Photo: U.S. Space Force

The U.S. Space Force on Thursday released its first-ever Space Warfighting framework, outlining the activities and considerations to fight in, and out of, space to achieve superiority in the domain.

The framework flows from the appreciation that the military space operations are foundational to joint force operations, enabling global communications, power projection, and long-range kill chains.

“Space superiority is not only a necessary precondition for Joint Force success but also something for which we must be prepared to fight,” the Space Force says in the foreword to the framework. “Gained and maintained, it unlocks superiority in other domains, fuels Coalition lethality, and fortifies troop survivability. It is therefore the basis from which the Joint Force projects power, deters aggression, and secures the homeland.”

Space control is the enabler of space superiority, the 22-page framework says. Space control consists of the activities to “contest and control the space domain,” namely counterspace operations, which includes offensive and defensive actions, it says.

There are three activities that make up offensive operations: orbital strike, space link interdiction, and terrestrial strike. Orbital strike refers to destroying, disrupting or degrading and adversary’s space platforms using kinetic or non-kinetic means.

Non-kinetic means, such as cyber or electromagnetic attacks, would be used to interdict space links. Terrestrial strikes, also carried out using kinetic or non-kinetic means, can be done by any of the military services and could entail attacking enemy launch sites, other terrestrial infrastructure such as command and control nodes and mission centers, and space systems.

Defensive actions are divided into active and passive space defenses. Active defense includes escort operations, which could be using space capabilities to protect friendly space assets.

Active space defense also includes counterattack against an adversary’s orbital, terrestrial, and space link systems, and suppression of adversary counterspace targeting by denying the “adversary’s ability to collect or disseminate weapons-quality targeting data during an orbital engagement,” the framework says.

Passive space defense consists of seven operations that comprise threat warning, military deception, hardening, dispersal, disaggregation, mobility, and redundancy. These operations are aimed at achieving specific space superiority effects such as rapid communication of “indications of enemy space or space-enabled attacks, or frequently moving space and related assets to reduce vulnerability and increase survivability.

“Space Warfighting offers the counterspace framework necessary to execute the tenets of Competitive Endurance, the USSF’s theory of success to achieve U.S. space superiority while safeguarding the safety, security, stability, and long-term sustainability of the space domain,” the framework says. “The ideas in Space Warfighting should shape Guardians’ planning and activities to avoid operational surprise, deny first-mover advantage, and undertake responsible counterspace campaigning.”

This story was first published by Defense Daily