By Squadron Leader Michael Spencer
Joan Johnson-Freese, Space Warfare in the 21st Century: Arming the Heavens. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Notes. Index. xx + 202 pp.
In this book, Joan Johnson-Freese, Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College, has written a comprehensive history of the development of US national policy for space security. In the preface, Johnson-Freese cited General John Hyten, the then Commander, US Air Force Space Command, as stating that, ‘if the United States is “threatened in space, we have the right of self-defence, and will make sure we execute that right.”’ (p. ix) The underlying driver that persists in twenty-first century US policy developments on space security, up to the publication of this book in 2017, is to be able to access and securely use space for its purposes independently and at the time of its choosing. The US also seeks to keep pace with the increasing number of space-faring nations and developments in space power projection.
The book’s title invokes visions of nations in the twenty-first-century posturing to exploit niche combat capabilities to project their influence into future confrontations into the common grounds located above the Earth that is the shared orbital domain. However, this book is a well-constructed guide that walks the reader through the process of US national policy development for space security. More specifically, the book logically describes to the reader the policy determinants for US national security and space security. It also considers the drivers adopted by the US government that has steered its space security interests and shaped attitudes and organisational responses to assert those interests in the shared space orbital domain in the early period of the twenty-first century. The book concludes with suggesting that US space security policy take the lead in providing a secure space domain.
Space is one of the domains used as a common ground to globally connect actors in activities that either permeates across the globe or are discrete interconnected nodes remote located around the world. Moreover, individual state actors wish to exploit that common ground to build compartments within it for their exclusive purposes. State actors will then seek to build systems to protect these compartments that inadvertently increase the congested, contested, and competitive character of the space domain. This also has implications for dependent capabilities, for example, the use of the electromagnetic spectrum for assured access to space systems that support state interests. The challenge for US policy development is to adopt mechanisms that can discriminate between a hostile act and an accidental on-orbit event and provide options for appropriate responses that will not further exacerbate the problems of congestion and inadvertently escalate the competition into an uncontrolled contest.
Chapter one provides a rolling history of the US government’s inaugural efforts in developing policy statements that injected space interests into national security policy. These were then elaborated further in the first dedicated national space policy and space security strategy. US policy-makers, along with many space-savvy actors, have accepted that in a globalised world, economic and national security have become critically dependent on space. However, space is increasingly complex, not regulated, and serves as a global common, which is a challenge for the security policy of individual nations.
Chapter two characterises the priority problems posed by the utility of the orbital space domain to security policy-makers. The characteristics of space activities in the global common fundamentally challenges the management of national security by individual nations. Space cannot be a physical extension to sovereign airspace. Additionally, space is increasingly more affordable and accessible to more state and non-state actors, and increasingly more critical to designs for public infrastructure and daily lifestyles. Although it is accepted that space is a globally shared common, it has become increasingly congested, contested, and competitive in the absence of robust regulation. The space domain is difficult to control, and this is a driver for significant space-faring nations to consider structuring military force options to help assure space access from adverse environmental effects, on-orbit accidents, potential future adversary actions.
Chapter three discusses the reasons why the US should make strategies for space security. The fundamental assumption made is that conflict in the common grounds is inevitable and that concern over the future capabilities of potential adversary nations in the space domain is an acceptable driver for the development of US space security strategy irrespective of the publicly announced intentions of other nations. Johnson-Freese postulates potential strategy developments in the US along the four separate themes. First, space dominance is essential to assuring US military/civilian capabilities. Second, the weaponisation of space is inevitable. Third, while space is essential to military capabilities, the government should seek to limit the militarisation of space, and finally, the US should promote the use of space as a sanctuary, in a similar analogy to the international cooperation for managing Antarctica. Irrespective of the strategic theme, all discussions conclude that space is the Achilles heel for military power.
In chapter four, Johnson-Freese discusses options for military roles that can be performed in and with space to assure space security with a focus on the separate roles and potential technologies for the military to deter, defend, and defeat an adversary in space. The challenge for military commanders is that space is not a logical extension of the air domain. This requires strategists and capability developers to recognise the need to understand the differences in science, technology, and costs. The conduct of warfare in the orbital space domain will be challenged by the definition and ethics of military endstates involving any on-orbit military actions. This is especially true of those legacy effects, such as orbital space debris and disruption to critical public infrastructure, which may endure, potentially, for many generations after a conflict has ended.
Whereas chapters one to four steps the reader through a logical process of understanding the outcomes for a space security strategy and deriving the necessary outputs, chapter five discusses the critical national stakeholders who are essential in putting space strategy into effect, and the support necessary to make it useful. The observation made is that the issue of space security has generated an industry for the pondering, pursuit, and procurement of new space applications by military, industry, aerospace think tanks, academia, and support research organisations. Thus, it is good to define a threat that can be used to justify the significant and long-term investments into space security.
Chapter six is a discussion on the impact of the newest space actors and their behaviours and attitudes towards space. Space access is no longer considered to be exclusive to government-run organisations in space-faring nations. Technology miniaturisation and reduced launch costs have democratised space access to allow non-state actors. Moreover, entrepreneurial investors have triggered a need for strategists to reconsider space as ‘New Space’ to be shared with new additional actors and an increased level of unexpected and complexity in space behaviours. Johnson-Freese refines the book’s premise to consider that access to is space is inevitable but that space warfare is not necessarily inevitable.
Chapter seven concludes the Johnson-Freese’s discussion on strategy development for US space security by highlighting the challenges of democratisation of space access and the globalisation of interdependent space users, both military and non-military. While it is difficult to define a policy for space warfare when a definition for ‘space weapon’ has not yet been universally agreed, space security is complex and might be better achieved under a multi-lateral cooperative arrangement between space-faring nations. While space warfare might serve to achieve a short-term goal, it may be better to appreciate that the more prolonged effects of destabilising the space domain will be detrimental to all space users. A continuously growing number of space users want evermore space-derived services driven by ever-evolving technological improvements that allow more space missions to be conducted near each other. However, this uncontrolled approach by separate nations to individually access the common grounds of the Earth space orbital domain must logically converge at a point where the risks of accidents or deliberate action on orbit must be considered as a likely determinant for future space security policy, and not necessarily a space warfare policy.
In conclusion, this book is well-referenced, and presented in a logical flow of clearly articulated thoughts, making it a useful study reference for strategic thinkers. Johnson-Freese, herself a noted specialist on the space domain, has consulted with subject matter experts from appropriate military and space industry organisations and think-tanks, and is supported by critical individuals typified by the international recognised experts such as Dr David Finkleman, who has served on numerous technical and scientific advisory and study boards for industry and the federal government and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Squadron Leader Michael Spencer is currently a serving officer in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He serves at the Air Power Development Centre in Canberra where he is involved in the analysis of potential risks and opportunities posed by technology change drivers and disruptions to future air and space power. His RAAF career has provided operational experiences in long-range maritime patrol, aircrew training, and weaponeering, and management experiences in international relations, project management in air and space systems acquisitions, space concepts development, and joint force capability integration. He is also an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics. The opinions expressed are his alone and do not reflect those of the RAAF, the Australian Defence Force, or the Australian Government.
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Header Image: An Atlas V rocket carrying a Space Based Infrared System Geosynchronous Earth Orbit satellite for a US Air Force mission lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, 19 January 2018. (Source: US Department of Defense)
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