reversible, temporary effects. Denial, like other aspects of space superiority, may be bounded in temporal and spatial dimensions.

Seizing space superiority at the time and place of our choosing can offer advantages to military forces. By concentrating effects to control celestial lines of communication, United States space forces can achieve space superiority and enable joint lethality. In many ways, the modern use of various orbital regimes in the space domain provides similar advantages to military forces that control key terrain and positions in other domains.

Space superiority has both spatial and temporal dimensions. Because of the expansiveness of the space domain, which includes the orbital, link, and terrestrial segments, various Earth orbits, and cislunar space, the attainment of space superiority at all places and all times will likely prove elusive. This means space superiority can be either general or local and either persistent or temporary.

General superiority of space is achieved when the enemy is no longer able to act in a meaningful or dangerous way against friendly celestial lines of communication, and it also means that the enemy is unable to adequately defend or control its own assets or deliver space effects in support of its own operations. Local superiority is where control is gained or exercised and is less than the total region where one’s interests in space lie. Persistent superiority means that despite the adversary’s attempts, the element of time is no longer a significant strategic factor in the execution of warfare in, from, and to space. Temporary superiority means that either general or local control is gained for a specific period to achieve either military or non-military objectives.

When superiority is both general and persistent, it does not mean the enemy cannot act, but that the adversary is severely weakened to such a point where its efforts are unlikely to affect the war’s outcome in a significant and lasting way, and this condition aligns most with space supremacy. When superiority is both local and persistent, it signifies that significant space capabilities and celestial lines of communication are protected within a specified region for the foreseeable future, yet the military outcome is still not assured. Achieving space superiority involves both offensive and defensive operations. During the pursuit for space superiority, it is critical to heed the timeless advice of maritime strategist Julian Corbett: To seek invulnerability is to fall into the strategical vice of trying to be superior everywhere, to forfeit the attainment of the essential for fear of risking the unessential, to base our plans on an assumption that war may be waged without loss, that it is, in short, something that it never has been and never can be.

Photo: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket booster carrying a payload of two WorldView Legion satellites launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., May 2, 2024. This launch marked a collaboration between the U.S. Space Forces – Space and Maxar Technologies, a commercial space company. This mission was supported by S4S’s CIC program, which fosters collaboration between the DoD and commercial space companies to deliver critical space capabilities. (U.S. Space Force photo by SrA. Joshua Leroi)

Quick Analysis

North Korea’s Growing Nuclear Threat, Part 2

The Congressional Research Service has released a major new report on North Koreas’ nuclear weapons and missile programs. We conclude our presentation of that report. Nuclear Warheads North Korean government statements show that the country is aiming to increase its stockpile of nuclear warheads and improve their design for a variety of delivery systems. Some nongovernmental experts estimate that North Korea has produced enough fissile material for up to 90 warheads but may have assembled approximately 50. Another goal of a nuclear weapon program is to lower the size and weight of a nuclear warhead for deployment on missiles, called “miniaturization.” A July 2017 DIA assessment asserted North Korea had achieved the level of miniaturization required to fit a nuclear device on weapons ranging from short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Kim Jong-un in January 2021 said that the country was able to “miniaturize, lighten and standardize nuclear weapons and to make them tactical ones.” In his January 1, 2023, speech, Kim said the country would expand its nuclear arsenal and “mass produce” tactical nuclear weapons. The 2024 ATA said that Kim ordered a “an increase in the nuclear weapons stockpile and the expansion of weapon-grade nuclear material production” in March 2023. The ATA said that “North Korea also unveiled a purported tactical nuclear warhead and claimed it could be mounted on at least eight delivery systems, including an unmanned underwater vehicle and cruise missiles.” Missile Testing North Korea has accelerated the pace of its ballistic missile test launches since 2022. UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions prohibit North Korea’s development of the means of delivering conventional and nuclear payloads, in addition to the nuclear weapons themselves. UNSC resolutions specifically ban “all ballistic missile tests” by North Korea. A ballistic missile is a projectile powered by a rocket engine until it reaches the apogee of its trajectory, at which point it falls back to earth using earth’s gravity. Ballistic missiles can deliver nuclear and large conventional payloads at high speed and over great distances. They are categorized as short-range, medium-range, or long-range (intercontinental) based on the distance from the launch site to the target. North Korea will likely continue testing and developing a variety of missiles to increase the reliability, effectiveness, and survivability of its ballistic missile force. According to the 2025 ATA, North Korea may be receiving technical expertise from Moscow in exchange for weapons sales, which “could accelerate North Korea’s testing and deployment efforts.” In his May 2025 congressional testimony, U.S. Forces Korea Commander said, “Russia’s expanded cooperation will enable advancements of DPRK’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program across the next three to five years.” Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles North Korea has been improving its ability to strike the continental United States with an ICBM through a series of tests, first in 2017, then in 2022, four times in 2023, and most recently in October 2024. The DPRK first successfully test-launched two liquid-propellant, road mobile ICBMs in 2017: the Hwasong-14 (U.S. designated KN-20) and Hwasong-15 (U.S. designated KN-22). North Korea displayed a larger Hwasong-17 ICBM at an October 2020 military parade and began test launching it in 2022. In December 2022, North Korea static (or ground) tested an ICBM solid-propellant rocket motor, potentially for a land based or submarine-based ICBM. On April 13, July 12, and December 17, 2023, North Korea flight tested its solid-fuel ICBM, the Hwasong-18. The October 31, 2024, test was assessed as a Hwasong-19 solid-propellant ICBM with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) capability. These systems may require further testing to improve reliability. Short- and Medium-Range Missiles North Korean SRBMs and medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM), precision-guided multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), and artillery pose the most acute near-term threats to other nations. Advances in these systems demonstrate a shift toward solid propellants and satellite guidance systems; advances that could carry over to larger, more potent systems like the Hwasong series ICBMs. These developments provide the projectiles greater mobility and survivability prior to launch and greater precision on target. Selected systems are described here. In the MRBM category, the Pukguksong-2 (KN-15) is a solid-propellant missile capable of carrying a nuclear or conventional payload—known as dual capable. The North Koreans fire the missile from a tracked vehicle, which gives the system mobility and makes prelaunch targeting of the system difficult. The KN-23 SRBM can strike any location on the Korean peninsula with either a conventional or nuclear payload and uses a solid-propellant. North Korea has committed to expanding the performance of its precision guided tactical weapons, which can pose significant threats to South Korea and U.S. assets on the peninsula. The KN-24 is a tactical system with a mobile launcher, solid propellant, and relatively large payload. The KN-25 blurs the line between rocket and missile; however, it achieves the same effect as a traditional SRBM by delivering destructive effects on a precision target at significant range. The North Koreans may seek to fire these rockets in salvos to overwhelm missile defense systems. The recent advances in North Korea’s ballistic missile program appear to be directed at developing capabilities to defeat or degrade the effectiveness of missile defenses in the region: Patriot, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). The United States and South Korea are developing Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD). North Korea’s progress with submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) suggests an effort to counter land-based THAAD missile defenses by launching attacks from positions at sea outside the THAAD’s radar field of view, although local Aegis BMD systems could likely still track these projectiles. The Pukgugsong-3 SLBM was successfully tested beginning in late 2019. According to a 2021 DIA report, North Korea has said this SLBM, to be launched from a ballistic missile submarine, will be cold launched, solid-fueled and “will carry a nuclear warhead.” North Korea has since then revealed development of longer-range SLBMs, the Pukguksong-4, -5, and -6. Unveiled in 2022, the Pukguksong-6 is a longer-range SLBN that some analysts assess is solid-fueled, MIRVed, and under development […]

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