Season’s Greetings from the New York Analysis of Policy and Government

Post author By Frank V. Vernuccio, Jr.
Post date December 25, 2015

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 […]