The Commander of US Space Command, General Stephen Whiting, says the United States is experiencing a window of vulnerability as it transitions to a more resilient space architecture while key adversaries make fast gains in space. He says one way to overcome this threat is to make the most of international partnerships.
“We’re trying to maximise our partnerships,” he told Washington’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies last week. “If space is a team sport, how do you get the most out of those partnerships? International partnerships are vital, and we do those at various echelons, but at the top, at the closest levels of cooperation, we have a named operation called Operation Olympic Defender- that’s us, the Australians, Canadians, and the Brits, operating together is space and sharing information.”
Now four years old, Olympic Defender is a multinational effort intended to optimise space operations, improve mission assurance and resilience, and synchronise US efforts with some of its closest allies. Olympic Defender aims to strengthen allies’ abilities to deter hostile acts in space, strengthen deterrence against hostile actors, and reduce the spread of orbiting debris. Whiting added that France, Germany, and New Zealand had been formally invited to join Olympic Defender and said the US hoped to receive a positive response from all three countries within the next few months.
“You can think about our international partnerships as a pyramid,” Whiting said. “At the top is Operation Olympic Defender.”
“As a combatant command, our event horizon is typically from now to two to three years out,” Whiting told the audience. “Our number one priority at US Space Command is to prepare and posture and maximise combat readiness by 2027 – that’s my three year event horizon”
On the top two adversaries, Russia and China, Whiting said Russia’s launching of an operational counter space weapon in May and putting it into orbit near a US national security satellite “doesn’t appear to be accidental.”
“It gives them a short operational response time to potentially hold at risk one of our satellites, and this is the kind of thing that leads to our assessment that this is a counter space capability that the Russians have launched and as we think about how to mitigate it.”
He said the speed with which the Chinese space program was moving was “something to behold,” including how quickly they’ve moved to field counterspace capabilities, including offensive cyber capabilities, GPS jammers, high-energy lasers, and on-orbit capabilities. Whiting also said China had been building its own space capabilities to enable its own terrestrial forces.
“They’ve been watching us since Desert Storm to see how we use space to enable our tactical terrestrial forces, and they’ve taken those advantages to space,” he said.
Whiting said he can’t wish away the array of capabilities ranged against the US. “We are all concerned about the rate China is developing in space,” he said. “We want to make sure we (the US and its partners) are all working together as well as we can.”
