The U.S. Must Draw Red Lines in Space Now
We’re Unprepared for Conflict in Low Earth Orbit
We are standing on a precarious ledge.
Space has become a warfighting domain, and the United States is woefully unprepared for a conflict that could begin there at any moment. Our nation is dependent on space economically, militarily and strategically. We are advancing technologies such as resilience, rapid reconstitution, counterforce and space-domain awareness, but we are not ready.
The absence of norms, rules or diplomatic channels to govern escalation in space is troubling. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty banned weapons of mass destruction in orbit but said nothing about conventional weapons. More recent United Nations efforts, such as the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space initiative, have long stalled. Even the 2008 Russia-China draft treaty was rejected as unverifiable. No binding rules exist to shape how nations behave in space once a conflict begins.
Make no mistake: A terrestrial conflict with China or Russia will begin in space. Crippling U.S. satellites would level the playing field and embolden a terrestrial attack. A conflict in space could escalate rapidly and unintentionally, leaving the orbital environment unusable for everyone.
Warfare has existed for millennia. Over time, nations developed ways to communicate intentions and escalate or de-escalate deliberately. Armies massing on a border, nuclear forces placed on alert and leader-to-leader hotlines all provide some clarity and reduce miscalculation.
We have none of that for space.
If an in-orbit weapon approaches a sensitive U.S. satellite, what happens next? What if Russia or China places a nuclear device in low earth orbit? We don’t know. Worse, our warfighters lack clear instructions and our adversaries have no reliable clue how we’ll respond. That uncertainty is destabilizing.
By contrast, the sea has clear rules. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and centuries of maritime practice define innocent passage, signaling and escalation ladders. Space has higher stakes but nothing comparable.
Space is unlike any battlefield. Low earth orbit is only a few hundred miles up, but the domain extends tens of thousands of miles. Everything moves fast. Destroy a target, and it does not disappear; it keeps moving, perhaps in many pieces, like a hypervelocity shotgun blast that circles Earth for years.
Our current defense strategy emphasizes resiliency: replacing a few exquisitely capable satellites with thousands of smaller, networked satellites. The logic is simple: If an adversary destroys a dozen, the system keeps working. Reconstitution aims to launch replacements faster than an enemy can destroy them. The goal is to make success costly and uncertain.
Yet resiliency is half a strategy. Dense proliferated constellations must operate in the accessible low earth orbit regime, making them vulnerable. The Trump administration recognized that merely absorbing losses is insufficient. Counterforce, or the ability to fight back, is on the table. Yet today, we cannot defend low earth orbit against a determined, large-scale assault.
Adversaries hold two trump cards:
Use proliferation against itself. The destruction of even a single satellite that creates a debris field wider than 15 miles, as with the 2007 Chinese ASAT test, could cascade through a dense shell, destroying hundreds of satellites in a day and rendering an entire orbital band unusable for years.
Go nuclear. A moderate-yield detonation at the right altitude would kill every satellite on its side of Earth, far out into higher orbits. It would leave behind an artificial radiation belt that would continue to kill more satellites for months, creating an impenetrable region.
Is there an escalatory step between modestly degrading a constellation and wiping out vast orbital zones? Is there a bright line that, if crossed, would trigger a proportionally stronger U.S. retaliation? If detonated in space with no immediate casualties, is it still a weapon of mass destruction?
These are vital questions, and no one knows the answers — especially not China or Russia.
Some progress has been made through voluntary commitments. The United States pledged not to conduct destructive anti-satellite tests, and allies have joined. Yet without universal adoption and enforcement, these steps fall far short of the predictability and deterrence we need.
Wholesale orbital destruction is an attack on the homelands of the U.S. and our allies. Our infrastructure depends more on space than that of our adversaries. Without satellites, Americans could face immediate collapse: no electricity, water, transportation, working credit cards, crippled emergency response, and empty supermarket shelves. That looks very much like a nation at war.
Until we can render a space attack ineffective, we remain in a dangerous no-man’s land. Treaties are important but take time. What we need now is an immediate, unilateral declaration of norms and responses. We must signal clearly to adversaries which actions will trigger proportional responses. Without defined red lines, we risk entering a conflict none of us can control — a conflict whose consequences could last for generations.
* Tory Bruno is president and CEO of United Launch Alliance. He is a member of the National Academies, an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and an academician of the International Academy of Astronautics.
Originally published by The Washington Times: The U.S. must draw red lines in space now — Washington Times