Tag Archive for: Defence Space Command

The state of Australian defence space strategy

On 9 January, the US Army released a new space vision focused on integrated multidomain operations. The brief document provides valuable perspective on how the US Army views its role in joint and combined space operations.

Why should Australians care? With the recent formation of the US Space Force, America’s legacy military services find themselves in much the same position as Australia’s Defence Department in relation to external space-based effects providers. Australia can learn from the US experiences.

Australia has long relied on civil agencies, allies and commercial entities for critical space-based enablers. It has struggled to find the right mix of investment in sovereign capability on the one hand and close international partnerships on the other.

With this dilemma lingering unanswered, there has been a long silence from Defence on the particulars of its space strategy. The 2023 defence strategic review (DSR) contained only high-level guidance. Defence’s space strategy was released in 2022 and drew heavily on the earlier defence strategic update and force structure plan (FSP).

The space strategy acknowledges that it lacks the ‘…detailed “what”… “how” and “when” required for execution’. It promises a space program roadmap laying out these specifics. This roadmap has not been made public.

When it comes to specifics, here is what we know. The FSP allocated up to $7 billion through 2030 for investment in sovereign military satellite communications, a program that continues to move forward. It provided up to $2 billion through 2038 for space situational awareness capabilities that have also made some progress. More aspirational were the $3.1-4.5 billion in commitments to satellite communications assurance and ‘contested space terrestrial operations’ not scheduled to begin until 2027 and beyond.

The DSR made several organisational recommendations without providing strong guidance on spending priorities. Perhaps most significantly, it recommended separate funding lines for space capabilities and building a defined career path for defence space professionals.

In terms of funding, the military SATCOM acquisition program is the only one to crack the top 30 in the annual portfolio budget statements. Having access to space situational awareness continues to rely heavily on international partners.

Outside Defence, progress has been feeble. The civil space strategy dates back to 2019 and sketches out only the flimsiest of budgetary commitments, many of which have been recently called into serious question.

So, what can we learn from the US Army’s space vision? Where is the service choosing to invest directly, and where is it relying on partnerships?

The vision document proposes two core competencies for its space professionals:

First, they must maintain the expertise to integrate with service providers in key warfighting functions such as precision navigation and timing, deep sensing, beyond-line-of-sight communications, force tracking, environmental monitoring, space domain awareness and geospatial information. In the not-too-distant past, it was common for America’s military services to duplicate capability investments in the name of maintaining control. Those days are gone when it comes to the space domain. The new focus is on maintaining expertise to capitalise on the wide range of space-based capabilities on offer.

Second, US Army space professionals must maintain the ability to protect warfighters from adversary space capabilities. This means delivering effects to ‘…protect friendly forces from observation and targeting by counter-satellite communications, counter-surveillance and reconnaissance, and navigation warfare operations.’

The Army’s vision document identifies key hardware investments that will empower those highly trained space professionals. Next-generation tactical terminals will ‘…leverage multi-orbit satellite communication services and access space-enabled tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms to meet deep sensing requirements.’ Layered systems such as stratospheric balloons and semi-autonomous aircraft will provide ‘redundant and complementary capabilities.’

 

Even as Australia’s Defence Department struggles to decrease its reliance on the US MILSATCOM system with Australian-operated geosynchronous satellites, international industry roars ahead. Low earth orbit constellations such as SpaceX’s Starlink are pushing data speeds toward the gigabit level and dramatically decreasing latency. They are reducing reliance on terrestrial infrastructure from ground stations to undersea cables with scaled optical inter-satellite links. The US Defense Innovation Unit is moving to capitalise on such capabilities with its hybrid space architecture while the Space Force looks for ways to best engage the commercial market.

Companies as close to home as Rocket Lab are moving up the value chain, joining legacy primes like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to provide satellites for the US Space Development Agency’s proliferated warfighter space architecture. Intermediaries are proliferating to fill gaps in the emerging network. Defence’s space strategy provides only passing reference to such capabilities.

Where should Australia focus its efforts? Progress has been patchy in areas of clear competitive advantage. Investment in space domain awareness trickles in, lagging far behind both US contributions and funding for the flashier communication satellites. Plans to capitalise on a clear and unassailable geographical advantage in space launch continue to languish.

It’s time to be honest with ourselves: How bad do things need to get before Australia is entirely cut off from the myriad of allied and commercial service providers in the space domain? If we get to that point, will a few Australian-operated satellites really matter?

Increasingly, adding to national sovereign space capability by launching another satellite is as quixotic as adding to national sovereign cyberspace capability by plugging in another computer. This is not to say Australia’s new SATCOM capability won’t be a valuable enabler. But it can’t be the centerpiece of a long-run space investment strategy.

In a networked world, defence strategy development has become more difficult than ever before. It is no longer possible to simply build the fences higher and the guns larger. All of us, the US included, are inextricably linked in ways that will make debates over national sovereignty ever more quaint.

The US Army has taken the right approach when it comes to the space domain. Its core investments are in training and in the tools required to make the most of partner capabilities. Resilience comes from tapping into the full range of services on offer, not from trying to re-create them. It seeks to contribute to the broader ecosystem only in areas where it holds obvious advantages. Australia should take note.

Keeping Australia safe in space

The joint statement issued after Saturday’s AUSMIN meeting in Brisbane declared enhanced space cooperation as a new force posture initiative for the United States and Australia in ‘this critical operational domain’. The two governments also announced an intention to increase space integration and cooperation in operations and exercises.

These are important steps, but there are challenges ahead, particularly in terms of how the Australian Defence Force ensures access to space in the face of growing threats from adversary counterspace capabilities. That’s the ‘contested’ part of the oft-quoted observation about space being ‘congested, contested and competitive’.

Australia’s 2020 force structure plan noted the challenge in a section titled ‘space control’, highlighting the need for space domain awareness. On the more challenging issue of responding to counterspace threats, it stated:

Defence will need capabilities that directly contribute to war fighting outcomes in the space domain using terrestrial and/or space-based systems. The Government’s plans include the development of options to enhance ADF space control through capabilities to counter emerging space threats to Australia’s free use of the space domain and that assure our continued access to space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

The Defence Department’s 2022 space strategy reinforced a requirement for space control, saying:

Defence will continue to identify Space Control gaps and opportunities to develop a credible Space Control capability, and space capability developers will actively seek to improve the resilience of the space capabilities. Defence will explore options consistent with its commitment to be a responsible actor in space.

However, the public version of the 2023 defence strategic review doesn’t mention space control. Consideration of this important next step for the ADF in space is reduced to a vague statement noting a requirement for ‘capability assurance and communications provision’. The review seems to de-emphasise the importance of having a sovereign capability, noting that ‘sovereign capability needs … must be offset by the cost requirements of such capabilities against opportunities to collaborate with the United States and other partners’.

While no one is arguing for autarky in Australian space capabilities, a retreat to dependency ignores the reality that if we want space assurance, we can’t depend on others to provide it for us. The recent reduction in funding for space development in the civil and commercial sector doesn’t build confidence that there will be a coherent strategic approach to space, especially with a national space policy now looking uncertain.

It’s time for the ADF and Defence Space Command to tackle the challenging but vital mission of space control and develop a policy and capability path towards it.

The beginning of space assurance for the ADF would be the ability to launch Australian satellites on Australian launch vehicles from Australian launch sites on demand. If we continue to rely on others for launch services, we won’t have assured access to space because we’ll be at the end of a queue driven by the interests of, and demands on, the overseas launch provider. That would be illogical. Australia is ideally situated to launch satellites for the ADF, for other areas of government and for broader commercial customers as well as international allies and partners. We must make sovereign launch the centrepiece of any national space strategy.

While a focus on space domain awareness gives us a valuable capability to share the burden with key allies and partners, it should be seen as the first step to a viable space control capability, not the complete solution. Australia can burden-share in orbit to a much greater degree, both by expanding ground- and space-based space domain awareness and by developing its own defensive soft-kill space-control capabilities. The threat is clear. Counterspace capabilities under development by China and Russia include a full suite of ground-launched, co-orbital and ground-based soft-kill and hard-kill systems.

An Australian space-control capability may be seen by some as controversial, but it’s not as if we’re acquiring kinetic-kill anti-satellite weapons, and it’s not unprecedented. Defence announced in 2021 that it was considering a defensive space electronic-warfare capability under Project 9358, noting that such a capability, ‘as part of the Australian Defence Force’s approach to space control, seeks to detect and deter attempts to interfere with, or attack, our use of the space domain’. As a soft-kill capability, space electronic warfare wouldn’t create debris or damage the space environment, the announcement said. That’s also consistent with Australia’s 2022 decision to support the ban on testing anti-satellite weapons that produce debris.

The head of Defence Space Command, Air Vice-Marshal Cath Roberts, has made the case for soft-kill space-control capabilities and has reinforced the importance of electronic warfare to defeat threats in orbit. The combination of assured space access through sovereign launch, enhanced space domain awareness, and a sovereign soft-kill space-control capability based on space electronic warfare is an excellent foundation from which the command can start dealing with space control in the coming decade.

A second step should be mitigating the counterspace threat by emphasising the acquisition and local development of proliferated constellations of small satellites as part of military space architecture, as the US and other allies are doing. Such constellations are much more difficult targets for counterspace capabilities than a small number of large, expensive and complex satellites because they increase the complexity of an attack, and its risk of failure. Small satellites are also better able to exploit locally developed fast innovation cycles and are better suited to emerging sovereign launch capabilities.

For small satellite constellations to provide resilience in space, we will also need to be able to replace them quickly. This should be a priority for Defence Space Command and highlights the importance of future technologies such as reusable launch and hypersonics to offer a high launch tempo matched with an ability to produce small satellites locally. The goal should be to ensure that Australia can rapidly augment and reconstitute space capabilities in the face of counterspace threats, defend those capabilities and deter an adversary from attacking them.

We must be prepared to challenge traditional mindsets on the use of space and be willing to shift away from traditional approaches to the provision of space capabilities in a much more contested domain. If Defence Space Command doesn’t grasp this problem, Australia will be much more vulnerable to an adversary’s space warfighting capabilities.