What should the United States do if one of its satellites were attacked and the Pentagon had no way to respond in space? The answer to this question is surprisingly revealing about Washington’s space policy.
One of my congressional colleagues said recently, “Let’s take out their ground stations with cruise missiles,” but that made me cringe. When asked a similar question at the National Press Club in March, Gen. John Raymond, chief of operations of the Space Force, said, “There’s no such thing as space war. It’s war,” but that worried me, too. What is the right answer?
Bombing an adversary’s ground station means attacking a sovereign asset like an embassy, probably killing enemy soldiers. Even if the prior attack destroyed one of our key satellites (which is not clear in the hypothetical), retaliating by blowing up a ground station and killing its staff seems disproportionate. If the satellite attack were to fail, bombing a ground station seems belligerent, but not responding at all risks encouraging future attacks. Either way, lowering a space conflict down to Earth means climbing up the escalatory ladder because it forces U.S. leaders to either create casualties on the ground or condone aggression in space.
