The U.S. Department of Defense has requested one hundred and eight million dollars from Congress for the construction of a new facility in Colorado. The new facility will be used to plan and experiment with technologies for waging war in space. The need for this facility is based on the concern that Russia and China currently developing space warfare capability that may be used against the U.S. at some future time. With a sufficiently robust and sophisticated technology for targeting satellites and spacecraft, an enemy might be able to stop the U.S. from exploiting Earth orbit and near Earth space for the delivery and coordination of U.S. space technology in a conflict. Ash Carter, the U.S. Defense Secretary told Congress recently that if the Pentagon received the requested funding, it would "enhance America's ability to identify, attribute, and negate all threatening actions in space."
The proposed Pentagon budget that was published a couple of days ago also contained a request for almost two billion dollars to fund space launches. It also asked for hundreds of millions of dollars for space technology research such as counterspace systems. Last year, Congress gave the Pentagon an extra five billion dollars for Pentagon Space Programs over the next five years. The U.S. is engaged in an arms race in space with Russia and China to counter threats to the U.S. array of satellites currently in Earth orbit as well as future satellites.
Ash Carter also said that "At times in the past, space was seen as a sanctuary. New and emerging threats make clear that that's not the case anymore and we must be prepared for the possibility of a conflict that extends in space. For so many commercial space endeavors, we want this domain to be just like the oceans and the internet: free and safe for all. There are some in this world who don't want that to happen."
James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, recently told Congress that China and Russia are developing sophisticated military uses of space services" and "counterspace weapon systems to deny, degrade, or disrupt US space systems."
Lieutenant Colonel Martin O'Donnell is a spokesman for the U.S. Strategic Command which controls U.S. military space operations. He recently said, "We… remain concerned with growing space capabilities around the globe, particularly those of China and Russia. Both countries have advanced directed-energy capabilities that could be used to track or blind satellites, disrupting key operations, and both have demonstrated the ability to perform complex maneuvers in space."
The U.S. military employs a huge orbiting array of satellites to aid in missions around the world. These satellites are critical for communications, reconnaissance, drone control and navigation of ships and planes. However, these satellites are difficult to defend or repair. The main mission of space weapons would be to deprive an enemy of the satellites needed to wage a modern war. The U.S. satellite fleet represent a great vulnerability in the ability of the U.S. to defend itself from major sophisticated enemies such as China and Russia.
Earth bound weapons systems could jam satellite communications, blind satellites with lasers, launch rockets to blow them up, or deliberately strew debris in the path of satellites. Space weapons might blow up satellites, collide with satellites or blind satellites with paint sprayed on lenses. It may also be possible to seize control of the computers that operate the satellites to disable them or retarget them. China has already destroyed one of their own satellites that was in a geosynchronous orbit. This means that they could launch rockets that could destroy U.S. military geosynchronous satellites.
It is possible that the actual spending on space weapons and countermeasures is much greater than reported by the Pentagon. Some critics of the U.S. space arms research and development point out that militarizing space may actually make the world less safe rather than insure the national
security of the U.S.
