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Bloomberg
The US intelligence community is updating its assessment of space warfare capabilities of Russia and China as military commanders express concerns about advances in the adversaries’ ability to jam, ram or destroy satellites in orbit.
Air Force General John Hyten requested the National Intelligence Estimate before he left his prior command at the US Strategic Command, and it “is being worked by the IC at this time,†said Lieutenant Colonel Christina Hoggatt, an Air Force spokeswoman. Hyten is now the US’s No. 2 military officer.
The new US Space Command will use the updated intelligence estimate “alongside current operations and critical information from our international, civil, and commercial partnerships, to identify and drive†future “training and acquisition requirements,†Hoggatt said.
The actual and potential threats of space wars were used in part to justify establishing the Space Command, a new Space Development Agency and possibly a sixth service branch that would be called the Space Force.
Those concerns will be reinforced this week by the congressionally mandated US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in its annual report to be released on November 14.
The report concludes that China “views space as a critical US military and economic vulnerability and has fielded an array of direct-ascent, cyber, electromagnetic and co-orbital counterspace weapons capable of targeting nearly every class of US space asset.â€
“It may be difficult for the United States to deter Beijing from using these weapons due to China’s belief the US has a greater vulnerability in space,†according to an advance copy.
The Pentagon requested $14.1 billion for an expanded national security space budget for the current 2020 fiscal year, about 14% more than in fiscal 2019, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The US operates 870 of the world’s 1,880 intelligence, communications, navigation and scientific satellites, according to the Pentagon’s inspector general.