Space Force No. 2 Says There Is Risk of China or Russia Launching Large-Scale Attack in Orbit

ROCKVILLE, Md.—China and Russia have been monitoring U.S. efforts to protect its space assets and are trying to devise ways to counter them, to include a potential large-scale attack, the Space Force’s No. 2 officer said Aug. 28.

The Space Force and the Department of Defense have turned to proliferated constellations to make the U.S. satellites less vulnerable to attack and say the U.S. remains ahead in space.

“Proliferation means I’m now spreading out orbitology across multiple different orbits, so that they can’t just take out one satellite; they have to take out a bunch of satellites,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael A. Guetlein said at the AFCEA/INSA Intelligence and National Security Summit. “Then through proliferation, we’re partnering with other entities to get just more assets on orbit. That is a significant investment for the United States Space Force.”

But when asked if even disaggregated satellites would be at risk of a “large-scale” attack, Guetlein did not hesitate.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

“How is to be determined, what the impact of it is to be determined,” Guetlein said, referring to such an attack. “But they are watching what’s going on in places like Ukraine and Gaza, and they are understanding how the world has become dependent upon space. They’re understanding the impact of those disaggregated architectures, and they are actively working on how to counter that capability.”

Russia has apparently not only been monitoring U.S. assets in space but has also been keeping close tabs on American space officials. On Aug. 28, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement announcing it has permanently banned Guetlein, along with 91 other individuals, from visiting Russia because of the “Biden administration’s Russophobic policy.” Other people banned included Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, the head of U.S. Space Command; Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant, the head of Space Systems Command; and former Pentagon space policy chief John Plumb.

U.S. officials have said that Russia is developing a nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon, among other capabilities.

While the Space Force is facing increasing threats, it is also dealing a flat budget of $30 billion—a slight decrease when accounting for inflation. “That may sound like a lot, but that’s a drop in the bucket,” Guetlein said. “That’s an enormous amount of heavy lift the nation is getting for three and a half percent of the DOD budget.”

The Space Force’s No. 2 officer said the budgetary constraints are preventing the service from addressing “some of the additional mission areas that we think we need to get after.”

When it comes to countering future Chinese or Russian threats, Gutlein said he was hopeful the soon-to-be-established Space Futures Command would help the Space Force field a more resilient force.

“What we’re hoping comes out of Space Futures Command is what we call the ‘objective architecture,’” Guetlein said. “That’s the architecture that we want tomorrow to look like. What that does for you is it defines your risk, because the difference between your objective architecture and your fielded architecture is the risk that you’re accepting today, and the difference between your objective architecture and the architecture that you have funded is the risk that you’re accepting in your current budget. So that really now starts to define where can we go as a Space Force.”

The threat is not just to American military assets but to the broad U.S. economy as well, he added. Guetlein cited a study that he said found the loss of GPS—which is operated by the Space Force—for even just 15 minutes would cause over a billion dollars in economic damage.

While the U.S. has pledged not to test any direct-ascent kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, the Pentagon is developing counterspace capabilities to stay ahead of China and Russia.

“What has become abundantly clear to us is that the adversary has been watching us for the past 20-plus years and the way we operate,” Guetlein said. “They’ve been studying the way our economy works, our way of life, and they have not only become very intent on denying our ability to use space, but they’ve become very capable at it as well. And that … should be enough of an alarm that we all start paying attention.”