The first, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, or SALT I, froze the number of each country’s long-range ballistic missile launchers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles at existing levels. The second accord, the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty restricted the number of anti-missile batteries each side could deploy.43
The Erosion of Arms Control Will Extend to Outer Space
China and Russia are developing missiles that can destroy satellites.
If the United States and Russia allow the New START arms control pact to expire next year, the subsequent end of all remaining limits on their nuclear arsenals will affect not only strategic stability on Earth but also in outer space, experts say.
The expiration will eliminate prohibitions on interfering with each other’s intelligence satellites and other methods for verifying treaty compliance, warns a new study by Aerospace Corp.’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy, a research center that analyzes space programs for the U.S. military.1
“This will mark a significant change in the strategic context within which U.S. national security space forces operate,” the study said. “U.S. space forces’ resources will be taxed, and the stability of the space domain will face new risks.”2
The study came out weeks after President Trump, authorized by Congress, announced creation of the U.S. Space Force, the military’s sixth branch, which aims to defend the United States and its satellites and spacecraft from hostile forces. With New START due to expire in February 2021 and no sign from Trump that he will activate the treaty’s five-year extension provision, the study details some of the challenges the Space Force and intelligence agencies will face in a post-New START world.
Michael Gleason, a senior strategic space analyst and co-author of the study, told reporters at a Jan. 15 news conference that on-site inspections conducted by U.S. and Russian officials as part of the treaty’s verification provisions will end. Thus, he said, there will be greater demand—and costs—for U.S. satellite surveillance of Russia’s nuclear forces.
Gleason also warned that after decades during which the United States and Russia left each other’s reconnaissance and military satellites alone, the Pentagon should be prepared for the possibility that Russia may try to challenge U.S. satellite overflights of its territory by interfering with them.
According to a U.S. intelligence analysis of open-source documents, Russia is developing a satellite system called Burevestnik, believed to be designed to disrupt and destroy other countries’ satellites. The documents suggest the Burevestnik will be a co-orbital satellite, or one that is deployed in an orbit similar to its target, capable of assessing the functions of Russian satellites as well as inspecting or killing an adversary’s satellites.3
U.S. intelligence officials also have cited Russia’s extensive testing of its PL-19 Nudol anti-satellite missile, which is fired from a mobile launcher and targets enemy satellites in low-Earth orbit, 250 miles above the planet.4 The Pentagon’s “2019 Missile Defense Review” cited such anti-satellite missiles as one of several Russian threats, including laser weapons.
Russia is developing a diverse suite of anti-satellite capabilities, including ground-launched missiles and laser weapons, “and continues to launch ‘experimental’ satellites that conduct sophisticated on-orbit activities to advance counterspace capabilities,” the report said.5
U.S. officials acknowledge the Pentagon is developing anti-satellite capabilities, but details remain classified.
Meanwhile, studies published last April focus on counterspace activities by China, which in 2007 stunned the U.S. defense community by firing a missile that destroyed one of its own defunct weather satellites, creating a large field of space debris that continues to pose risks to the International Space Station and other satellites.6 China demonstrated further technological advances in space last year when it became the first country to land a probe on the dark side of the moon.7
The April studies—one conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an independent Washington think tank, and the other by the Secure World Foundation, a research organization that promotes the peaceful uses of space—noted that China continues to test the ability of its SJ-17 satellite to maneuver close to another to inspect, repair or monitor its functions. China also appears to have deployed mobile jammers on Mischief Reef in the South China Sea’s Spratly Islands that can disrupt other countries’ ground-to-space communications, according to the CSIS study.8
Both studies say China is developing at least three types of missiles capable of hitting satellites orbiting between 250 miles and 22,236 miles above Earth. The Secure World Foundation study says one of the three anti-satellite missiles is probably operational and may already have been deployed on mobile Chinese launchers.9
“China is clearly investing in its counter-space capabilities,” the CSIS study says. “Evidence confirms that in 2018 alone, China tested technologies in three of the four counter-space weapon categories.”10
The four categories include kinetic weapons, such as missiles and killer satellites, designed to smash into or explode next to a satellite; nonkinetic weapons, such as lasers, high-powered microwaves or electromagnetic pulses that can blind or disable satellites; electronic weapons that can jam satellite communications or trick them with fake signals; and cyberweapons that target the data from satellites.11
“The big changes to Chinese doctrine and space organization happened a few years ago when they created their Strategic Support Force,” said Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation and co-editor of its study. “This is a new military organization that combines space, electronic warfare and cyber capabilities.”12
Military technology experts say China probably began building up its counterspace capabilities when the U.S. military started relying heavily on its constellation of communications, surveillance and intelligence-gathering satellites at the outset of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But with New START’s expiration looming, Russia is the most immediate concern, the Aerospace study stressed. Urging the Trump administration to begin planning for the day after the treaty expires, the study suggested either a negotiated understanding or a formal agreement with Moscow not to interfere with one another’s satellites.
“No alternative future foresees the existing status quo surviving after New START expires,” the study said.
—Jonathan Broder
1 Michael P. Gleason and Luc H. Riesbeck, “Noninterference With National Technical Means: The Status Quo Will Not Survive,” Center for Space Policy and Strategy, Aerospace Corp., January 2020, https://tinyurl.com/uqgs2v9.
2 Ibid.
3 “Russia develops co-orbital anti-satellite capability,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/uycd8mo.
4 “Russian Space Wars: U.S. Intelligence Claims Kremlin Made Seventh Test of Nudol ASAT Missile,” Spacewatch.global, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/s7pwx7b.
5 “2019 Missile Defense Review,” Office of the Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense, January 2019, https://tinyurl.com/y9hkqfnj.
6 Michael Safi and Hannah Devlin, “ ‘A terrible thing’: India’s destruction of satellite threatens ISS, says NASA,” The Guardian, April 2, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yyuezl8l.
7 Trefor Moss, “China Lands Probe on the ‘Dark Side’ of the Moon,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 3, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yborl7kj.
8 Todd Harrison