“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” the U.S. Space Force’s Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein told the 16th annual McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia on March 18.
“That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”
Guetlein’s stark comment about China signals a break with the past. “This marks the end of the Western-American-liberal dream of nations leaving wars on Earth so they can cooperate in space to advance humanity,” Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told Gatestone after the general’s widely publicized remarks. “Communist China has now taken war to the heavens, to low earth orbit, and very likely, will take war to the moon, Mars, and beyond. The heavens are no longer safe for the democracies.”
Space is now a highly contested domain, but it wasn’t always this way. “We told ourselves we would be the dominant power forever,” Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, said to Gatestone. “We coasted on that notion for far too long. Rising powers, notably China and Russia, saw how reliant we were on space—and how poorly defended our systems were. Our access to the strategic high ground is now more threatened than ever before.”
As Weichert points out, “bureaucratic inertia and a lack of visionary leadership from both political parties” allowed China and Russia to develop the capabilities to threaten America in space.
There was another party at fault: The U.S. military failed to protest when it could see there was an obvious threat. “There was a gentlemen’s agreement until recent that we didn’t mess with each other’s space systems,” Guetlein said. “We didn’t jam them, we didn’t spoof them, we didn’t lase them, we just kept them safe.”
Why was the U.S. so gentlemanly? Presidents believed that because the U.S. had more space assets than others, it was not in America’s interest to trigger a race to build weapons to destroy those assets. Yet this view, appearing commonsense at first glance, was naïve: It was apparent even then that neither China nor Russia could be enticed into good behavior. Generals and admirals should have sounded the warning.
Hellbound and Down 