America's Space Force is Preparing for a New Kind of War

A July combat training exercise involved a satellite dish-style antenna that 'could fire enough electromagnetic energy to fry the satellite 22,000 miles away,' reports the Washington Post. But 'Instead, the salvo would be more covert — millisecond pulses of energy that would subtly disrupt the satellite's signals, which U.S. military forces were using to communicate in the Pacific Ocean.'

The goal was to disguise the strike as a garbled connection that could be easily remedied by securing a loose cable or a simple reboot, leaving U.S. service members frustrated without raising their suspicions. [And using less power 'would make it harder for the Blue Team to track where the interference was coming from.'] This is how the next war could start: invisible shots fired in space on the electromagnetic spectrum that could render U.S. fighter jets and aircraft carriers deaf and blind, unable to communicate. In this case, the 'aggressors' targeting the U.S. satellite were not from China or Russia, but rather an elite squadron of U.S. Space Force Guardians mimicking how potential adversaries would act in a conflict that begins in orbit... Involving more than 700 service members and spanning 50 million square miles and six time zones, the training exercise, called Resolute Space, was observed firsthand exclusively by The Washington Post.
The article describes leadership at the U.S. Space Force 'still honing their mission while jousting with adversaries, such as China, that are moving quickly and conducting combat-like operations in orbit... While the Space Force continues to evolve, many defense analysts and some members of Congress fear the United States has already ceded its dominance in space to China and others.'
With a budget of just $40 billion, the relatively tiny Space Force makes up just about 4 percent of the Defense Department's budget and less than 1 percent of its personnel. It has more than 15,000 Guardians, which also includes several thousand civilians. By comparison, the Army has nearly 1 million soldiers. The Space Force has been squeezed under the department of the Air Force and struggled to distinguish itself from the other branches...

China, Russia and others have demonstrated that they can take out or interfere with the satellites operated by the Pentagon and intelligence agencies that provide the nation's missile warning and tracking, reconnaissance and communications. China in particular has moved rapidly to build an arsenal of space-based weapons... [R]ecently, several of China's satellites have engaged in what Space Force officials have called 'dogfighting,' jousting with U.S. satellites at high speeds and close ranges.

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