Fortress America

U.S. Must Prevent China and Russia From Attacking America From Space

Warren P. Strobel covers intelligence and security in The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau. Brett Forrest is a national-security reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, DC, where his investigative work focuses on the former Soviet Union. They write that the new military branch that emerged out of the shadows to deter China and Russia now prepares for the Risk of War in space.

“In the 21^st Century, the bastion that is “Fortress America” must recognize that the “walls” that we have erected to protect our sovereignty, liberty, and freedoms must have a new component—a dome to prevent our enemies from raining death and destruction from above—from Space.

While in decades past, this issue was one for the science fiction writers to plumb for  mind-blowing stories about aliens and fantastic voyages to distant planets. Unfortunately, the next stories about space are going to be found in the headlines on the front pages of our newspapers.

The stage is already being set for the coming race to achieve military dominance in near-space, just above earth’s atmosphere. There are already hundreds of space vehicles circling the earth, some with malign intent.

This fact brings us to one of the best strategic decisions for America since the end of World War II—the American Space Force—created by President Donald Trump during his 2017-2021 term to much derision by the mainstream media and the Progressive wing of the Democrat Party.

“Space Force Col. Raj Agrawal commands a 500 person military unit with teams located around the world that track every man-made object in orbit, watching for potential threats.

As China and Russia build arsenals of weapons that could target American military and civilian satellites, those threats are growing, and Agrawal’s unit is part of a relatively new military branch that is quietly preparing for a new era of warfare.

With 15,000 military and civilian personnel, and an annual budget of about $30 billion, Space Force is far smaller and less well known than any other branch of the military services.

Founded nearly five years ago under former President Donald Trump, Space Force met with initial ridicule for its quirky dress uniforms, calling its members “Guardians,” and adopting an anthem hastily penned by a Nashville-based Air Force veteran. A triangular emblem that resembled those worn on the uniforms in the “Star Trek” TV show only added to the jokes.

Now, Space Force is emerging from the shadows—and the late-night punchlines—and its leaders are beginning to talk about its preparations for a potential war involving space— even as they say their aim is to deter, not destroy.

“We don’t want anyone to get the impression that we’re trying to be offensive in nature,” said Agrawal, whose unit is known as Delta 2. But, he added, “you can’t show resolve without the ability to attack.”

American combat in space wouldn’t necessarily involve satellite-killing explosions. The U.S. would likely use less brute force tactics, such as blinding a spacecraft’s sensors, scrambling its electronics, or interfering with its communications with ground stations, officials in Colorado and Washington said.

U.S. military officials’ new willingness to openly discuss conflict in outer space reflects what they say are startling advances by China and Russia. Beijing is developing fleets of surveillance satellites and multiple types of satellite-killers aimed at eroding U.S. space superiority, they said, while Moscow has tested components for a nuclear-armed anti-satellite device.

Moscow says the device suspected of being a prototype satellite-killer is for scientific research, and China’s foreign ministry spokesman has accused the U.S. of being the “main driver in turning outer space into a weapon and a battlefield.”

The U.S. wants to deter countries like Russia and China from using their space weapons, Gen. Chance Saltzman, the head of Space Force, said in an interview. But if those efforts fail, he said, then the U.S. must be able to “deny, disrupt and degrade” enemy space systems.

U.S. lawmakers had pushed for a Space Force for years, arguing that threats in, and from, space were growing, and that the U.S. Air Force, with its emphasis on manned jet fighters, nuclear tipped missiles and bombers, would never give space the urgent focus it needed. Trump became a vocal supporter of those efforts, and in December 2019, he signed the law bringing Space Force into existence.

The Pentagon relies on space systems for almost everything it does: collecting and disseminating intelligence to assist with troop and ship movements, communicating, and finding adversary battle formations and targeting them.

U.S. adversaries, especially China, have seized on these vulnerabilities. According to Space Force officials, China now has nearly 500 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites operating in space, which can detect aircraft carriers, air wings and ground forces. Nearly half of China’s intelligence satellites were deployed just last year.

With these spacecraft, “China is able now to detect, track, target and kill U.S. forces,” said Jay Raymond, a retired general who served as Space Force’s first chief.

China is also looking for ways to disable U.S. satellites. It is planning to field ground--based weapons that can destroy satellites at up to 22,000 miles above the earth’s surface, Space Force officials say.

Despite Russia’s reliance on outdated technology, U.S. officials call Moscow a real, if lesser, threat to

U.S. assets in space. Moscow, like Beijing, has demonstrated its ability to strike satellites using ground based missiles. And since at least last year, Russian satellites have been parking on orbit near U.S. and Western commercial communications satellites, perhaps in an effort to disturb their function.

The most concerning development by far, U.S. officials say, is Russia’s 2022 launch of a satellite to test components for an antisatellite weapon that would carry a nuclear device. The weapon would allow Russia to disable numerous satellites with a single strike, rendering low-earth orbit, currently crowded with thousands of spacecraft, unusable for a year or more.

One U.S. response championed by Space Force is to radically increase the number of U.S. military satellites in space and spread them across different orbits. Even if some are destroyed in a conflict, the idea goes, the overall network will remain.”

It goes without saying that the Space Force must become more robust in the near future, and that needs  to include the ability to effectively destroy enemy space vehicles—electronically or physically.

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Elon Musk’s Starlink Makes China ‘Very Scared’

Gary Bai is a reporter for The Epoch Times Canada, covering China and U.S. news. Reporter for the Epoch Times. New York since March 2018. He interviews experts, strategists, and scholars on the latest news analysis on topics including US-China relationships, Taiwan, and  the CCP's foreign influence operations. He writes that Elon Musk’s Starlink Makes China ‘Very Scared’.

As Americans try out the newest Starlink dishes on their recreational vehicles, a space expert says Elon Musk’s Starlink makes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “nervous,” as the SpaceX satellite internet business is the “only” player in the field now when it comes to the United States’ strategic space race with China.

“It is important to understand that Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is the only thing keeping the U.S. in the space race with China,” Brandon Weichert, space expert and author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, told The Epoch Times in an interview.

Weichert said Starlink, now “possibly a vital component of war-making,” is making America’s rivals “nervous,” even as Musk is under a two-fold “attack” by the Biden White House and shamefully, the politically corrupted U.S. military establishment.

Starlink, a satellite internet constellation operated by Musk’s spacecraft company SpaceX, currently consists of over 2,400 satellites that orbit the earth at an altitude more than 60 times lower than the satellites that carry most of the world’s internet today.

CCP Is ‘Nervous’

The reason U.S. adversaries are nervous about Starlink, according to Weichert, is that the satellite system is resistant to mass-scale attacks U.S. adversaries are currently capable of and thus makes “destroying” America’s space infrastructure much more difficult than before.

“Starlink is a great example of a private-sector profit motive providing a key example of how the military’s vital yet-vulnerable satellite constellations can be protected,” Weichert said.

“The strength of Starlink is its redundancy. So basically, we saw last summer, a solar flare knocked out something like 20—or maybe it was even 40—Starlink satellites, and Musk didn’t even bat an eye. Within a day, those systems were replaced because they’re small and they’re cheap.”

[This is just the latest example of the age-old strategic wisdom of not putting all your eggs in one—or even a few—baskets.]

As Weichert details in his book, Russia and China previously had the capability to prevent the U.S. military from accessing communication networks by attacking U.S. satellites, for example by using electromagnetic pulse attacks.

“Russia and China are both threatened by this capability because they know how the Americans could use that to an advantage,” he said. “And that is why those two countries are livid right now and trying desperately to figure out countermeasures to maintain what they think is their advantage, with counter-space capabilities, the ability to deny the Americans use of space in the event of a conflict.”

He said one sign indicating that the CCP is threatened by Starlink is that the CCP complained to the United Nations that the Chinese Space Station “Tiangong” had to maneuver to avoid a collision with Starlink satellites in two separate incidences.

“China came out and they were screaming about how Elon Musk’s— one of his Starlink satellites—almost collided with their new modular space station, which of course was an over exaggeration ... but they were tipping their hand by telling us that they’re very scared of this new communication system,” Weichert said.

The U.S. refuted the CCP’s claims in a responding note verbale. SpaceX issued a statement acknowledging the encounter and saying it monitors its satellites’ flight trajectory to maintain a safe distance from Tiangong.

The expert said Starlink has cyber-defense capabilities that seemed impressive even to defense specialists at the Pentagon.

“Pentagon’s electronic warfare specialist was witnessing in real-time Starlink operators at SpaceX defend the Starlink satellite onboard system from the Russia’s ceaseless cyber-attacks,” Weichert said, quoting Dave Tremper, the Pentagon’s director of electronic warfare, who told Breaking Defense that SpaceX’s capabilities are “eye-watering” to him.

Therefore, if China’s military attempted a cyber-attack on Starlink’s onboard operating systems, Weichert says, it “would be in for a very rude awakening.”

Sole American Player in Space Race

Weichert says SpaceX is now the “only thing keeping the U.S. in the space race with China,” yet it’s

forced to maneuver through institutional forces within the United States.

“The problem now is our own government seems to not recognize or care much for the fact that SpaceX is the only property right now that’s keeping America in the new space race, keeping us competitive,” Weichert said. “NASA is asleep at the switch and Space Force can’t figure out what it wants to do.

“Meanwhile, American [so-called] leaders, for the most part, are not envisioning space as a strategic domain. China does. Musk does.”

The reasons for this lack of action, Weichert said, include a glaring disagreement in political ideology between Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, and the White House. SpaceX “is also under a lot of political pressure because of Elon Musk’s political stances, particularly recently. Elon Musk is not a friend of the Biden administration,” Weichert said, adding that this disagreement has “put a giant target” on Musk’s back.

Musk’s recent criticism of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party has stirred up controversy in the political world. The billionaire suggested that Biden wasn’t the “real” U.S. president and called the Democratic Party the party of “division” and “hate.”

“They started now going after Musk. They’re going to go after him with a regulatory issue over the purchase of Twitter: not because of anything wrong, just because he’s a political rival,” Weichert said. “So the problem now is not the Chinese or the Russians.”

Another key reason behind America’s stagnation in the space race, Weichert said, is a cartel-like military establishment who are “nowhere near as innovative these days as SpaceX.”

“What you have now is basically a cartel of a handful of very powerful defense contractors who don’t really care about creating weapons systems that are both efficient, that are time friendly, in terms of development, and that are cheaper than what they are right now,” he said.

“And so SpaceX undermines that old cartel approach to the defense industry. That’s why Musk is hated. That’s why he’s under attack from the bureaucracy plus all the political attacks in the Biden administration.”

Weichert suggests that America adopt SpaceX’s innovative model of using networks of easily replaceable satellites to make America’s space infrastructure more resilient to space directed attacks in wartime scenarios.

“Whether it’s SpaceX getting the contract to do this or another firm, they’ve got to replicate that SpaceX model. That’s the key,” Weichert said.

In his book Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Weichert warns that America must undergo a paradigm shift in its vision of space and see space as a “strategic domain” so as to prevent a “catastrophic surprise attack” from Russia or China—which he calls, the “space Pearl Harbor”—during future times of war.

“America is a juggernaut. When we get moving as a country, we’re unstoppable. Taking the initial steps,

however, is always the hardest for our country,” Weichert said. “Today, the United States faces a space Pearl Harbor—and everyone in Washington knows it.”

It borders on treason that America’s political and military elites consider self-serving political and economic power more important than America’s survival as a nation.

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Nurture STEM Studies to Fill Space Industry

Masooma Haq began reporting for The Epoch Times from Pakistan in 2008. She currently covers a variety of topics including U.S. government, culture, and entertainment. Steve Lance is NTD's Washington D.C. Bureau Chief and chief political correspondent. They write that America must develop satellite-killer system of mobile-launched, widely dispersed capable of disabling enemy satellites physically or electronically if enemy starts hostilities.

“Ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics Brian Babin (R-TX) has said the United States has fallen behind its adversaries in the development of its space program and space weaponry and must encourage STEM studies to advance the U.S. space industry. “We need engineers and physicists and people that will go into our space industry,” Babin told the host of NTD’s Capitol Report, Steve Lance.

Babin said one of the main functions of the National Aeronautical Space Administration (NASA) is to educate the public and “to encourage young people to go into STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics] studies.”

NASA’s federal budget for fiscal year 2021 was $23.3 billion. According to NASA, its STEM engagement strategies include “opportunities, activities, and products, encompassing internships; fellowships; student learning; informal education and out-of-school learning activities; educational products, tools, and platforms,” and programs to support educators.

The Texas congressman said the United States has worked closely with Russia in space research, but since the Ukraine invasion, that has been somewhat strained. “We certainly hope we can continue there,” Babin said, noting that China is more of a threat militarily.

“The Chinese, on the other hand, are absolutely on a track to surpass us in space. We don’t want them making the rules, so we have to make sure that we’re continuing the research and development, the funding of our space program.

“But I will say this, all of the developments that we have on our civil side enhance the warfighting domain for Americans on our defense side, but we haven’t pushed defense into the realm of space.” Babin is concerned that the Chinese and the Russians have advanced space weaponry such as anti-satellite missiles.

“We’ve seen some of the tests where they’ve actually destroyed some of their own satellites up there to prove that they have the capability if there ever was a need for that,” he said. “And the warfighting domain has now reached space, and who controls that high ground will control the low ground as well.

“We have already seen some weaponry that has been tested by the Chinese hypersonic weapons, which we have no defense for. America has to be on ... our toes, if you will, to make sure that our space program is on track.”

A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that “China has greatly strengthened its military capabilities over the last 20 years and its stated goal is to have a ‘world-class’ military by the end of 2049, according to DOD.”

GAO identified five key areas that China’s communist leadership was investing in as part of its attempt to challenge the United States. Those areas were anti-access and area-denial capabilities such as long-range missiles, surface and undersea operations including the expansion of its navy, cyber capabilities designed to knock U.S. systems offline, space fighting capabilities such as antisatellite weapons, and broad investments in artificial intelligence.

“We have to make sure that we don’t allow ourselves to be behind in the development of these types of weapons,” Babin said. “We want to make sure that we are the number one military power in the world because, as the ancient Greeks said, if you want peace, prepare for war.” Andrew Thornebrooke contributed to this report."

Next time: China Challenging US in Space Capabilities