No one would die directly from an attack on satellites, and no one cries over melted plastic and copper. Yet as American and Chinese reliance on their space-based satellite constellations increases, so will the incentive for either side to target and strike the other sides early in a conflict. This incentive to strike first—a “Pearl Harbor” in space—could be so destabilizing as to precipitate a war that neither state wants but cannot avoid.
The United States needs a space infrastructure that is both resilient and redundant enough to survive a Chinese first strike. That is, the satellite constellation infrastructure that the United States uses for its military and commercial needs must still be functional even if the Chinese were to attack the system and attempt to destroy it. Currently, the brittleness of our satellite constellation is such that any concerted effort by an adversary would render the American satellite constellation useless for military purposes. The satellite infrastructure must be resilient to non-kinetic counterspace weapons like electronic jamming and laser blinding, but also to kinetic anti-satellite missiles or even the deployment of a nuclear weapon.
The modern U.S. military is dependent on satellites for global positioning system (GPS); communications; sensing and targeting of enemy assets; and even the movement of American ships and planes across the planet. . Put another way, the U.S. military would be hard pressed to conduct successful operations without access to it. Modern aircraft and navy vessels rely on GPS to traverse the world’s oceans and skies; the military relies on satellites for open and secure communications; and intelligence and surveillance satellites enable America’s precision-guided munitions to hit targets with accuracy. Increasingly, China and Russia are similarly reliant on satellite constellations for military purposes.
Given the reliance of the United States, China, and Russia on their respective satellite infrastructure, there are first-mover advantages to an adversary who strikes first in space. That is, the more an actor is reliant upon satellite constellations in prosecuting a war, the more incentives their adversaries have to preemptively destroy or degrade said constellations. Indeed, the benefits of striking first are so great—and the consequences of being the target of such a strike are so grave—that brittleness in space incentivizes first strikes and is therefore destabilizing.
Strategic stability generally refers to a condition in which neither actor is incentivized to strike first—and both would pay significant costs for doing so. In the Cold War, neither side carried out a decapitation strike on the other, due in part because of the knowledge that such a strike would not provide meaningful benefit and would trigger a retaliation (a devastating nuclear second strike) the consequences of which would far outstrip any marginal benefit incurred in even a “successful” first strike.
Hellbound and Down 