The Spacepower Needed to Secure Space and Improve U.S. National Security

This series, Space in Focus, explores key space trends, challenges, and policy issues that will confront the next administration as well as offers recommendations for how to navigate them.

In 2019, the United States established the United States Space Force (USSF) and made other important changes in its structure for developing and operating national security space (NSS) capabilities. Many want to believe these changes comprehensively and effectively addressed how space can support national security; they are now eager to turn their attention toward the panoply of other pressing national security challenges. Unfortunately, however, the 2019 NSS restructuring is incomplete work and may just represent “the end of the beginning.” The United States may have done some right things for the wrong reasons since several changes were driven more by domestic politics than clear national security considerations. Domestic politics will always be part of policy formulation in democracies, but it shouldn’t override other critical national security considerations, no matter how cool it sounds to chant “Space Force” at political rallies.

The 2019 structure is simply too weak and fragmented a foundation to provide the integration and unity of effort needed to accelerate the development of U.S. spacepower. However, the last thing the United States currently needs is another major reorganization. The Department of Defense and Intelligence Community have already suffered through the almost constant churn of at least seven major organizational changes during the last 30 years. Instead, the United States must adopt a long-term mindset that encourages thinking about first-order issues like discerning all of the ways space activities support national security. Then the United States can better address the second-order issue of structuring those activities in accordance with Aristotle’s basic “form follows function” concept. This approach can help the United States synergize some sequential and interrelated steps toward a more robust structure for NSS that will continue strengthening space security.

First and most importantly, the United States needs a more clear, powerful, and easily understood fundamental doctrine for the employment of military force in space—a comprehensive spacepower doctrine. Doctrine provides foundational orientation and guidance to military forces; it can be defined as what is officially believed and taught about the best ways to conduct military affairs. Development of this doctrine should be a fully collaborative effort between the Joint Staff, USSF, and United States Space Command. Officers steeped in military space operations and charged with deterring conflict and winning the United States’ wars are the right people to develop this doctrine.

The USSF was simply handed independence in 2019; this deprived space officers of the benefits and necessity of being engaged in intense and protracted public debates about the best ways to conduct military space operations. Several recent and laudable but nascent steps have attempted to address this shortfall and show progress toward developing a comprehensive and foundational spacepower doctrine; most noteworthy efforts include the USSF Space Capstone Publication Spacepower, Joint Space Operations doctrine, and the USSF white paper on competitive endurance and its terms of reference. Unfortunately, however, spacepower doctrine still lacks anything approaching the pithy and powerful doctrine that airpower theory pioneers like Giulio Douhet and Billy Mitchell developed and fought to disseminate in the 1920s: airpower is inherently offensive, manifestly strategic, and should therefore be organized independently.

It should be instructive that both Douhet and Mitchell were court-martialed and that the United States (and really the world) has never seen a single senior active-duty military space officer who approaches the strident public advocacy of these officers. The lack of a Mitchell for space should also be instructive with respect to his paradigm-changing sinking of the Ostfriesland in 1921, a demonstration that showed airpower could render Navy and Army doctrines for hemispheric and coastal defense subordinate or obsolete. An analogous demonstration today would involve something like using space capabilities not just to target, but to shoot down a B-2 or sink an aircraft carrier—demonstrations that no space officer is close to proposing, let alone conducting. Clearly, the United States must look beyond just force application in assessing the military utility of space. The divergence between the force application demonstrated less than 20 years after Kitty Hawk versus nothing remotely similar nearly 70 years after Sputnik highlights one of the greatest distinctions between the evolution of airpower and spacepower thus far.

The development of a more robust spacepower doctrine has also been significantly hindered by layers of secrecy surrounding too many NSS programs. NSS policy and programs were born in secret under National Security Council report 5520 in May 1955, many of the original classification restrictions were tightened, some have remained in place for decades, and a few have never been lifted; consider that the very existence of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) was not made public until 1992. A comprehensive and robust spacepower doctrine cannot arise when too many of the officers responsible for its development are not aware of many of the capabilities that should shape this doctrine. It is difficult to develop doctrine to advance integration and unity of effort when special access programs create stovepipes and preclude officers from having any knowledge about programs that could even be in the suite next door. Many specifics about NSS capabilities should remain classified, but a holistic assessment is needed to determine how revealing and concealing certain capabilities can strengthen deterrence and improve space warfighting. Revealing the “fact of” many capabilities should be an overarching goal, particularly if the NSS community is to more effectively leverage the capabilities of its commercial and international partners.

Following progress in developing a more robust spacepower doctrine and lowering classification barriers, the United States can then turn to applying the form-follows-function approach to restructuring the NSS enterprise. The United States currently has the most separate and fractured structure for NSS of any major space actor. Patient and careful work will be needed to determine the best ways to achieve better integration and unity of effort for NSS. The United States must consider the continuing utility of housing cutting-edge space intelligence under the NRO and space-based missile defenses under the Missile Defense Agency. Additionally, the structure for several space mission areas seems ripe for reconsideration including tracking moving targets; integration of commercial and international capabilities; positioning, navigation, and timing; and safety and constabulary functions. Throughout this patient work, the form follows function approach can help us avoid pitfalls and not establish more self-licking ice cream cones.

Peter Hays is a senior associate (non-resident) with the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.