Defining “Counterspace” in the Theory on Competitive Endurance

In General B. Chance Saltzman’s “Theory on Competitive Endurance,” the Chief of Space Operations for the United States Space Force listed three core tenets of the military’s approach to the space domain: avoid operational surprise, deny first-mover advantage, and undertake “responsible counterspace campaigning.” This third tenet, counterspace, has become increasingly relevant for a warfighting domain that has traditionally approached space capabilities with risk-averse language and restrictive classification policies.  

But now, adversaries have recognized that space capabilities are both a strategic advantage - and potential vulnerability - for the United States military. This emerging threat is driving an imperative to both understand and define how counterspace capabilities can preserve the space domain the global economy has come to rely on. 

In this episode of "The Elara Edge," Elara Nova partners Col (Ret) Stu Pettis and Col (Ret) Dave Morrow describe the types of counterspace threats the Space Force must prepare for and emphasize the role of counterspace campaigning in Gen Saltzman's "Theory on Competitive Endurance." Both Col Pettis and Col Morrow are graduates of the United States Air Force Weapons School.

Col Pettis served for 29 years in the United States Air Force supporting space operations and serving on the Secretary of the Air Force’s Space Force Planning Team, where he oversaw the establishment of the military’s newest service. Col Morrow served for 24 years in the United States Air Force before retiring as the Director of Testing and Evaluation for the United States Space Force. 

"The Elara Edge" is hosted by Scott King and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. The full story can be found on Elara Nova's Insights page here. Music was produced by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio.

Transcript

Host: Scott King 

SMEs: Col (Ret) Stu Pettis, Partner at Elara Nova; former Chief of Space Integration with the United States Space Force. (SP)

Col (Ret) Dave Morrow, Partner at Elara Nova; former Director of Testing and Evaluation with the United States Space Force (DM)

00:02 - 01:29 

In General B. Chance Saltzman’s “Theory on Competitive Endurance,” the Chief of Space Operations for the United States Space Force listed three core tenets of the military’s approach to the space domain: avoid operational surprise, deny first-mover advantage, and undertake “responsible counterspace campaigning.”

Understanding this third tenet - counterspace - has become increasingly relevant for a warfighting domain that has traditionally approached space capabilities with risk-averse language and restrictive classification policies.  

But now, adversaries have recognized that space capabilities are both a strategic advantage - and vulnerability - for the United States military. This emerging threat is driving an imperative to both understand and define how counterspace capabilities can preserve the space domain the global economy has come to rely on. 

Welcome to The Elara Edge. Today, we will be defining counterspace as it relates to General Saltzman’s “Theory on Competitive Endurance.” Joining us are two Elara Nova partners, both of whom are graduates of the United States Air Force Weapons School: retired Colonel Stuart Pettis and retired Colonel Dave Morrow.  

Colonel Pettis served for 29 years in the United States Air Force, supporting space operations and serving on the Secretary of the Air Force’s Space Force Planning Team, where he oversaw the establishment of the military’s newest service. 

Sir, welcome to the show!

01:29 - 01:31 

SP: Thank you. Thanks for having me 

01:32 - 01:42 

Col Morrow served for 24 years in the United States Air Force, before retiring as the Director of Testing and Evaluation for the United States Space Force. 

Sir, thanks for taking the time to join us today. 

01:42 - 01:43 

DM: Thanks for having me.  

01:44 - 02:03 

General Saltzman published his “Theory on Competitive Endurance,” in January of 2024, which introduced us to this idea of “responsible counterspace campaigning.” 

So let’s begin with the basics: what is General Saltzman’s Theory on Competitive Endurance? And how do we understand counterspace within the context of this document?

02:04 - 03:05 

SP: So he's published a white paper, and he's trying to not say “deterrence” while saying “deterrence,” and basically it's the recognition that the Space Force needs to continually define and refine and develop new capabilities to ensure that we never entice an attack on our space systems. 

So you know, first avoid operational surprise, that would be an unexpected capability you would not plan for. [Second,] deny first mover advantage. We've always known all along that he or she who moves first in space is at a distinct advantage.  

And then last, be responsible for actually conducting counterspace campaigning. Counterspace classically is basically the ability to deny an adversary space capabilities and that can be both offensive or defensive. If you have a credible offensive capability and a credible defensive capability and you continually demonstrate that and refine that capability, it actually deters a conflict. 

What you never want to do is give an adversary the idea that they can win or that we have an Achilles heel that they can exploit and so that would be the strategic deterrence kind of definition. But that is such a loaded term in other arenas that I think he's used a different term for it, which is “competitive endurance.”

03:06 - 04:21 

DM: Exactly. It has to have both offensive and defensive components. A defensive component alone is nice and well-intended, but it's a losing posture. If you can't go [on] offense, you will never win the game.  

So it has to have both components to have space superiority and apply counterspace because what he ultimately wants to do with his competitive endurance is preserve the space environment so that it can be used by all. 

But he says that by also saying that, “If needed, I need to be able to deny an adversary's ability to use space while preserving our ability to do that, to include using force. But I would prefer it to be non-kinetic.” 

And that alone ties back to the deterrent that isn't really mentioned, but is very much there, to deter a rational actor from destroying the space environment and the foundation of making that achievable is the space domain awareness to have the insight and the foresight to be able to say, “Hey, our adversary is about to do something. Let's start with political mechanisms for maybe averting this crisis. And then if we have to, let's try non-kinetic things to enable us to be that first maneuver.”  Because the first mover almost always wins in space.

04:22 - 04:37 

Now, traditionally speaking, the United States military has taken a pretty risk-averse approach when talking about space capabilities. 

But as this approach begins to shift toward a more open dialogue - can you describe how this is an important, but delicate process for the Space Force?

04:38 - 06:20 

SP: We should recognize that space has always been a military domain from the inception. The first U.S. space system Discoverer was really a cover for military capabilities and at the time and in the 1950s, when we're developing the original spy satellites, we had no idea what was going on inside Russia and we had the perception of a missile gap.  

And so both the United States and the Soviet Union at the time developed these capabilities to monitor each other's strategic nuclear forces. And this was all about “Let's not get into war inadvertently because we don't know what the other side is doing.” And so there's a euphemism used “national technical means of verification,” which would be spy satellites. 

What we never wanted to do was threaten each other’s spy satellites, because a rational actor would look at that as: “If you're blinding my capability to monitor my strategic forces, that must be a precursor to an attack and so when we talked about the peaceful uses of space - really, that's what we're getting around. And for military purposes, it was basically, “Let's not get into a nuclear war.”  

In Desert Storm, we saw the value of these systems and these were incredibly classified capabilities. We had really, really detailed imagery, all sorts of capabilities that were kept in very closed channels. 

We realized in Desert Storm it was kind of silly: we couldn't show spy satellite imagery to pilots who were going to go bomb the targets within an hour or two. And so there was this huge effort to basically get this capability out, into more traditional military operations. At the time, it was okay, because the Soviet Union had fallen. China wasn't really threatening.  

But there's still this legacy of we’ve got to be very careful not to threaten each other’s national technical means and I think that's really shaped a lot of the discussion since. And so you get people cringe when you talk about space control. And it's really I think it's a legacy of that many decades worth of: “Let's preserve this [domain] for peaceful purposes.”

06:21 - 07:52 

DM: Yeah, and quite frankly, nine years ago, we could not even say the term "offensive counterspace” because it was just deemed too absolutely hawkish in a military perspective. 

So, it's nice that we're able to talk about that because you really don't have a deterrent of any sort unless you can one, talk about it, and two demonstrate it, that you can do these things. But what we really need to realize - you're right. You know, I completely agree with Stu that since the early 60s, space has been a military domain. 

But it has evolved into a far more economic domain for the world. Every single bank transaction worldwide is based off a very precise timestamp. If that goes away, our whole economic system globally breaks down.  

We cannot allow that to happen. So, I agree with the Theory of Competitive Endurance. Actually, General Saltzman calls it a hypothesis on how to do this, not necessarily a theory, which means it hasn't been proven. But it's well-intended that it's against a rational actor. If you start where it may have some phrase in the counterspace front is an irrational actor.  

What if you have an actor that says, “I see how much the U.S. or other militaries use space to achieve their goals. Let me take that away from them. I don't care about the environment because I can't use it anyway. And now I've leveled the playing field.” So well. You know, I think it was Mister Colt that said, “It's the Colt revolver that makes all men equal.” 

It's the nuclear weapon that makes all nations truly have the same voice, regardless of their capability, just because of the potential fallout of using that nuclear weapon and effects it can have, whether it be terrestrial or exoatmospheric. 

07:53 - 08:18 

And to put this within the context of the current moment: in some respects the United States Space Force is still being stood up, so to speak, but in other respects, the service is also five years old and to a certain degree - it’s pretty well-established by now.  

So how does last year’s release of the Theory on Competitive Endurance - as well as defining terms like counterspace - part of the natural maturation process for the Space Force?

08:19 - 10:27 

DM: Well, if I can start on this one, let me just say, cause, Stu and I were both there from the onset of both of this, and the good news was, as we stood up the Space Force, we had a blank sheet of paper. 

The bad news was we had a blank sheet of paper, and we had to start somewhere. It was such a large problem to try and get our arms around. We had to start at the most simplistic foundational area to build the force that we were comfortable and confident that - given our best military advice - our country needed to secure its interest and the interest of the world writ large. 

So that's kind of where we stood off as a stepping stone and we really knew to get after space - the foundation to make all of that happen - was really space domain awareness.  

And I'll give you an example. From something that most people can relate to, even here in recent news: at a terminal, air traffic control facility in Atlanta, National Capital Region, Denver, LA, San Francisco type. The radars turn a little over, 12.5 r.p.m., which gives you about a five second revisit rate on where an aircraft is. 

So an update about once every five seconds and all of these aircraft below 10,000 feet are moving less than 250 knots. When we lost that capability due to a data feed in the New Jersey regional area there for 90 seconds. People came unglued.  

Now, transform that into space. Objects are not moving at 250 knots. They're moving at 17,500 miles an hour. And we are lucky. I mean, really lucky. If we get a revisit daily - once a day, once every 24 hours, we get to look to say. “What is something doing?”  

Now because the orbitology is very predictable. Unless you have a nefarious actor that's trying to do something, at which point they get 24 hours, sometimes less, but by and large, a large swath of time to do something with something that is moving at a very high rate of speed. 

So it was really foundational to achieve what we were setting up here to do. And while it's in its infancy, we had to start from somewhere. Space domain awareness was really the foundation to make it all happen. How do we get current revisit rates? How do we know exactly what's happening? And let an adversary know that we know so that if they do try something, they’ll know, we'll intervene before they try and get started. That's the whole premise behind this. 

10:28 - 11:31 

SP: Even though the Space Force is only five years old, a lot of these ideas and a lot of the concepts go back decades. So we've been talking about this for quite a while. We've been thinking about this quite a while. I think the big thing that came out of the Space Force is - there were eight core missions of the Air Force and we're one of eight. 

And General Goldfein, when he was the chief of staff of the Air Force, when we stood up the Space Force, he said, “This is important. I don't have the time to focus on it because I got all these other things.” And so he really appreciated the fact that we had a service dedicated to getting after this problem. 

And the Chief of Space Operations has been able to provide laser focus on this issue because space professionals like Dave and I.  We saw what in particular China was up to and we're raising an alarm bell. And keep in mind that when the Chinese did their ASAT test, it was also during the surge in Iraq. 

So the DoD as a whole was very busy doing other things. And yet we're here saying, “Hey, listen, this is really bad. We need to really be thinking about this. And then you go into the meeting and your number ten on the agenda because it's all about how are we going to get more forces to Iraq?” 

So that's been the good news is, you know, there's been a lot of thinking about this that we're able to kind of capitalize on it. There's a lot of great leaders who came before who really set the stage for General Raymond and now General Saltzman.

11:32 - 12:35 

DM: And the other thing I would even add onto that with getting started was, whereas you had laws of the sea, you had laws of the sky, the road, just typical norms of professional behavior on how to conduct yourself.  

If you intercept an aircraft, what that looks like, how close you come and you just, you had professional conduct, norms of behavior. None of that existed in space and a lot of that is still trying to be established.  

The biggest example is kinetic testing in low-Earth orbit. You know, the Chinese first did it - well I won’t say first but most recently did it in, you know, 2007. And then I think they realized the error of their way because they didn't really fully anticipate the debris field they would create, which really destroyed the environment. But they did demonstrate a very credible capability as a deterrent. 

The Russians have done the same, and the Russians have had anti-satellite weapons for a while. And we have done our tit-for-tat, but in a more responsible way at a much lower Earth orbit and using more advanced tactics to direct where that debris field went. So it's defining those acceptable norms of behavior just by demonstrating what is professional norms of behavior in the domain. 

12:36 - 12:57 

Thank you, Sir. And that actually dovetails nicely into my next question. I’d like to go through the four types of “counterspace weapons,” as identified and described by the Congressional Research Service.  

The first one is kinetic. What are the types of kinetic counterspace weapons that we're talking about? And what are the inherent risks of deploying kinetic weaponry in space? 

12:58 - 13:52 

SP: Kinetic, the direct ascent ASAT - that basically comes from the Earth directly to a satellite. That capability has been demonstrated by China. The Russians, have had a capability and, the United States did it [to a] National Reconnaissance Office satellite that was going to reenter, we basically used a modified missile to go up and take it down.  

Co-orbital would be this is again, the Russians have demonstrated this capability. That's a satellite that basically goes up, gets in orbit with another satellite, and then goes in for a kill. That technology has existed since the 70s. 

There's also a nightmare scenario called Kessler syndrome, where you create so much debris that it starts impacting other pieces of debris, which creates more debris, which is this cascading bad effect. And it's been theorized for a very long time, particularly in low-Earth orbit and so [space] is a shared resource. 

That's one of the biggest challenges is it's not just potential combatants like China, Russia and the United States. Every nation is using satellites in some form or they're leveraging capabilities from satellites.  

13:53 - 16:12 

DM: From a kinetic perspective, those options are almost always bad to worse, and ungodly bad because all of those pieces are moving up 17,500 miles an hour, and if a paint flake something with that little mass hits your vehicle at that velocity. It's going to kill it.  

We've seen that happen on-orbit multiple times. And eventually it gets to a point where you just can't manage it and right now, we don't have the technology to clean the orbit.  

If it's below about 200 miles in low Earth Orbit, it will eventually clean itself. Between solar activity, the atmosphere expands and contracts. It will slow objects down and they will eventually burn in.  

Between about 200 miles up and about 800 miles up. You're talking probably hundreds of years before it cleans itself. 

Beyond about 800 miles. It's there to stay. The likelihood that it's going to come back and any geodetic reasonable time is nearly none. When you're out in Geostationary orbit 22,000 plus miles out, it's there forever. We literally park junkyard things. We supersync it 600 or so miles beyond GEO because it's never coming back. 

So that is why non-kinetic is the preferred method to responsibly try to maintain space superiority. Get control if you need to. Take [space] away from an adversary. When things settle down, give them back their professional use of space while we keep ours intact throughout the whole thing.  

But I'll tie one thing that Stu said, and I'm just going to talk physics here just completely unclassified. When we first went to the moon in the late 60s, that was our first, what we call RPO rendezvous proximity operations, when the spacecraft went up and docked with another vehicle. 

Now, that is a very calculated, very gentle approach to allow these two vehicles to connect. But that is the exact same science. If you want to kill another satellite kinetically with a co-orbital vehicle.  

And going back to the comment I made earlier about the importance and the foundation of the space domain awareness, if you have a, like a nesting satellite, a satellite inside of a satellite, and our adversaries have demonstrated the ability to do this for a co-orbital intercept or potential thereof, you might look at this one satellite and it might look nice and benign. 

And then after if they have indications that you just did a look at it, it kicks out another satellite and flies off. You don't have any idea what just left, where it went, what it went after, or any of the threat and that's problematic and something we have to be able to get our arms around and stay in front of or the adversary has the advantage.

16:13 - 16:31 

The next three types of counterspace weapons are all, to a degree, non-kinetic. 

There is: 

Directed energy 

Electronic Warfare 

And Cyber. 

Let’s start with directed energy. Particularly for those who may be unfamiliar with how directed energy works in space - can you describe this counterspace threat?

16:32 - 17:14 

DM: So the simplest way to describe the effect a laser has is if you've ever taken a magnifying glass out in the sun and you focus that point directly on your hand - it will start to burn you. 

If you move your hand out of that focal point, it no longer burns you. So a laser takes energy and focuses it on a very specific point at a very defined distance to burn a hole in something. And that's what directed energy is, it's not like Star Wars, where a burst of light goes flying out of some cannon-looking tube and hits something. 

That's not how lasers work. Lasers are like a magnifying glass at a very defined focal point, with a defined point of energy. And if you hold it there long enough, it will burn just like it will your hand with magnifying glass on it.

17:15 - 17:23 

SP: And satellites - they're not terribly hardened. You know, they're designed to be lightweight. They have a lot of capability, and they're not very rugged. [They’re] just rugged enough to survive the space environment.  

17:24 - 18:21 

DM: So things that are vulnerable to directed energy: solar panels, infrared, electro-optical sensors. You don't necessarily even have to get to that point where you're burning it. You just need to like, flash blind it a little bit.  

Imagine somebody taking a flash and setting it off and your eyes in the middle of a dark room you can't see for a little bit. Well, your sensor is going to respond the same way to a laser flash. 

Just like your eyes would if you were a pilot, you got flashed with the laser. It's going to temporarily blind you until your eyes readjust and recover. And it can cause permanent damage to the sensor. 

Anything from the five D’s: deny, destroy, disrupt, degrade, deceive. Degrade and destroy are your two permanent options: degrade means you've permanently caused some damage to a satellite or a capability and destroy is - it's gone. 

The other three deny, deceive or disrupt about the electronic communications, coming off of those birds and there are various tactics on how you can accomplish those things. But it probably won't create debris in doing that, other than the dead piece of satellite floating along.

18:22 - 18:35 

The next counterspace weapon is electronic warfare, or EW, which can primarily be understood through the jamming or spoofing of signals on the electromagnetic spectrum. 

But can you elaborate on how EW can be a threat to space operations? 

18:36 - 20:56 

SP: Jamming would be basically I either jam your downlink signal off of that satellite, or you jam the uplink so that you can't command that satellite and that's just pure physics.  

Downlink would be, for example, this weekend, if I was watching the soccer game between Spain and Portugal from Europe, it's getting to me in real time via the satellites. We take for granted the fact we can get information across the globe in real time - that's happened during our lifetime. 

I mean, the 60s was when they really started doing this. So prior to that, if you wanted to watch a game from Europe, you would wait for the tape to make it on a plane over to the United States. So if I wanted to deny that signal, all I need to know is where that satellite is. What transponder the signal is being broadcast from and then I just put noise up onto that so that you can't get it down. There's some mitigation techniques, but it's fairly simple physics.  

Ironically, the first known electronic attack was actually a guy in Orlando, Florida in the 80s who went by the handle Captain Midnight, he jammed the downlink from a HBO’s satellite because they we're encrypting their downlink and you couldn't get HBO for free anymore. So, again, just simple physics. And by the way, he did it using a TV station antenna, but he could have easily built one in his backyard. So the physics is very simple and that would just be to deny that capability.  

GPS is also another downlink. That's a very low strength signal that comes off of all the GPS satellites that allow you to triangulate a point. That’s a known frequency, if you jam that frequency, now you can't get a GPS signal. So, pretty simple to do. 

Uplink jamming would be, you can think of a satellite, much like a UAV. You know, like you're a little quadcopter that kids might have. You're communicating with that quadcopter via a little transmission. So if you can't communicate with the quadcopter, it's going to crash. 

So similar idea, there would be basically to jam that command signal with the satellite. Now, you can't do anything with the satellite until you turn it off. There are some mitigation techniques again, but it's a, it's going to be a tough problem and so that would be your classic electronic attack. 

Everyone needs a discrete frequency to communicate with their satellite and different downlinks might be on a different frequency if you start stepping on each other you're going to get crowded out. You may not be able to get your information down off the satellite because someone's broadcasting on it inadvertently or if a side lobe on it.  

And so then just because the frequencies get very dirty, having someone to go and figure out exactly what's going on and is this particular transmitter out spec is or some sort of issue is this person is using the freq because they thought it was that was free, they didn't comply with a frequency plan. It just becomes, especially in a big theater, becomes an issue. 

20:57 - 21:56 

DM: And I would add to that, there's just a finite number of frequencies that you can use and depending on what you're trying to do, depends on where you pick a frequency in the band and just hope it's not being used. 

And a real recent and modern example of that. And, Col Pettis just mentioned it with jamming into somebody's side lobe is a common technique. The 5G network that was established to set up was right at the ragged edge of a GPS side lobe, which was why all the concern in certain places that it could potentially knock a GPS receiver off of the air. 

Not that they were intending to, but they were just so close to the edge of a side lobe and the GPS signal was so weak coming off the satellite as it's designed to be. It creates concern and problems.  

And that's why 5G has been implemented very gingerly, in certain areas where GPS is just so doggone critical, like, again, class B airspace, major hubs and stuff like that for banking and airplanes and stuff that are using that to navigate and do those things. 

21:57 - 22:15 

SP: Probably one difference would be spoofing. Now I'm going up on a uplink trying to emulate a ground station, but again, that's a little bit more difficult because you got to be able to emulate the ground station and there's encrypted uplinks and things like that. What I described before be just be basically putting noise so I can't communicate. 

22:16 - 22:39 

DM: When you start talking refined spoofing, where you make an image appear like in a synthetic aperture radar bird or something like that, that isn't there, that spoofing or other forms of deceiving somebody into believing what they are getting off their satellite is real when it isn't. 

That is a very much more advanced technique and we have seen that from some of our adversaries like Russia and China. 

22:40 - 22:51 

The last category for counterspace weapons is cyber. 

Particularly considering the interconnected relationship between space and cyber - how can cyber threats compromise the capabilities of our space systems?

22:52 - 23:38 

SP: If you think about it, there's only ten people in space right now, but there's about a thousand satellites. We're connected to all of these satellites via a network, not unlike the internet. Your ground stations, for example, Intelsat and Intelsat commands their constellation of satellites from a facility outside of Washington, D.C. 

They have to connect with these antennas around the world using the internet. So there's a cyber component as well as non-kinetic.  

I think we're all familiar with cyber attacks. Especially commercial capabilities are going to leverage the commercial internet to connect a ground station with an antenna somewhere out there in the world. 

And you could just there's all sorts of different ways you could cut off that antenna. You can try to deny their ability to command over the internet. Anything you think of there. The satellite itself these days are very much think of them as internet devices that just happen to be in space. So it's very much an interconnected world in that regard.

23:39 - 24:37 

DM: I would say there are no space heroes without ones and zeros and the ones and zeros being the cyber guys. And they are really the guys that I am gravely concerned about because the cost of entry into the cyber world is a laptop computer and an internet connection. 

You can expand on that a little bit if you start doing some active jamming spoofing with your laptop and or internet connection. But it doesn't take much to disrupt a network. And, our cyber professionals do an amazing job. It is unbelievably linked and tied together. There's baked in at every single level to space. The networks, the components and stuff like that. 

So, it is a very real capability that the cost of entry is, a smart kid with a laptop and an internet connection, and that's what makes it such a threat. It's so easy to get access to. It's the knowledge on how to do it. And again, with the proliferation of knowledge around the world, that's just going to become harder and harder and harder to put up barriers and protections against that. 

24:38 - 25:06 

Now, non-kinetic means of warfare - like the three we’ve just discussed - can present a difficult problem of attribution, or identifying where an attack is coming from. It also brings about this idea of “grey zone warfare,” or actions taken by an adversary that are not explicitly acts of war, despite potentially giving an adversary a strategic advantage.  

Can you describe how non-kinetic counterspace actions relate to challenges in attribution and grey zone warfare?  

25:07 - 25:40 

SP: I'd say that the attribution problem is certainly an issue for everything other than probably your kinetic ASATs. I mean, you're going to know where they were launched from, where the, where the attack came from and it's going to leave a pretty big mark in the form of debris. 

Any sort of non-kinetic attack. I mean, you could attribute where jamming is coming from, but a cyber attack, As we've seen [with] Russia in Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine, they started off with attacks against the cyber infrastructure of those countries. 

And I think Estonia was well after the fact, they were finally attributed in the open source that Russia had done the cyber attacks. So there's definitely to be an attribution issue there. 

25:41 - 27:08 

DM: And taking that a step further it's fairly easy to geo-locate where a jamming source is coming from, from the Earth looking up. 

There's nothing to say. You couldn't do a co-orbital jammer. You know, you put a jammer on a satellite, you just accomplished or really defeated your distance problem to your target. You're hanging out relatively close to it with a fairly low power and geo-locating something that is moving that you're not even certain where it's coming from. 

Attribution becomes very, very difficult, especially if it's from somebody that doesn’t even acknowledge that it's their satellite. And the majority of our jamming and noise that happens is done completely inadvertently, because we don't even realize we're stepping on frequencies that we're trying to use, not only ourselves, but our friends and adversaries alike. So it's a very difficult problem. 

If you wanted to complicate that one layer further, imagine doing advanced jamming with cyber to make your adversary or your opponent think the information they are getting is accurate, when in fact it isn’t. It has been altered. Say there's a database where your targets are located. Nothing more than a latitude and longitude of where bombs are to strike. 

Well, if an adversary were to hack into your database and change those coordinates by relatively small numbers, 50ft off, it's just enough to make you believe that the bomb missed due to error or some other thing. Not the fact it went exactly where you told it to go, but you just were spoofed into where you told it to go. 

The psychological piece of that, and then the troubleshooting and where that came from can just become a real burden to try and figure out. 

27:09 - 27:18 

Thank you, Sir. Now, Colonel Morrow, I’d like to circle back on this idea that space domain awareness is the “foundation” of counterspace operations.  

Can you elaborate on that? 

27:19 - 30:40 

DM: One of the things the Space Force has done, and in my opinion, very smartly, is, a lot of commercial users already have data on their satellites, as to where they were. 

Many satellites currently today have G.P.S. receivers on board using, either the backside of GPS or if they're in low Earth orbit, just like a normal receiver here on Earth, it’s position. And they're getting that data. And they said we should have a consortium where we start sharing each other's data because now it's almost real time for some satellites that you don't have to have either an optical sensor or a radar [to] take a look at a satellite. 

If they're being cooperative, “Well, hey, that's a great norm of behavior in space.” And that starts to paint a picture of what we have, where it is. Now, that's all well and great until the satellite quits functioning or it's out of gas or the batteries die, or it has some other anomaly, or it just becomes an end of life and we turn it off.  

Now it becomes just a floating rock that we have to keep up with via a radar or again, an optical sensor. But again, there are lots of countries that have optical sensors and radars around the world that are willing to share this data. Now that you have this large pool of data and it is a phenomenally large pool of data, you have to start asking yourself, “Well, how accurate is this data?” 

You know, if I'm starting to talk about something that's flying within 600 kilometers or closer of the ten astronauts on orbit, which is international - it could be any country. That's an issue. And so we have a box or a bubble, if you will, around the space station that we try and protect and keep clean. 

And occasionally we even do maneuvers in that space station based off how accurate we think this data is. Some data is more accurate than others. One of the things that has made this whole idea of sharing data is - it's self-monitoring and people want to present the data for how accurate their data is, and others will present data that they think their data isn't accurate, and then they'll counter that. 

So by doing that, it all actually gets better, which is a good thing. But so that starts to boil into the question with respect to cyber attacks and databases, is the assurance of how confident you are that your data is - one: How good was your day to begin with? Two: has your database stayed secure enough that you can believe it? 

Because if I were an adversary and I wanted to do an attack, the first thing I’d do is make you believe your data wasn't accurate. Especially if you start wanting to use that data to target something. And again, I'm just talking the pure science of physics. You want to be absolutely certain of your target coordinates before you shoot at something. 

Otherwise you miss. And if your adversary can make you or even just instill doubt without actually making it wrong, just the thought that it might not be right, it's going to make you take a second chance. Well, that's also a deterrent. You can also use it against your adversaries that might be trying to target you. 

So that works both ways. But you really see how just knowing what's going on - imagine walking into a room and you have a blindfold on and you're allowed to look at the room for 30 seconds, and then you're blindfolded, and then you're asked to take three steps, and then a minute later you can open your eyes and look again, and you're trying to figure out what's going on in that room. 

That's kind of what space is. And ideally, we'd like to walk in a room and keep our eyes open all the time. But space is a very, very big area: between 360 degrees and plus the depth, out to geostationary and even beyond. When you start talking the moon and other places, how do you keep up with everything? 

[Space domain awareness] really is the foundation of what we have to do to be successful in that domain.

30:41 - 31:04 

SP: And it is not just where an adversary is, it's the safety of flight. If I'm in a slot in the geosynchronous belt and you get your little degree you're moving in and someone else has just happened to get close. 

If that data is not accurate, just because they don't have good sensors on where they're at, I'm going to get pretty nervous because satellites - these are not cheap assets. And so there's the safety flight issue as well, and debris obviously isn't going to tell you where it's at. So you got to keep track of that as well. 

31:05 - 31:30 

Then also going back to this idea of rendezvous and proximity operations - or RPO - we're seeing the technology for this capability advance: whether that be crewed capsules docking with the International Space Station, grappling arms for orbital debris clean-up, or even the potential for re-fueling of maneuverable spacecraft.  

So how does the growing prevalence of rendezvous and proximity operations reinforce the need for space domain awareness?

31:31 - 32:40 

DM: The most deadly punch that you'll ever take is the one you don't see coming and that goes back to space domain awareness. 

And this also sort of ties back to what I said earlier about norms of behavior. If you come up and parked next to a boat at sea and you're both traveling in the same direction and you're both a quarter mile apart, that's pretty safe. If you're talking to each other, it's even safer. You know, you're communicating intent and stuff like that.  

So when a satellite snuggles up next to you: How close is it? What is its closure rate? Because that determines how fast it can actually move in, maneuver and hit you. 

Maybe that person is talking to you about it. “Hey, we're just an observation satellite. We'd like to get an image, see what's going on or we're doing a space evaluation of the electromagnetic spectrum here.”  

Are they talking to you? That would be the first thing that would reduce hostilities. Are we talking? Are they sharing their orbital parameters with you? When they try and sneak up on you, and they get really super close or they're in a position where they could close that distance really fast. 

That becomes very concerning from a: how do I protect my asset? And then again, you want to protect your asset because you want to avoid a collision and causing debris at all cost, because as soon as you cause debris, you've got third and fourth, fifth order effects that can really spin out of control.  

32:41 - 33:08 

SP: The other case scenario is going to be if I'm going to RPO with my own satellite because I want to go in and refuel it, I want to do maintenance on it. That's going to be very common. We'll probably see that over the next several years.  

But again, it’s the foundation of where's the satellite I'm going to go rendezvous with, especially if you're going to refuel. I'm gonna have to dock or grab a hold of the satellite so I can do the maintenance.  

But the adversarial case is - that's where the norms of behavior really aren't established. That's where if you're not communicating with what you're doing, “Why are you coming so close to my satellite?” I'm going to get exceptionally nervous. 

33:09 - 33:12 

And on this note: what do we know of Russia’s counterspace capabilities? 

33:13 - 33:34 

SP: They've demonstrated a direct ascent capability. They've demonstrated in the past a co-orbital capability. Electronic warfare has been a key component in Ukraine. So those capabilities, and I'm sure cyber is a capability they would have as well. I mean, Russian hackers are proving to be a pretty key element of their military strategy. 

So I'd say all of those capabilities - I’d make the assumption that I'd have to plan for those threats. 

33:35 - 35:13 

DM: It's also a little bit of a poker game and a bluff. If they could convince us that they were actually going to shoot at us and which satellite they were going to shoot at, we might actually move that satellite. 

But in moving that satellite, we burn fuel. You do that long enough, you kill the satellite effectively because you're running out of gas. One of the more things that I would say that we believe the Russians have developed - it's like a nesting doll. You know, the doll that comes out of the doll that comes out of the doll that comes out of the doll. 

So when you track that and you know, there's good norms of behavior space when you launch something, you tell the world, “Here's where I'm gonna launch a satellite from, and here's where I'm going to put it. And, everybody goes, well, it looks - yep, there it is. So it's peaceful.” 

But there's no requirement or something breaks off of it, whether intentional or unintentional or separation, it becomes to where do those two go? Is the one staying where it was? Did it do it at a time and place that you really couldn't see it?  

Twilight Zones where your optical sensors or something like that might not be able to view, or it made a maneuver when it was not over or around any of your radar sites. And then when you went back to look again, it looks different or it's missing or it's gone. 

Now it becomes a mad, frantic search for where in space is this object and then it starts to really smell of nefarious actions. And that would be for Co-orbital, could be for intel collection purposes. It could be maybe they just want to snuggle up and take pictures of your satellite. Maybe they want to snuggle up so close to your satellite you don't know it. 

And at the time of their choosing, they turn on an electronic jammer that you can't geo-locate because it's coming from your satellite. But it's jamming your frequencies. There's just so many possibilities of the physics of what you could do. Just by being sneaky and deliberate in the way that you do it and all of that boils down to do you have the space domain awareness to know what's going on around you? 

35:13 - 35:14 

And what about China?  

35:15 - 35:23 

DM: It's identical, to be extremely short. But what the Russians can do, the Chinese can do every bit or better. They're two equal peers.  

35:24 - 35:41 

Thank you, Sir. So now I’d also like to tie in how our adversaries recognize space capabilities as both a strategic advantage - but also a potential vulnerability - for the United States military. 

Can each of you speak to this dichotomy that space reliance is both a strength and vulnerability for the U.S.?  

35:42 - 37:03 

SP: Sure, when I was on active duty, I used to keep a quote from a colonel in the Chinese People's Liberation Air Force and he basically said you know, “The U.S. is very reliant on space capabilities. You don't want to take them one with the tanks and airplanes.” 

And this was from the early 2000s is when this came out. So, they've identified this as a vulnerability early on, and they've had 20 years to view how we operate. We operate now with not as many forces forward. You have a lot of reach back to capabilities inside the United States. 

The classic idea of this big front of troops really doesn't exist anymore. There's lots of little bodies of troops moving around, and they're all interconnected via satcom, in many cases with each other, with higher headquarters. And there's no worry because they're one satcom call away from getting air support, getting medevac, getting all of these capabilities. And it makes us so fast.  

Probably the biggest strength of our military right now is we can operate so fast. 

And so when you're able to do that, you're going to win. And so we're very interconnected and it's all enabled by space. And that's where am I? GPS. How do I go and get help? That’s satcom. So many capabilities are brought to bear. What's that in front of me? I use that via only military imagery satellites. 

Now, I also have commercial imagery satellites that can provide me all sorts of information. And so that's really kind of how we like to operate. China and Russia had 20 years to see how we're operating. And so they know that we're doing this, I think it's just a recognition. They've identified this as a possible weak point so we need to be able to address that.  

37:04 - 38:16 

DM: Between exquisite targeting that we get from space, communications, we can do with one bomb what when World War II took us an entire squadron of bombers, sometimes multiple days to go take out a target. 

And now we can do with one 2,000 pound bomb. They're just that accurate. The targeting is that good. You hit at critical nodes. So you have second or third order effects that achieve the desired effects that you wanted on to battle space. And I kind of mentioned this earlier going back to going back to General Saltzman, competitive endurance theory, that works for the rational actor. 

If you've got an actor and we'll throw out a name here that we haven't used yet: North Korea, are mostly rational, but sometimes I kind of scratch my head and really say, not so sure. And they have rocket ability enough to put a crude nuclear weapon into orbit. They level that playing field really quick, with their conventional army, which they have a large mass of artillery and they're not reliant on space.  

So if they destroy the space environment, it doesn't hurt them at all. But it hurts the rest of the world in the process of doing that. So the theory works, I think, for rational actors. And it's very important that we try and treat North Korea as a rational actor. But be prepared just in case they decide not to be. 

38:17 - 38:33 

The Space Force has indicated time and again it wants to partner with - and leverage capabilities from - the commercial industry to support its mission and objectives.  

So can each of you explain how the inherent dual-use nature of commercial space systems should be factored into our counterspace threat assessment?

38:34 - 39:59 

DM: From a commercial perspective, from space, it's a great money for them. Space is not cheap. And if they can get a government provider to at least provide them foundational moneys to one: develop the capability; two: launch it and have it be a ready reserve, that's upfront R&D costs that the companies don't necessarily have to foot the bill themselves, or at least they have a mechanism for paying for that by partnering with a government and in doing so, that it also enables them to commercially use their assets and, in other capacities to meet their business model. 

Now think about this from a satellite perspective as well. When your commercial asset is being used by a military entity, it immediately becomes a very legal and valid target. And I'll draw an analogy here. Any general during the military or leadership is a valid and legal target. 

If you take out their leadership, you degrade their military's ability to conduct operations against you. What if that general, or senior military leader is flying on a commercial airplane, does that make that commercial airplane a legal target? “Ehh, you might want to scratch your head on that one.” With electronic warfare you might be able to take out the comms they are using on a satellite and you might justify hitting that entire satellite and not killing anybody. But you took out the military's ability to use that satellite, now that creates debris and other problems.  

Or you could shoot down the airplane and take out that leader. We've seen actions similar to that from some other countries with assassination attempts in the past, it's frowned upon. But if you're on your heels and trying to win, it's a way to level the playing field. 

40:00 - 41:04 

SP: We use the analogy of satellites being dual use. I mean, there's an insatiable appetite for satcom bandwidth and so the bulk of your satcom satellites today are commercial. So the U.S. military is reliant upon them. Any of the imagery we see from Ukraine is coming from commercial satellite imagery companies. There's a lot of those. 

Like I said, GPS, it's a military system, but it's the commercial sector is reliant upon it. So there's a lot of dual use in space. And as Dave said, when you use it for military purposes, it's no longer protected. It's a valid military target. If we’re using Satcom for military command to control that satellite that's providing a signal is a valid target.  

If I contract with Maersk shipping lines to ship military cargo across the Pacific. “Hey, congratulations. You're now a lawful target.” You probably need to know that the implications of working with not just our side, but it could be the other side in a campaign as well. 

And so they need to be aware because ultimately if something happens to their satellite, even if it's a reversible effect where it's an electronic attack on your satellite, that's still putting RF energy on your satellite. It may be out of specs on, so it could damage your satellite, impact the mission life of the satellite and like we all know, satellites aren't cheap.

41:05 - 41:47 

DM: Yeah. And I was even going to give you another example. You used the company Maersk for sea lines of shipping. The same is true with CRAF Civil Reserve Air Fleet, where, in times of crisis or national emergency, the government pays airlines a certain amount of money just to keep airplanes and crew in ready reserve, to do whatever it may be: humanitarian supplies, you know, a tsunami hits Indonesia and you've got to start flying just bundles of whatever to wherever you get, now that's humanitarian purpose. Probably not the greatest example. 

But if you're moving troops to move them forward, they become legal, valid targets. And if there's a way to take a shot at them before they can safely land, that's warfare. That's why it's so ugly and should be avoided. 

41:48 - 42:09 

Now, we opened today’s conversation with General Saltzman’s Theory on Competitive Endurance. And I'd like to bring everything we discussed so far back to its third tenet of “responsible counterspace campaigning.” 

So how can we connect this understanding of counter space weaponry, whether they be kinetic or non-kinetic means, into the significance of the Theory on Competitive Endurance and its implementation moving forward?  

42:10 - 42:54 

SP: I think he's just openly talking about what we probably needed to talk about two decades ago, which is: we're using space for military purposes. We gain an advantage by using it for military purposes. An adversary sees that and if they don't think we're ready to defend those capabilities or to hold their own capabilities at risk, it becomes an attractive target. 

So openly talking about it, and again, taking into account things like discrimination and proportionality, existing elements of law of armed conflict, responsible campaigning to me means, “Okay, I'm going to comply with the law of armed conflict. I'm not going to create undue suffering. I'm only going to hit military targets. I'm going to use proportional responses.”  

So all of these things just basically saying “We're ready to do this.” And it's counterintuitive, but the best way to avoid a fight is to show that you're ready for a fight.

42:55 - 43:31 

DM: The only thing I would add, and we kind of mentioned earlier, is he had to start somewhere with a vision and a way forward on what to do and how to do it, and show that, “Hey, we're going to be ready for this. So don't bring it.” That acts as a deterrent to prevent war and hopefully things get resolved by mechanisms other than war. 

But at the same time, if push really comes to shove, be able to shut down your adversaries, or if at least it appears that they cannot achieve any of their objectives or goals by going to war and that in and of itself is a win. 

So it was the first time anything really been written down as to how we ought to do this from a strategy perspective, and dovetailing that with national policy, understanding that the policies change with administrations. But that's just a fact of life. They always do. But we had to have something down to foundationally to work from.

43:32 - 43:51 

And from the perspective of your roles with Elara Nova, what opportunities exist for the consulting firm to support the understanding and development of counterspace capabilities? 

43:52 - 44:34 

DM: Elara Nova has an incredible experience that was really grown over time and none of us have lowered our hands and said, “Hey, you know the oath we took? I don't need it anymore.” We're just continuing to do what we did with that oath on behalf of Elara Nova.  

So it's a way to use our past experiences.  We've been around long enough so we know what has worked and what probably could work. And some critical thinking of what might work, and helping to influence some of those ideas and stuff in the future is, I think, a way that Elara Nova. And when you look at the team as a whole: there's pilots, there's intel, there's cyber professionals. There's just a very steep, steep background of professionals that can really help the cause. 

44:35 - 45:44 

SP: One of the big challenges the Space Force has is telling its story. What do you mean by counterspace? By clearly articulating what we’re talking about and by clearly articulating how we think the Space Force should do it. Hopefully it will allay some fears that we're not militarizing it. We're just trying to preserve what we have.  

You used an ATM machine today, right? Okay. Space Force enabled that. Did you get an Amazon package today? Okay, I'm pretty sure that was tracked by GPS as well. Did you watch NFL or soccer from Europe over the weekend? I know where that signal came from.  

We're all reliant upon space. So just basically helping, General Salzman tell its story and talking about why it's important. And really, there's a lot of just, I'd say disinformation. It's like, hand-wavy we should use space for people for peaceful purposes. Totally agree, but I ought to be prepared to not use it for peaceful purposes because others are probably preparing as well. 

And so, I think Elara Nova, like Dave said,  every single one of us raised our hand at a certain point, you take the uniform off and I can still help and so I think every single one of us has that passion. 

We've entrusted the Space Force to people that we know and love and we want to make sure that they're equipped and can get what they need. And so this is our way of continuing to serve and continue to help out those that we entrusted the Space Force with.

45:45 - 46:20 

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in national security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.