Implications for United States' Military Strategy and Policy of China's

Implications for United States’ Military Strategy and Policy of China’s Asymmetric Anti-Satellite Capability

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

William B. Robey, M.A.

Graduate Program in Political Science

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Randall L. Schweller, Advisor

Alexander Thompson

Christopher Gelpi

William Bud Robey

2015

Abstract

This dissertation argues that a military power shift has occurred in the Pacific.

Prevailing international relations theorists believe that United States’ military retains a decisive power advantage in the region. This paper offers the argument that the Chinese have adopted an orthogonal approach to increasing their military bargaining power by pursuing a strategy of exploiting US military overdependence on space enabled warfare. To prove this, the paper offers proof the Chinese have pursued and created a kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) capability capable of destroying US space assets. The Chinese strategy can be effective only in combination with an extant operational and strategic US vulnerability on space. The paper further proves through a comparative case study approach that the US is indeed over dependent on space. The factors of over dependence on encrypted radio communications of the German Navy in

World War II and the Battle of the Atlantic are identified in a historical case study. Those factors are then tested for in the US case of space dependence to determine exploitable vulnerability. The conclusions of the study decisively identify a vulnerable US position with highly proliferated dependence on small numbers of space assets, the concentration of risk in those assets, and the existence of a constructive relationship between US space enablers and US

military operational doctrine. These facts combined with the Chinese ASAT capability reduce the US bargaining position in a crisis. The survivability of mobile Chinese ASAT assets and the threshold differences between attacking on orbit assets versus pre-empting Chinese ASATs in mainland China create a condition where the US must start a war with China in order to preserve the ability to win. The ability therefore to hold US space assets at risk gives the

Chinese escalation dominance in a crisis situation. This research is the first methodical analysis of the impact of the Chinese ASAT program on US-Chinese military power relations, and an important addition to the growing body of work on Chinese anti-access, area denial (A2/AD) strategies. It also expands scholarship in the area of rising challenger strategies shaping responses, offering an approach where a rising challenger seeks to expand power without triggering significant balancing responses from the reigning global power by focusing on reigning power vulnerabilities instead of strengths.

iii

Dedication

Dedicated to my family

Acknowledgements

I would like to gratefully thank the United States Air Force for allowing me the opportunity to study international relations. I offer sincere thanks to the

Department of Political Science faculty at The Ohio State University, in particular the members of my committee, Dr. Randy Schweller, Dr. Alex Thompson, and

Dr. Chris Gelpi. I would also like to thank the Dean of Air War College, Dr. Mark

Conversino, for his patience, understanding and support. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the unwavering support of my Mom and my eternal gratefulness to my Dad.

Vita

1984……………………...... Tecumseh High School

1989……………………………B.S. Biology, University of Illinois

1993……………………………M.S. Administration, Central Michigan University

2002……………………………M.A. National Security and Strategic Studies, Naval War College

2009……………………………M.A. Strategic Studies, Air War College

Fields of Study

Major Field: Political Science

Minor Field: International Relations

Table of Contents

Abstract ……..……………………………………………………………………….… ii

Dedication .....……………………………………………………………………….... iv

Acknowledgements ….……….……………………..……………………………..…. v

Vita ….……….……………………..………………………………………………..… vi

List of Tables ....………..…………………………………………………..……….. viii

List of Figures ....………..…………………………………………..……………...... ix

Chapter 1: Introduction and theory ………………………………………………… 1

Chapter 2: China is Exploiting US Space Dependence …………………….….. 37

Chapter 3: Enigma, Ultra and Operational Overdependence ………………….. 70

Chapter 4: The United States is Walking into a Trap: Critical Overdependence on Space …………………………………………………………………………… 115

Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications ……………………………………….. 167

References ………………………………………………………………………… 180

vii

List of Tables

Table 1. ASAT Probability of Kill …………………………………………………. 66

Table 2. Active Duty Military Personnel 1940-2011 ……………………...…… 139

Table 3. Evolution of Space Enabled Strike complex …………………………. 155

viii

List of Figures

Figure 1. US and Chinese Defense Spending ………………………………..…… 5

Figure 2. First Island Chain Map ………………………………………………...... 20

Figure 3. US Airpower and Space ………………………………………………... 30

Figure 4. Space Attacks Change Crisis Decision Making ……………………… 31

Figure 5. US and Chinese Satellite Comparisons ………………………………. 52

Figure 6. Scherbius Enigma Patent Image ………………………………………. 86

Figure 7. Allied Shipping codes in WWII …………………………………………. 93

Figure 8. Allied Shipping Lost and German U-boats lost …………………….… 94

Figure 9. Battle of the Atlantic Case Study Comparison …..………………….. 108

Figure 10. Space Orbits and Altitudes …………….……………………..….….. 117

Figure 11. US Aircraft Inventory over the Decades ………………………….… 141

Figure 12. Air Force Personnel and Aircraft ……………………………….…… 142

Figure 13. Navy Personnel and Ships ……………………………………….….. 145

Figure 14. USAF Budget Allocation …...... 147

Figure 15. Space Dependence Cycle ………………………………………..…. 157

Figure 16. Effects of Space and Stealth on Aircraft …………………………… 158

Figure 17. The Vicious Acquisitions Cycle ……………………………………… 161

Figure 18. Case Study Comparison …………………………………………….. 165

Chapter 1: Introduction and Theory

The United States is faced with a world power structure experiencing dynamic change. China is rising and the relative power of the United States

(US) is in decline. Amid this context, the Chinese have continued to build their economic and military power. By some estimates, they have more than doubled their spending on military equipment, enacting double digit increases in their defense expenditures for over a decade.1 In the past, rising powers like the

Chinese that aggressively increase their defense spending have triggered balancing actions, both by neighboring states and the dominant power in the international system. Wilhelmine Germany, Japan prior to WWII, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) have all been chronicled as examples of rising states whose arms growth triggered balancing reactions. In each of these examples, the rising state sought increased military power by challenging the military strengths of the dominant powers, and each ultimately failed in their goals: Germany and Japan in world wars and the USSR in collapse. By

The views expressed in this dissertation are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. 1 Unattributed, “The dragon’s new teeth: China’s military rise,” The Economist, No. 403 (April 07, 2012), pp. 27-32. 1

challenging the strengths of the dominant state, these rising powers sent clear signals of their intentions, making themselves focal points to rally against, much like children on a playground using a head-on approach to confrontation, they practically ensured balancing responses.

This international security politics dynamic provides the backdrop for this study’s raison d’être. Will China’s rise follow the pattern of the examples above?

Will China seek to challenge US strength in the Pacific region, and will its increasing material capabilities eventually trigger a balancing response which guarantees China will either remain in the same relative power position, or lead to resolution of the issue through conflict or even war? This paper explores a unique facet of this question by making the argument that Chinese exploitation of US strategic vulnerability in space creates a real military power differential that has impact on the political relationship between the U.S. and China, shifting the advantage to the Chinese in a crisis situation. This approach is available to the Chinese and places them on a path to increased bargaining power while avoiding counterbalancing; one which evidence will show they are already following.

In making this argument, the following pages explain two related puzzles.

The first puzzle is why the Chinese chose to pursue anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, and if their pursuit of anti-satellite weaponry enables a Chinese power transition strategy? The second puzzle is integral to the first, how did the United

States manage to become over dependent on military space capabilities to the

extent they are strategically vulnerable to ASAT weapons? This second puzzle is the primary emphasis of the paper, being the necessary prerequisite to any

Chinese ASAT approach. The evidence for Chinese ASAT technology and reasoning will be addressed in chapter two, while US overdependence on space will be explained in chapters three and four.

Unlike China, the cases cited above are historical, and while consensus is that China is rising, we do not know where in their rise China sits, or for that matter, if China’s rise will continue. For this study, I do make the assumption that China’s rise will continue. Opinions on this assumption vary, and have been debated thoroughly and more productively in other literature. It is illuminating to note that almost a decade ago, Avery Goldstein made the same heroic assumption in his article Power transitions, institutions, and China’s rise in East

Asia: Theoretical expectations and evidence,2 and since that time, China’s rise has continued apace, including its most recent, and largest, annual defense spending increase over that time of 12.2%.3 Goldstein and other authors4 cite considerable obstacles to continued Chinese growth including domestic and international political hurdles, environmental problems, global economic

2 Avery Goldstein, “Power transitions, institutions, and China’s rise in East Asia: Theoretical expectations and evidence,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4-5 (Aug-Oct 2007), pp. 639-682. 3 Edward Wong, “China Announces 12.2% Increase in Its Military Budget for 2014” The New York Times, March 5, 2014, p. A3. 4 See John G. Ikenberry, "The rise of China and the future of the west: can the liberal system survive?" Foreign Affairs (2008), pp. 23-27, Thomas F. Christensen, "Advantages of an Assertive China-Responding to Beijing's Abrasive Diplomacy," Foreign Affairs, 90 (2011): pp. 54, and Denny Roy, "Hegemon on the horizon? China's threat to East Asian security," International Security (1994), pp.149-168.

concerns, globalization, and potential unidentified exogenous shocks. Given all these concerns, real and imagined, China has continued to rise. For this reason and because the thinking of most prudent US diplomats and decision makers is to prepare for the worst case, I use the assumption that China’s rise will continue.

Despite China’s economic rise and associated accelerated defense expenditures an intense response has not occurred to this point. While Chinese spending has continued to increase, more than doubling from $60B in 2002 to over $150B in 2012, US expenditures have increased only slightly even while fighting two wars. While the Obama administration has openly announced a

“pivot to the Pacific,” which can be logically interpreted as a balancing maneuver to China’s growth, the pivot has been largely rhetorical, with only a small increase in US-Australian exercises involving a small number of deployed US

Soldiers and Marines.

Figure 1. US and Chinese Defense Spending

This rhetorical response to China’s sustained military budget build up is contrary to what most realists would expect in the form of balancing behavior.

One could argue this lack of balancing could be due to reassurances from the

Chinese, the effects of economic interdependency and globalization working to mitigate balancing reactions, or a common sense response recognizing that

China, while growing rapidly, still has very little in the way of power projection capabilities with limited air and sea power to draw upon. It could also be argued the US does not have the will or economic resources to balance against Chinese power because of the extended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the deteriorated economic conditions in the US and Europe, and the extremely high debt condition in the US. Finally, it could also just be too early in the rise to identify a 5

balancing response.

This study argues the Chinese have been able to increase their power without triggering counterproductive balancing responses from the dominant power in the international system by focusing on US strategic vulnerability in space.

Gap in power transition literature – agency of rising power

This effort is an important addition to existing scholarship by expanding on the rising challenger’s role in understanding power transitions. Most of the power transition literature is focused on the dominant power’s actions in choosing to confront, contain, or appease rising challengers. There has been surprisingly little analysis on the challenger’s choices and strategies. In an unpublished dissertation, Michael Glosny explores the challenger’s agency arguing that the choice between grand strategies of assurance behavior or coercion behavior shapes the balancing response of the dominant power.5 He concludes that assuring behaviors from the challenger state help to mitigate balancing responses, while coercive challenger behaviors trigger balancing.

This study will build on this momentum, analyzing a Chinese strategy targeting

US military weakness instead of strength.

Some security analysts in the US and the West have characterized current Chinese defense policies as a strategy of anti-access and area denial

5 Michael Glosny, “The grand strategies of rising powers: reassurance, coercion and balancing responses,” (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012), http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72850. 6

(A2/AD), meaning their efforts are designed to prevent the entrance of hostile forces into their area of operations while at the same time creating capabilities that will prevent the operations of hostile forces that manage to gain access.6

One of the capabilities the Chinese have pursued, ASATs, has attracted less analysis than most of the other anti-shipping and ballistic missile programs. This analysis looks directly at the Chinese ASAT program as the key to increasing their bargaining power, how ASATs can be used across the spectrum of conflict to support Chinese policy goals, and why they are an important part of the

Chinese strategy.

Framing Chinese Grand Strategy and Interests

Because the power relationship between the US and China is the setting for discussion about US space vulnerability and Chinese ASATs, it is prudent to understand as best as possible China’s interests and strategy in order to show how the proposed Chinese ASAT approach aligns with their interests.

Any national strategy must serve the nation’s core interests. Wang Jisi makes a compelling argument that China’s core interests are sovereignty, security and development.7 Sovereignty for the same reasons all states value sovereignty, but also because of the high importance the Chinese Communist

Party (CCP) has placed on linking their legitimacy to sovereignty issues.

6 Rand Corporation, Roger Cliff, et al. “Entering the Dragon’s Lair: Chinese Antiaccess Strategies and their Implications for the United States,” (Santa Monica: Rand, 2007), p. all. 7 Wang Jisi, “China’s Search for a Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 2 (March/April 2011), pp. 68-79. 7

Security is a core interest due to the traditional concerns of any state, but also because of the negative history of domestic disruption associated with foreign intervention in China, especially in the last two centuries. Development is a core interest primarily based on China’s status as a developing nation, and continued development is also a central issue of legitimacy for the CCP. These core interests lend themselves to a specific set of conditions. To achieve development, the Chinese prefer continued peace; to achieve security, the

Chinese need military equipment and resources capable of defending their interests, and to ensure sovereignty they require at least enough power to ensure their existing territorial integrity.

Put simply, the Chinese have adopted a rising challenger strategy that sets favorable conditions and meets all their core interests by creating weapons to exploit the United States’ overdependence on space capabilities. This strategy achieves for the Chinese the security results they prefer while preserving their resources and obviating war with the US. If the arguments in this paper are correct, then in many ways a power transition in the Pacific may have already occurred, and the World is just waiting for a focal point moment to recognize and acknowledge the transition. This study makes the following four primary assertions about Chinese Grand Strategy;

1) that China, as a rising international power, has reason to anticipate conflict with the dominant power in the system, the United States,

2) that Chinese grand strategy includes the eventual absorption of Taiwan for

legitimate historical, cultural and security reasons, and that even if this assertion is incorrect, the prudent policy approach for both the US and China, is to prepare as if this were the case,

3) that the best possible outcome for the Chinese is to negotiate any power transition in their region without open conflict with the US and

4) that to effect a transition without conflict requires the real ability to threaten the United States as the dominant power in the region, in order to force the US to make more concessions than the Chinese.8

Supporting assertion #1: Why a rising China has reason to anticipate conflict with the dominant power in the system, the United States.

Is China a rising or revisionist power-and does that matter?

Most current literature is focused on China’s rise and how the world will perceive and cope with it, and less focused on what China will do or try if they transition to the dominant power in the international system. Alistair Johnson analyzed the national intentions of the Chinese government in his 2003

International Security article entitled “Is China a Status Quo Power?” Johnston concluded that while the definition of revisionist and status quo powers were subject to some interpretation, that by using the constituent measures of several of the leading theorists “it is hard to conclude that China is a clearly revisionist state operating outside, or barely inside, the boundaries of a so-called

8 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 206. 9

international community.”9 That was a decade ago, now it seems the actions of the Chinese government have become more aggressive especially in terms of defense policy, reducing doubt in the minds of many security analysts and pundits about the revisionist intentions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

One of the criteria Johnston used in 2003 to determine PRC government was not revisionist came from Dr. Randall Schweller’s brilliant 1994 article

“Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” where he writes “revisionist states value what they covet more than what they currently possess…they will employ military force to change the status quo and to extend their values.”10 Chinese actions in 2003 did not meet this criteria, however,

Chinese actions currently come much closer to meeting this criteria, with the recent introduction of a new People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) patrolled air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea and harassing and blockading actions from People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels in international waters and around disputed island territories.

While this dissertation doesn’t argue that China has become a global revisionist power, there has been a clear change in policy behavior, significant growth in the Chinese economy, and accelerating weapons procurement. These facts combined with continuing increased budgets for Chinese military capabilities, leads to the consensus conclusion the power gap that has existed

9 Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power,” International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Spring, 2003), pp. 5-56. 10 Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), p. 105. 10

for so long between the US and China is indeed narrowing.11 While only the

Chinese leadership can know whether their intentions are revisionist or if they only seek enhanced security within the status quo, US policy makers and military strategists must acknowledge at least the potential of, if not their current immersion in, a power transition with China. Prudence dictates policy makers and strategists on both sides must prepare for the reality of China potentially overtaking the US.

Conflict during Power Transitions

Realists have argued persuasively since ancient times that power transitions naturally lead to conflict, as when Thucydides asserted that the primary reason for the Peloponnesian War was Athens’ rising power and the fear and concern this caused in Sparta.12 The transition of a rising and a reigning or waning power creates “tension, distrust, and conflict”13 as the challenger seeks to capitalize on its increasing economic and military power, while the reigning power or hegemon seeks first to sustain their absolute power advantage, or at least a relative advantage, for as long as possible. Why would states seek to change the political system as a result of changed power within the system? The answer is that the best and most efficient way to capitalize on a position of power is to adjust the rules to your advantage.

11 Evan Braden Montgomery, "Contested Primacy in the Western Pacific: China's Rise and the Future of US Power Projection," International Security, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Spring 2014), pp. 115-149. 12 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner (London: Penguin Books, 1954), p. 49. 13 G. John Ikenberry, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West,” Foreign Affairs, No. 87, No. 1 (January/February 2008), pp. 23-30. 11

Gilpin posits that state security indifference curves will result in generally more powerful states opting for a larger bundle of welfare and security objectives. The rising power’s broadening of security objectives clashes with the dominant power’s desire to maintain a relative power advantage and conflict results. Gilpin writes, “The once-dominant state is decreasingly able to impose its will on others and/or to protect its interests. The rising state or states in the system increasingly demand changes in the system that will reflect their newly gained power and interests. Finally, the stalemate and issue of who will run the system are resolved through armed conflict.”14 John Mearsheimer’s offensive realism provides similar reasons to anticipate conflict, arguing that states will be opportunistic in expanding their power in order to provide for better national security in the face of an anarchic world fraught with security dilemmas.

Kenneth Waltz offers a structural reason in his book, Theory of International

Politics, that within the international system, “States are differently placed by their power”,15 and that via competition and the need to balance, any given state, for instance state A will move to make use of any existing power advantage resulting from differential growth, just as those other undifferentiated state units, states B through n, within the system will try to emulate that same differential growth while seeking to balance against the power advantage of state A.

14 Robert Gilpin, p. 33. 15 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Long Grove: Waveland Press, 2010), p. 97. 12

It indeed almost requires an assumption of irrationality to think that a state with a relative power advantage would not seek to exploit it in some way.

Complete overturn or control of the system may not be the desired outcome of a state enjoying a relative growth in power; however, to think that any state would not at some level seek to capitalize on this advantage is wrong-headed. Thus, in the case of the United States and China, the US must assume the Chinese will seek to capitalize on their increasing power, which begs the question of response options for the dominant power, which range from appeasement through the possibility of pre-emptive war.

Reactions to differential power growth

What are the dominant power response options during a power transition? According to Jack Snyder’s book, Myths of Empire, “A state has an incentive for preventive aggression whenever its relative power is expected to decline.”16 He goes on to explain the choices and incentives for dominant states that range from appeasement of to pre-emptive war with rising challengers. The incentive to pre-empt supports the assertion that the Chinese should anticipate conflict at some level. Even a strategy of containment is still considered conflict.

The incentive for the dominant power in relative decline to pre-empt is explained by Levy. “There is an apprehension that this decline will be accompanied by a weakening of one’s bargaining position and a corresponding decline in the political, economic, cultural, and other benefits that one receives from the status

16 Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 25. 13

quo; and further, that one might be faced with a future choice between a dangerous war and the sacrifice of vital national interests. The temptation is to fight a war under relatively favorable circumstances now in order to block or retard the further rise of an adversary and to avoid both the worsening of the status quo over time and the risk of war under less favorable circumstances later.”17

Organski and Kugler advanced the opposite argument, that the challenger state will launch war because of a “general dissatisfaction with its position in the system, and a desire to redraft the rules by which relations among nations work.”18 In their analysis, the more rapid rate of growth for the challenger, the more likely they are to initiate conflict. Regardless of which side originates the conflict, the dominant power or the rising challenger, the anticipation of conflict is reasonable and justified. Organski and Kugler conclude their analysis of power transitions with “The dominant nation and the challenger are very likely to wage war on one another whenever the challenger overtakes in power the dominant nation. It is this shift that destabilizes the system and begins the slide toward war.”19

Additionally, Gilpin puts forth the simple premise that fundamental changes in the power of states result in changes to the international system.

17 Jack S. Levy, Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War, World Politics, Vol. 40. No. 1. (Oct., 1987), pp. 82-107. 18 A.F.K Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 23. 19 A.F.K Organski and Jacek Kugler, p. 206. 14

The key concept concerning this dissertation in Gilpin’s work is the role that differential growth rates in power play in facilitating change in the political system. Gilpin’s theory relies exclusively on the connection between differential growth rates in power and subsequent redistribution of power in the international political system. Redistribution of power within the system creates disequilibrium, which must be resolved, sometimes via peaceful methods, but most often, through hegemonic war.20

Therefore, whether one considers the differential rate of growth as the key to triggering conflict, the fear experienced by a dominant power as they see a challenger state’s rising power status, or the reaction of a challenger state concerned about pre-emptive measures, containment, or even war, there is tremendous inertia toward conflict in cases like the one currently underway between the US and China. Each of these approaches to understanding conflict during power transitions rests on the reasons or sources of differential power growth. The next section looks at sources of differential power growth.

Sources of differential power growth

In Robert Gilpin’s book, War and Change in World Politics, the only source for change in Gilpin’s model is the relative rates at which different states grow power. He elaborates early writing “If the interests and relative powers of the principal states in an international system remained constant over time, or if power relations changed in such a way as to maintain the same relative

20 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 10-14. 15

distribution of power, the system would continue indefinitely in a state of equilibrium. However, both domestic and international developments undermine the stability of the status quo. For example, shifts in domestic coalitions may necessitate redefinition of “national interest.” However, the most destabilizing factor is the tendency in an international system for the powers of member states to change at different rates because of political, economic, and technological developments. In time, the differential growth in power of the various states in the system causes a fundamental redistribution of power in the system.”21

Economic growth is a primary source of power in the modern world.

Economic growth creates fungible assets that can be converted into political, military or economic power. There is no doubt that the United States has used its post WWII position as the largest economy in the world to create additional political, military and economic power. There is also no doubt that the Chinese have managed to engineer an extended period of economic growth, “the most significant cause of political change over the long term.”22 They have used this economic growth to advance their military capabilities, expand their foreign policy and cement their political position domestically. The analysis of China’s growing economic power and how it affects their policies includes an extremely broad scope, well beyond the focus of this study.

21 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 13. (emphasis added) 22 Robert Gilpin, p. 55. 16

The focus here is on the military aspect of power and its ability to create power differentials. Military power differentials can result from producing more war material than the enemy, or through the creation of novel weapons or tactics that result in military advantage. Of course, the best course would be to do both; however that is often unachievable under normal state resource constraints.

This section argues that China should expect conflict as a rising power, explains the underlying reasons for conflict during power transitions and why changing power relationships, whether real or perceived, increase the likelihood of conflict.

Chapter two will offer evidence the Chinese have created a military power differential by exploiting US space vulnerability.

Supporting Assertion #2. Why Chinese grand strategy includes Taiwan

This assertion is no stretch since the Chinese are on record to this fact.

The US, in maintaining their one-China foreign policy stance has conceded that re-unification is China’s eventual goal, the Americans believe the Chinese are serious. Thus, this assertion requires little more in terms of support, however, there are other substantive reasons why the Chinese want to reunify and control

Taiwan, which bear expanded discussion. As in the power growth discussion above, the economic benefits of Taiwan reunification will not be discussed here other than to say the economic aspects of reunification would definitely be seen as positive for the mainland Chinese government. There are certainly legitimate cultural reasons for reunification. The people of Taiwan are overwhelmingly

(96%) Han Chinese in decent, and the cross strait commuting of family members

continues to grow as relations between Taiwan and China have warmed.

Additionally, noted economist Martin Jacques, author of When China Rules the

World: The end of the western world and the birth of a new global order, argues that China is really a civilization state rather than a nation state, and that the foundation of the civilization state is the maintenance of Chinese unity.23 This means the absorption of Taiwan, like Hong Kong, is of prime importance at the identity level for the Chinese people, and thus for the Chinese government.

Additionally, according to Mearsheimer, “China is likely to try to dominate

Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere…It is unlikely that China will pursue military superiority so that it can go on a rampage and conquer other Asian countries, although that is always possible. Instead, it is more likely that China will want to dictate the boundaries of acceptable behavior to neighboring countries, much the way the United States makes it clear to other states in the Americas that it is the boss. Gaining regional hegemony, I might add, is probably the only way that China will get Taiwan back.”24 This represents the common sense application of realist thinking to

China’s place in the world. Just like generations of leaders in the United States sought to consolidate power and influence, it is natural to expect the Chinese to act in the same manner to increase their security. The core interests of security

23 Martin Jacques, “Understanding the rise of China,” TED (January 24, 2011), Lecture, available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhUmLtlZpw 24 John J. Mearsheimer, “China’s Unpeaceful Rise,” Current History-New York Then Philadelphia, Vol. 105, No. 690 (April 2006), pp. 160-162. (emphasis added) 18

and sovereignty argue strongly for absorbing Taiwan, which is also a necessary step to achieving regional hegemony.

The reason regional hegemony hinges upon Taiwan unification is a matter of geography. “As U.S. General Douglas MacArthur put it, Taiwan is an

“unsinkable aircraft carrier” midway up China’s seaboard. From there, say the naval strategists Holmes and Yoshihara, an outside power such as the United

States can “radiate” power along China’s coastal periphery. If Taiwan returned to the bosom of mainland China, the Chinese navy not only would suddenly be in an advantageous strategic position vis-à-vis the first island chain but also would be freed up to project power beyond it to an unprecedented degree.”25

25 Robert D. Kaplan, “The Geography of Chinese Power,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 3 (May/June 2010), pp. 22-41. 19

Figure 2. First Island Chain Map courtesy www.globalsecurity.org

The ability to power project is critical for Chinese security. By one estimate, the

South China Sea, which the Chinese have already asserted historical rights to, in contention with other nations in the region, can provide up to one third of

China’s hydro-carbon requirements. When combined with planned overland pipeline sources, the South China Sea represents the potential of near resource autarky for the Chinese.

Finally, the recent history of China, particularly “the so-called ‘century of humiliation’ (1842-1949) during which strong powers interfered in China’s internal affairs and substituted the unequal treaty system for the former tributary

arrangements,”26 reinforces the drive for China to extend its security. Thus, for compelling cultural, historic, and security reasons, the acquisition of Taiwan for the Chinese government and its people is virtually certain to be a central tenet of

Chinese grand strategy.

Supporting Assertion #3. Why China prefers to rise to regional hegemony without conflict.

Clearly, any state for common sense reasons would prefer to accomplish its security goals without conflict. This preserves resources, brings success to the current elites and government officials, builds power within the international system without exacerbating enemies the way conflict does and fits with the highest strategic traditions of China as espoused by Sun Tzu’s famous dictum,

“To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”27 This assertion also preserves the Chinese core interest of development. Any conflict in the region, but particularly one the Chinese are involved in, represents an impediment to continued Chinese development. Thus, the logical acceptance of this assertion begs the question of how can the Chinese affect a transition without conflict?

After all, the support and evidence for our first assertion argues that China should anticipate conflict, the exact opposite of a conflict free power transition.

Supporting Assertion #4. China needs the ability to threaten and thus force concessions from the US.

26 Rosemary Foot, “Chinese strategies in a US-hegemonic global order: accommodating and hedging,” International Affairs, Vol. 82, No.1 (January 2006), pp. 77-94. 27 Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 77. 21

Reasoning for this assertion can be found in E.H. Carr’s analysis on peaceful change in The Twenty Years’ Crisis. Carr argues that peaceful change in the international system can be understood best by using a labor relation’s model. Change comes peacefully only when labor or the “have nots” has the real ability to inflict pain, otherwise management or the “haves” have no real incentive to meet labor’s demands. At the same time, management has a decision to make, whether capitulation or oppression is the best course. In order for change to occur peacefully, management must decide to give more, or if you prefer, allow labor to take more, to preserve peace. Management could decide to oppress labor, running the risk of fatally hurting both parties, trading the certainty of peaceful concessions for the uncertainty of Pyrrhic victory. The have-have not relationship parallels our case of the US and China in the international system.

Carr sums up the importance of being able to threaten real force writing

“Power, used, threatened or silently held in reserve, is an essential factor in international change; and change will, generally speaking, be effected only in the interests of those by whom, or on those whose behalf, power can be invoked.

‘Yielding to threats of force’ is a normal part of the process of peaceful change.”28 For Carr, the decision to concede also carries a moral component, the “rightness” of the demands help influence whether the dominant state will concede. In this case, there are myriad shades and moral questions centered

28 Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939 (London: MacMillan & Co, 1939), p. 218. 22

on ‘is it morally right for Taiwan to be part of China or remain independent?’ Of course, a more realist view would consider the possibility the dominant state may feel coerced, or at least be influenced by, the power of the challenger state.

Most likely both moral and realist considerations will be significant factors in the

US decision when China decides to pursue absorption of Taiwan.

In summary, I have endeavored to prove the Chinese have good reason to anticipate conflict and that they have strong logical, cultural and security reasons to bring Taiwan back into the fold. I also argued the Chinese would prefer to not only reunite with Taiwan but also make the transition to regional hegemony peacefully. Finally, in order to accomplish this peaceful transition, they must first possess a real ability to forcefully threaten the US in order to force concessions to change the status quo. The strategies each party adopts to achieve their goals are an important component of every power transition. The

Chinese pursuit of ASAT capabilities within the framework of their larger grand strategy is outlined below.

How to avoid a balancing response while still gaining leverage – or how China learned to stop worrying and love the ASAT: an orthogonal approach to increased power

“Now an army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strengths and strikes weakness.”29 From Sun Tzu, the Art of War

The previous sections have argued for a Chinese strategy that preserves the peace, increases their power, and allows for the continued security and

29 Sun Tzu, The Art of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 101. 23

sovereignty of the CCP and China. In this section, I lay out the theory behind

Chinese pursuit of ASAT weapons and strategies and how they create power for the Chinese.

Latent Force and Bargaining Power

“To study the strategy of conflict is to take the view that most conflict situations are essentially bargaining situations.”30 Because the US and China are declared nuclear states, the logic of nuclear deterrence could lead us to hastily determine that US space dependence and Chinese ASATs are irrelevant, depending instead on the threat of nuclear destruction and mutual deterrence to prevent attempts to change the status quo on Taiwan. However, nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945 despite many wars and conflicts where nuclear powers were involved. In the afterword to the 2008 edition of Arms and

Influence, Thomas Schelling himself all but endorses the existence of a nuclear taboo.31 There must certainly be some bargaining room between global thermonuclear war and for example, a crisis over Taiwan in which the bargaining power resident in latent force can still be successfully applied. If we proceed on this premise, then the capacity to hurt the opponent’s military capabilities translates into bargaining power.

30 Thomas Crombie Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard Press, 1960), p. 5. 31 Thomas Crombie Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 287. 24

In Arms and Influence, Schelling explains how the latent capacity to punish, the power to hurt, translates into bargaining power,32 therefore the argument must be made that Chinese ASAT systems hold the power to hurt the

US in a meaningful way. How can weapons designed to defeat or destroy unmanned spacecraft orbiting the Earth possibly create a hurt substantial enough to translate into bargaining power as Schelling describes? While

Chinese ASAT weapons are not hurtful to the US population (the strict meaning as described by Schelling), they can be used to significantly hurt the US military’s combat capabilities. The resultant effect of ASAT weapons is a significant leveling of the military playing field between the United States and

China.

The potential of a level, or even near-level playing field, is one the US is rightfully concerned about. Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Christine Fox, in a recent speech, said “those of us entrusted with leadership positions at the

Department of Defense do not wish to see the U.S. lose its decisive advantage or end up in a situation of parity against any military power. If either of those possibilities came to pass, the United States would lose influence, regional rivalries and security dilemmas would increase, as would the possibility, however remote, of a conflict due to miscalculation.”33

32 This concept is introduced in the Preface, and is the central theme of the book. 33 Christine Fox, Keynote address at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) West Conference, San Diego, California, (February 11, 2014). 25

The ability to remove or significantly degrade the US advantage drives any subsequent conflict into a true force on force war and creates a situation where the outcome of a military conflict between the US and China becomes far less than certain for the United States. This “industrial age warfare”34 greatly increases the chances for significant US casualties and creates conditions juxtaposed to those the US normally enjoys, prefers, and has come to expect in conflict. In this case, the actions of force to destroy a satellite is the brute force mechanism that represents the latent force or threat to hurt the US military’s ability to make war, and by extension, their ability to win a war, with the

Chinese.35 Thus the concept of the power to hurt that Schelling describes is adapted to include the power to hurt US military capability, creating a real military power differential capable of significantly influencing US decisions to use force in any conflict scenario with China.

Thus the real usefulness of a Chinese ASAT threat is not in the actual destruction of US space capabilities, but in the threat of destruction, because as

Schelling writes, “Violence is most purposive and most successful when it is threatened and not used. Successful threats are those that don’t have to be

34 General William Shelton, Senate Armed Services Committee, Military Space Programs, Hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Washington D.C., March 12, 2014 (Response by General Shelton, AFSPC/CC to Senator King (ME)) 35 The use of ASAT weapons against space targets is a brute application of force, and appears counter to Schelling, who clearly distinguishes the difference between latent force and brute force. However, he does allow for the possibility of actions of brute force at one level to be perceived as threats of force or pure pain at another. Schelling writes “We have to keep in mind, though, that what is pure pain, or the threat of it, at one level of decision can be equivalent to brute force at another.” 26

carried out.”36 The Chinese ASAT threat potential creates testable requirements like probability of ASAT success, survivability, and numerical quantity, all of which are important factors in proving or disproving if a Chinese ASAT threat is credible.

ASATs Hold the Power to Hurt the US

“The PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) has identified the U.S. Military’s reliance on information systems as a significant vulnerability, that if successfully exploited, could paralyze or degrade U.S. forces to such an extent that victory could be achieved…Targets could include computer systems based in the United States or abroad, command and control nodes, and space-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and communications assets.”37

University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape’s book, Bombing to Win, is a study on the usefulness of what he terms coercion to achieve victory. Pape focuses on the use of American airpower to defeat the target state’s military ability to defend their territory, leading to effective coercion. In real terms, he is describing one state denying the ability of another state to achieve its military objectives, an integral part of the proposed Chinese ASAT strategy. Pape’s vernacular is confusing, he conflates latent power with brute force, and comingles denial and coercion, but his argument’s focus on the enemy’s military capability is instructive when searching for a way to increase power without triggering balancing. According to Pape, “Coercion is the use of threatened

36 Schelling, Arms and Influence, pp. 10. 37 Rand Corporation, Roger Cliff, et al., Entering the Dragon’s Lair: Chinese Antiaccess Strategies and their Implications for the United States, (Santa Monica: Rand 2007), pp. xvi. 27

force, including the limited use of actual force to back up the threat, to induce an adversary to behave differently than it otherwise would. Coercion is not destruction. Although partially destroying an adversary’s means of resistance may be necessary to increase the effect and credibility of coercive threats, coercion succeeds when the adversary gives in while it still has the power to resist.”38

Scholars of coercion have generally considered two broad mechanisms for coercion; one is by placing a nation’s populace at risk as embodied in the theories described above by Thomas Schelling, the second is by increasing risk to the enemy’s fielded military forces. Coercion targeting the populace is generally termed coercion via a punishment mechanism, whereas the coercion of military forces is termed denial. Pape rightfully points out that most studies of military coercion have failed to explore the “use of coercive power to deny the target state the military capacity to control the contested territory.”39

On the point of coercion by denial, Pape writes “Matching the coercer’s strategy to the target state’s specific vulnerabilities can be decisive: it will determine how severe the effects of the coercer’s attacks are and thus how strong the pressure on the target’s political calculations. Theories that do not account for differences in vulnerabilities cannot accurately predict coercive

38 Daniel L. Byman and Matthew C. Waxman, “Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate," International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring 2000), pp. 5-38. 39 Robert Anthony Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 7. 28

outcomes.”40 “The historical record offers strong support for Pape’s theses that neutralizing an adversary’s ability to achieve its desired ends through force is critical to coercion…Successful denial, however, requires defeating the enemy’s particular strategy, not simply stopping its conventional military operations.”41

Matching the denial strategy to the target state’s vulnerabilities is key to achieving success. By targeting an adversary vulnerability that has significant consequences for the ability to achieve military success, the coercing state seeks to lower the success expectations of the target state. The highly leveraged and critical US space based command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR) assets work perfectly as a denial strategy target. “Once a state is persuaded that objectives cannot be achieved, levels of costs that were bearable as long as there was a chance of success become intolerable. The target then concedes in order to avoid suffering further losses to no purpose.”42 In effect, denial seeks to convince the targeted state that military success is no longer probable. Achieving denial with the threat of force, instead of actually having to attack, combines a capability based denial strategy with successful deterrence.

It is the deep integration and multiplier effects of space-based C3ISR that make them such an attractive denial target. The graphic below illustrates the potential effects of Chinese ASAT success on just US Air Force airpower. The

40 Robert Pape, pp. 8. 41 Daniel Byman and Anthony Waxman, pp. 23. 42 Robert Pape, pp. 10. 29

graphic illustrates how leveraging space based C3ISR has enabled combat effectiveness to continue increasing with ever-smaller aircraft and personnel numbers. The drop in combat power represents the effects of removing or degrading space. This is not to argue that only space based C3ISR has increased combat capability, or that the only reason for force reduction is because of space. This study does argue in chapter four that the effects of space based C3ISR are pervasive and significant, and the denial of which will result in significant losses of combat power.

Figure 3. US Airpower and Space

The suggestion then is the Chinese have recognized US military dependence upon space enabled C3ISR and logistics capabilities, and therefore are pursuing ASAT weapons in their approach to preparing for war. They are adapting their force structure, strategy and operational approach to exploit US weakness and deny the US the use of space. Attacking US space assets creates US costs while simultaneously reducing combat power and the probability of combat success. The graphic below illustrates the unique situation that denying US space-based capabilities creates.

Figure 4. Space Attacks Change Crisis Decision Making

This combined effect of inflicted costs and decreased probability of success could be argued for other low density, high impact systems. For example, one could argue that the destruction of an aircraft carrier would be costly while also significantly decreasing the probability of victory, and there are currently only ten active US aircraft carriers. This point is well taken, but there are several important qualitative differences that make space assets unique.

For one, the destruction of an aircraft carrier crosses the threshold of human casualties, a significant difference from the destruction of a machine in space, and there are nine other aircraft carriers that can perform the same mission in a relatively short time frame. This is a very different situation from the numbers and time to orbit of spacecraft in most C3ISR systems. More importantly, there is the pervasiveness of space to consider. While the destruction of the aircraft carrier is costly, it will only marginally impact the effectiveness of the other ships and planes around it. The planes will recover at other airfields or carriers, to refuel and fight again. The other ships in the group may suffer from increased air attack, but their inherent offensive and defensive systems, and their ability to maneuver are unaffected. Conversely with denied space capabilities, their loss negatively impacts the combat capabilities of all the systems that are dependent upon the force enhancement that space provides. Limited communications, loss of battle space awareness and real-time intelligence, less accurate weapons, the delay or halting of data fusion all result from impacts to space, with concurrent 32

decreases in combat power across land, air, sea, space and cyber domains.

These are but a few of the reasons that attacking space capabilities, and the effect on the probability of military victory, is different from traditional conventional warfare.

Challenger Strategy

Thus far I have argued for a Chinese Grand Strategy centered on sovereignty, security and development, and stated the conditions that are most conducive to these core interests. We know the Chinese are pursuing A2/AD military capabilities, and I have proposed that nested within this strategy, the

Chinese are pursuing ASATs to increase their military power without providing a focal point for a US balancing reaction to achieve both the conditions and outcomes the Chinese desire. Attempting to exploit your enemy’s vulnerabilities isn’t new in warfare or strategy. However, the traditional rising challenger strategies have been directed at matching or exceeding the dominant power in military strength. It’s been argued that challenger strategy can affect balancing response, however, both reassuring and coercing behaviors have generally resulted in either war, or without change in relative power position. This is because reassuring challenger strategies fail to increase power enough to affect a real power transition, and coercer strategies trigger the dominant power to balance in response to the rising state.

Thus, grouping challenger strategies into reassurance or coercive categories does little to help understand the military power relationship between

the actors. For this study the challenger strategy is characterized as orthogonal based on the challenger targeting a dominant power weakness in the search for increased power. In order to show an increased relative military power position I will offer empirical proof in chapter two the Chinese have developed an ASAT capability, then in chapters three and four I provide evidence the US is strategically vulnerable in space. I use a WWII case study to identify the factors of exploitable operational vulnerabilities that result from technology overdependence. Then I use those factors to test for US overdependence on space. While it is impossible to prove intentions, this study shows without question the US is strategically vulnerable in space due to overdependence, and that should the Chinese have intentions to increase their bargaining power via an orthogonal approach, they have the means, capabilities and opportunity to do so now.

Challenges to inference

In the parlance of traditional political science then, for my analysis I am taking a neoclassical realist approach to understanding the impacts of Chinese

ASAT development on US war fighting capability and US-China relations. The dependent variable in this study is the change in relative military power between the US and China in the Pacific. I focus on the intervening variables of Chinese

ASAT development and its relationship to US dependence on space capability.

There are obviously two major challenges to this approach; first, while evidence is provided that shows the potential for a change in military power,

there is no empirical way to measure the change. One can observe the foreign policy behavior of the Chinese and the US for possible indicators however. It is clear to many contemporary writers that China is indeed rising, and is seeking expanded influence in many foreign policy areas. It is difficult to identify exactly which independent or intervening variable is causing the expansive foreign policy behavior because of what Gideon Rose characterized as the “inaccurate and misleading notion of a smooth transmission belt” which conducts power to policy, when in practice the “translation of capabilities into national behavior is often rough and capricious over the short and medium term.”43

The second significant challenge is that while most political science is conducted on case studies from the past, the subject of this study, US strategic vulnerability in space and China’s ASAT program are still emerging. Therefore it is being conducted without the benefit of knowing the actual outcomes or being able to collect data relevant to those outcomes. The timely nature of this issue however makes the research particularly useful in the realm of policy making.

Plan of the Paper

Regardless of the challenges, studying and determining through analysis if the US has a true strategic vulnerability in space is important, and equally important is understanding if the Chinese are in a position to exploit any vulnerability that may exist. The rest of the study is organized into four additional chapters. Chapter two contains the empirical analysis of China’s approach to

43 Gideon Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy,” World Politics, Vol 51, No.1, p. 144-172. 35

ASAT warfare and how it complements an A2/AD strategy, and counters arguments about other reasons why the Chinese would pursue ASATs. The chapter shows that the Chinese have the capability to affect US space assets in a profound way if the US in indeed overly dependent upon space capability.

Chapter three and four use a comparative case study approach to identify how the US military became over dependent and therefore strategically vulnerable in space. Chapter five offers conclusions and implications for US policy and for international relations in the Pacific, as well as avenues of potential future research.

Chapter 2 – China is exploiting US space dependence

Senator King: General Shelton, I want to engage in a hypothetical. This hearing is about the importance of military aspects of space. Tell us what would happen if all of our space assets were wiped out in a 5-minute period. What would that mean to our ground and naval forces if we were in a conflict situation?

Angus King, Senator from Maine

General Shelton: I would tell you, Senator, that we are so dependent on space these days. We plug into it like a utility. It is always there. Nobody worries about it. You do not even know sometimes that you are touching space. So it would be almost a reversion back to industrial-based warfare, industrial age warfare. We would not be able to communicate as well. We could not navigate as well. We would not operate with the precision. We would not have the coordination. It would be awhile recovering our coordinated, integrated aspects of warfare. We operate as an integrated joint team now. Much of that is provided by space capability. So recovering that without space would be very, very difficult if not impossible.

General William Shelton, Commander, Air Force Space Command44

Introduction

In May of 2007, the Chinese government successfully conducted an anti- satellite (ASAT) test with a hit-to-kill kinetic interceptor. “The Chinese Feng Yun

1C (FY-1C) polar orbit weather satellite launched in 1999 was attacked by an

[anti-satellite] ASAT system launched from or near the Xichang Space Center.”45

Perhaps no other event could have signaled the seriousness and achievement

44 Senate Armed Services Committee, Military Space Programs, Hearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Washington D.C., March 12, 2014 (Response by General Shelton, AFSPC/CC to Senator King (ME)). 45 Aviation Week, January 17, 2007, available at: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/C HI01177.xml 37 of the Chinese better than this surprise engagement and resultant destruction of one of their own defunct satellites. The closure rate over 20,000 kilometers per hour, combined with the precise hit to kill nature of the ASAT demonstrated not only propulsion, guidance and tracking capacity at the cutting edge of technology, but also the political will to accept the fallout from creating thousands of dangerous pieces of space debris in order to signal the advancement and credibility of their space program. From a technological standpoint, the FY-1C intercept “demonstrates that China has surpassed the erstwhile Soviet Union, which in its heyday could do little beyond attempting to kill its targets by spraying them with shrapnel from a conventional fragmenting warhead.”46

Less than a year later, the United States successfully destroyed a non- functioning reconnaissance satellite, USA-193, with a hastily modified Standard

Missile 3 fired from an Aegis class cruiser in the Pacific ocean, to prevent the re- entry of a large tank of highly toxic frozen hydrazine fuel from reaching Earth and potentially causing harm.47 As recently as May of 2013, the Chinese again conducted a launch test that has been described as a test of an ASAT rocket capable of achieving geosynchronous orbital altitudes. The launch achieved an

46 Ashley J. Tellis, 2007. China's Military Space Strategy, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 49:3, pg 42. 47 James Oberg, “U.S. Satellite Shootdown: The Inside Story,” IEEE Spectrum Online, August 1, 2008, available at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/satellites/us-satellite- shootdown-the-inside-story 38 altitude of over 6000 miles, the highest sub orbital launch since 1976.48 The US government issued a single statement via email saying, “The launch appeared to be on a ballistic trajectory nearly to geosynchronous Earth orbit,”49 and that none of the objects tracked throughout the launch remained in space. The rocket and pieces re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and impacted somewhere in the

Indian Ocean.

The timing and use of these ASATs by China and the United States raise interesting questions. Why did the Chinese pursue and demonstrate the ability to destroy a spacecraft on orbit, risking backlash from the international community over the resultant debris in the first place? Was the subsequent shoot down of a spacecraft by the United States, its first in over 20 years, a signal to the Chinese and the rest of the world, or truly a necessity to ensure the safe destruction of a potentially dangerous falling satellite? Was China’s most recent launch really a test of the first-ever direct ascent ASAT capable of reaching geosynchronous orbit?

This chapter argues the Chinese are pursuing anti-satellite capabilities as a strategy that targets US space vulnerability. The chapter covers potential reasons for pursuing ASAT space technology and the specific logic behind

Chinese kinetic ASATs and how their capability fits into a larger A2/AD strategy.

It explores the mechanisms behind military power and how linear and orthogonal

48 Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters, available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/15/us-china-launch-idUSBRE94E07D20130515 49 Staff quoting Lt. Col. Monica Matoush, “China Launches Suborbital Rocket,” Space News, May 20, 2013, available at: http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch- report/35410china-launches-suborbital-rocket 39 approaches can be used to change military power differentials, and how the

Chinese are using an orthogonal approach to increase their military strength and bargaining power. The chapter also describes the importance of C3ISR to modern warfighting, and concludes by assessing the practical measures of

Chinese ASAT effectiveness; all supporting the argument the Chinese are seeking purposefully to exploit US space vulnerabilities.

What is China Thinking? Models for pursuing ASAT weapons

“China is rapidly improving its space and counterspace capabilities to advance its own interests, and presumably to challenge the U.S.’ or other actor’s use of space-based systems. China is expanding its satellite navigation, reconnaissance and communications capabilities through routine space launches. At the same time, we are concerned over extensive writings about – and apparent continued testing of – anti-satellite systems, including a purpose- built missile system, lasers and jammers.”50

Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, Commander, U.S. Pacific Command

Let us start by examining why the Chinese would choose to pursue this extremely expensive technology. There are certainly other avenues of research and investment that were available to the Chinese government. According to

Clay Moltz, author of Asia’s Space Race, the Chinese government plays a more pervasive role in the direction and purposes of the Chinese space program than the governments of other space faring nations.51 ASAT systems, particularly kinetic hit to kill systems, have little to no other use than to target and destroy satellites on orbit. It is clear from Admiral Locklear’s quote above, the Chinese

50 House Armed Services Committee, Statement of Admiral Samuel J. Locklear, U.S. Navy, Commander, U.S. Pacific Command, Hearing before the Committee on U.S. Pacific Posture, Washington, DC, March 5, 2013. 51 James Clay Moltz, Asia's Space Race (Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 70. 40 are pursuing these counterspace weapons, and exploring the reasoning as to why can help determine Chinese intentions, or at least the menu of possible

Chinese actions. The most dangerous scenario for the United States is that

China plans to use ASAT weapons to affect the military power balance in the

Pacific theater.

If we are to believe Moltz, then the Chinese government had a specific purpose behind pursuing a space technology that is simultaneously very expensive and very specific in its application. Some authors have offered explanations including prestige and security motivations, or that the Chinese are just following natural technological development of their space program. In a paper inspired by Scott Sagan’s article on understanding why states would pursue nuclear weapons, this author wrote about the potential reasons states might pursue space capabilities. Although ASAT weapons are a very specific subset of space capability, with a very limited mission, it is useful to use these models of space capability pursuit to understand why the Chinese are interested in ASATs. The paper proposed five models of pursuit for space capabilities.

The “security model” leverages capabilities to increase military power and therefore increase security, usually by providing force enhancement to other military arms via space-based command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR). In the “ballistic missile technology ruse model” states pursue space launch capabilities as cover for their ballistic missile program, because the ability to orbit a spacecraft offers the same capability needed to launch intermediate range and potentially intercontinental 41 ballistic missiles.52 In the “economic model” states pursue space capabilities in order to increase economic benefits or to private firms within the states. Each space capability offers different market possibilities, for instance launch facilities, commercial space activities, and the diffusion of space technologies within a state can all have potential, though not guaranteed, economic benefits. The

“domestic model” describes domestic groups or politicians using space capability agendas to garner power or support. Finally, states can pursue space as a route to increased prestige in the “prestige model.” This model is offered in place of Sagan’s norms model due to the lower impact of achieving successful space capability when compared to acquiring a nuclear weapon. However, while space capabilities do not represent the same type of “normative symbol of a state’s modernity and identity”53 they can represent a significant upward movement in terms of relative prestige.

Based on these models of space capability pursuit, there are several that can be discounted out of hand for the Chinese and specifically Chinese ASAT capabilities. The ballistic missile ruse model obviously doesn’t apply since the

Chinese have already demonstrated they are leaders in the world in ballistic missiles. According to a 2013 National Air and Space Intelligence Center report,

“China has the most active and diverse ballistic missile development program in

52 Daniel Deudney, “Unlocking Space,” Foreign Policy, No. 53 (Winter, 1983-1984), pp. 91-113, World Watch Paper #50, “Space: The High Frontier in Perspective,” August 1982, and “Forging Missiles into Spaceships,” World Policy Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring, 1985), pp. 271-303. 53 Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No.3, (Winter, 1996-1997), pp. 54-86. 42 the world.”54 They have already successfully demonstrated intercontinental ballistic missiles, have acknowledged nuclear weapons capability with those missiles, and have extensive medium and short-range ballistic missile capabilities. Thus the ballistic missile ruse model cannot explain pursuing ASAT weapons, especially hit-to-kill systems like the one Admiral Locklear described as “purpose-built.”

The economic model is also an unlikely candidate for why the Chinese are pursuing ASATs for the simple reason that ASAT technology doesn’t serve any significant economic market. Generally, space capabilities that can best be explained by economic reasons include missions like navigation, weather satellites, launch facilities, and communications. The anti-satellite mission does not readily or easily translate to economic benefit for any country, including

China. In fact, there is clear evidence the kinetic ASAT program of the U.S. did not yield any direct economic benefits while costing nearly $30 billion dollars.55

The argument can be made that technology spin off from research or industrial base creation flows from this technological approach, however this argument is erroneous. These technologies and companies that produce them do not need the excuse of kinetic ASAT research to exist, nor does the argument fit the dual-

54 National Air and Space Intelligence Center, “Ballistic & Cruise Missile Threat,” (Wright-Patterson AFB, OH. National Air and Space Intelligence Center Public Affairs, 2013). 55 National Institute for Public Policy, James A., Abrahamson and Henry F. Cooper, “What did We Get for our $30-Billion investment in SDI/BMD?” (Fairfax, VA. National Institute for Public Policy, 1993). 43 use (commercial and military applications) pattern of research and development that China has pursued with their other fledgling space capabilities.

The domestic model offers plausibility, especially since there has been some literature written on the apparent disconnect between the People’s

Liberation Army’s 2007 kinetic ASAT test and the subsequent hesitant response from their government. This apparent lack of coordination could be evidence of factional fighting within the Chinese government, or it could actually be an example of “fragmented authoritarianism, describing conditions in which groups of leaders-often institutionally based and organized-have overlapping power over a particular policy realm.”56 However, the subsequent launch of two more

ASAT tests with full government support and coordination argue against the domestic theory. Thus, the two most plausible remaining reasons are for national prestige or increased power and influence.

Considering the Prestige Model – Chinese Manned Space Program and ASATs

The prestige model mirrors closely the logic set forth in Sagan’s article, where space capability, and in particular manned space flight activities serve an important symbolic function, “both shaping and reflecting a state’s identity.”57 In the prestige model, leaders decide to pursue space capabilities in response to norms based on great power activity and shared beliefs about what “legitimate

56 James Clay Moltz, Asia's space race. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 72. 57 Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No.3, (Winter, 1996-1997), pp. 54-86. 44 and modern behavior”58 makes a legitimate great power. Sagan offers an excellent example of national airlines as evidence of states that create symbolic capabilities in order to enhance prestige, rather than to fill security or domestically driven functional requirements. These airlines often offer little in new capability, while operating at a net subsidy cost to their governments. He also cites the creation of governmental scientific boards when there is little or no indigenous national scientific capability. We can therefore conclude that states spending heavily on space capabilities that yield low tangible returns are evidence of the prestige model at work, especially programs only a select group of Great Powers possess. Both manned space flight and ASAT programs fit these prestige model requirements; however ASATs wiyh a specific military mission are a less compelling fit for the prestige model.

The pursuit of manned space flight, and the technological prowess required for ASAT weapons, both offer potential for Chinese prestige. After all, the only other countries in history to develop indigenous manned space flight and demonstrate a kinetic anti-satellite system are the U.S. and Russia.

Success in the very important national endeavor of manned space flight

58 Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No.3, (Winter, 1996-1997), pp. 54-86. and Martha Finnemore, “International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and Science Policy,” International Organization , Vol. 47, No. 4, (Autumn, 1993), pp. 565-597. 45 represents a facet of “face”, which can then be leveraged domestically and regionally as an extension of security and influence.59

Consider the Chinese manned space program. In 2003, China became only the third nation in the world to independently orbit a human around Earth.

They have since continued to pursue additional manned space flights, recently announcing a human mission to rendezvous with an orbiting experimental module. The Chinese have long been targeting manned space flight.

“Observers only recently learned that China first began to plan for manned spaceflight back in 1966. On March 15, 1971, China became the third country in the world to select a squad of astronauts…In 2002, the Chinese gave a figure for the cost of the manned space program from inception to the completion of the first docking mission as ¥19bn, or about $2.5bn.”60

Clearly, the desire and investment to achieve manned space flight has been part of Chinese designs since the superpowers started the space race.

“Some observers see China’s race to space as a battle with its own demons.

Prestige, in this scenario, becomes the Chinese brass ring. Conquering space represents an opportunity in what China refers to as mankind’s “fourth frontier” to recapture its lost legacy of technological mastery and innovation.”61

59 Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No.3, (Winter, 1996-1997), pp. 54-86. 60 Monterey Institute of International Studies, Brian Harvey, “China’s Space Program: Emerging Competitor or Potential Partner?” (Monterrey: Center for Nonproliferation Occasional Paper 12, 2003) pp. 48-55. 61 Joan Johnson-Freese, “China’s Manned Space Program: Sun Tzu or Apollo Redux?,” Naval War College Review, Vol. LVI, No. 3, (Summer, 2003), pp. 51-71. 46

Being only the third nation ever to intercept a satellite in orbit doesn’t quite carry the same gravitas on the world stage as orbiting a human. In fact, the actual demonstration of the intercept caused a significant international backlash over the irresponsible creation of space debris, which could have actually negatively affected Chinese prestige. There has also been significantly less public ownership of the ASAT activities, including a days-long delay between the actual 2007 event and the announcement from the CCP. Finally, there is the very tangible military mission accomplished by an ASAT which is different from manned space activities.

In summary, the prestige model best explains the Chinese manned space flight program; even though some like Dr. Joan Johnson-Freese quoted above believe the emphasis on manned space flight may be an effort to mask the creation of spin-off technologies, providing a venue for proofing out advanced military space capabilities akin to the ruse model. The evidence for the pursuit of

ASATs being driven by prestige is less convincing. ASATs have a unique military mission, and there is a limited global audience for successful ASAT technologies. The CCP has been reluctant to advertise or claim responsibility for

ASAT operations and tests. These facts combine to make a more convincing argument that China’s ASAT program is in direct response to Chinese security interests as discussed in chapter one and supported further below.

This is not a Cold War Redux

Many view Chinese development of ASAT weapons in the Cold War context of the US and Soviets. This section highlights the reasons why the Cold 47

War analogy doesn’t hold when examining the development of Chinese ASAT weaponry, an important step in understanding Chinese motivations. During the early Cold War years, both countries developed ASAT weapons in a classic mutual deterrence dynamic, then both discontinued ASAT weaponry because

ASATs destabilized mutual deterrence and added space debris hazards and cost. Anti-satellite capability during the Cold War was destabilizing because both sides had a need to verify the quantity and status of the other’s nuclear weapons. Verification by national technical means (NTM) was written into the

SALT I treaty. ASATs could be used to blind or destroy NTM, leading to uncertainty in treaty verifications or removing the attack warning so critical to stability in the mutually assured destruction (MAD) framework. Therefore, both sides eventually recognized the destabilizing nature of ASAT weapons and discontinued their programs.

Initial Cold War development of ASAT capability was a direct response to the unknown threat of man-made satellites. The ability to orbit objects was clearly viewed as threatening at the time, with both the US and USSR fearing the placement of nuclear weapons on orbit, providing the potential for no warning time in the event of an attack. This prospect was destabilizing, leading both sides to pursue defensive measures including ideas about anti-satellites and other warning mechanisms like radars and space based launch detection.

The Soviets, in response to the establishment of north and northeast- facing ground based US radar-warning sensors, developed the Fractional Orbital

Bombardment System (FOBS). FOBS was designed as a countermeasure to 48 radar warning, able to carry objects into space via a southern polar orbit that would avoid the American radar warning network.62 In response, the US accelerated their direct ascent nuclear ASATs, called the Mudflap program.63

American pursuit of ASATs triggered a Soviet response. They favored co-orbital

ASAT systems which were less responsive, but of longer duration.

These moves follow the mutual deterrence dynamic of the US and

Soviets during the Cold War. Both superpowers needed to use reconnaissance satellites to identify and therefore target the other’s nuclear weapons positioned deep within their own territory. Parity with this capability was critical for continued stability. If one country could launch without the other knowing, or have hidden assets for coercive response that could not be targeted, then the incentive for first strike would move higher. For the same reasons, both sides eventually fielded space-based early warning systems and radar fences to detect intercontinental ballistic missile launches. The Chinese neither have nor are pursuing these types of space-based capabilities. They are expensive and technologically advanced, creating opportunity costs to pursue; it is highly unlikely the US would launch missiles at China, as they would overfly Russia, risking an accidental Russian response. Finally, the Chinese know they could never match the US in nuclear throw weight, and have opted for a deterrence

62 Joan Johnson-Freese and Roger Handberg, Space: The Dormant Frontier (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 1997), pp. 77. 63 Secure World Foundation, Brian Weeden, Through a Glass, Darkly, (Broomfield: Secure World Foundation, 2014), pp. 23. 49 strategy rooted in survivable counter strike instead of mutually assured destruction.

Second the mutual deterrence dynamic doesn’t hold because the

Chinese are late-late adopters of space technology. They have been able to leap frog the natural progression of space technology, alleviating justification for pursuing kinetic energy ASAT weapons as in the case of the US and USSR.

Either through technology diffusion, espionage or a combination, the Chinese have been able to achieve ASAT capabilities while not developing them as deterrents for protection against enemy ASATs. Their low dependence upon space argues heavily against their need for ASAT weapons, unlike the Cold War superpowers. The US and USSR being equally dependent upon space justified matching each other’s capabilities in order to deter their rival. Clearly, without the antecedent dependence upon space, the Chinese ASAT development must be explained by a different argument than mutual deterrence.

The third difference between the Cold war superpowers and the US

China relationship is geographical focus. The US and Soviets shared a global focus with client states in every hemisphere adding to their need for global space based surveillance, situational awareness and communications. Global awareness concerns fed the need for space assets, leading to mutual deterrence needs. While the Chinese have globally expanded economically, they continue to be regionally focused militarily. This regional focus has allowed them to tailor their military forces, and is a primary driver behind their low dependence upon space. While they are moving toward global military 50 capabilities, there are significant differences between their growth and direction and that of the superpowers during the Cold War.

Finally, the Chinese and Cold War cases differ significantly in that the

Chinese have learned they do not want to try to compete the “US way” having learned from the Soviet experience that arms racing with the US can lead to disaster. Thus, they have chosen an orthogonal path to enhanced military power which is more in keeping with their traditional thoughts on warfare. While the Cold War can rightfully best be thought of in Clausewitzian terms, the

Chinese approach to exploiting enemy vulnerability to win without conflict is very

Sun-Tzu.

Why traditional deterrence won’t work for the US against China in space

“When I think about this, it is really complicated, because the U.S. is at an asymmetric disadvantage. We do depend on space more than other countries. We have the most targets. Think about it as an attacker: it is beautiful, there are dozens of them up there that I can shoot at and I can shoot at them in ways that they will never figure out. We are at an asymmetric disadvantage.”64 Mr. James Lewis, Senior Fellow at CSIS

Some security scholars have suggested that the ASAT demonstration by

China constitutes a warning to the US, and the USA 193 shoot down by the US as a bold deterrent answer to the Chinese. Characterizing these events this way echoes the incorrect analogy of the US and Soviet mutual deterrence strategies of the 1960s to the 1980s. The previous section detailed the differences between the Cold War case and the US-China case. It’s worthwhile to add why

64 Lewis, James, panel comment from A Day Without Space: National Security Ramifications. Jim Lewis is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Director of the Center’s Technology and Public Policy Program, where he works extensively on these topics with a particular focus on space security 51 traditional models of deterrence are not generally applicable to the US and

China case. Simply put, the asymmetry of dependence upon space makes the use of tit-for-tat ASAT attacks a loser for the United States. The Chinese have a fifth of the number of satellites, and their dependence upon those satellites for military operations is also much lower than the United States. Therefore, to trade anti-satellite attacks in a conflict will invariably hurt the US more than the

Chinese.

Figure 5. US and Chinese Satellite Comparisons

Certainly, the Chinese have developed and deployed some space force enhancement capabilities and are continuing to pursue space, but they are not dependent upon space at this time, while the US is still extremely dependent on space. As long as the US maintains the decided edge in space, its continued use is a distinct, and nearly insurmountable advantage. The advanced C3ISR capabilities of the Americans provide the US with the ability to generate overwhelming combat power. In contrast, China’s asymmetric space 52 independence becomes an advantage if and only if space capabilities are taken away from both parties.

This asymmetry in dependence upon satellites makes it unlikely that the

USA 193 intercept was intended as a deterrence signal. The US’ ability to quickly modify a SM-3 missile did demonstrate the continued prestige and capability of the United States, and based on the successful intercept, we must assume the US could easily reproduce the capability whenever desired.

However, the use of the SM-3 creates a political limitation on any efforts the US may have desired to make regarding anti-satellites. The US has continued to maintain the SM-3 is not an ASAT weapon, however the use in fact makes that assertion ring hollow,65 and any efforts to constrain the Chinese from conducting

ASAT operations could be seen as hypocritical.

China’s ASAT Approach to Increased Bargaining Power

The previous sections have argued that the Chinese motivation for

ASATs is to increase security and bargaining power. They have argued that the classic dynamic of mutual deterrence is not the logic being used by the US or

China in their ASAT programs. What then is the mechanism the Chinese are using to increase their security and bargaining power in a crisis by fielding

ASATs? The following details the historical approaches to countering power using novel approaches.

Historical Approaches to Countering Power Using Novel Weapons and Tactics

65 Duncan Lennox, “Protection of satellites is the new race in space,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 28 October 2009. 53

Changing Military Power and Linear Logic

Gilpin writes briefly about military capability affecting changes in power,

“From earliest times, innovation and adoption of novel weapons and tactics have launched groups and states on the path of conquest.”66 This pathway follows the traditional measure-countermeasure logic, or what Luttwak would call linear logic,67 where one side secures a novel advantage in business or warfare via a new technology, a new market, or a new approach to business or war. Most of the examples cited by Gilpin are illustrations of this dynamic. The thoroughbred horse example for the Mongols,68 providing speed and mobility advantages continued until the advent of a weapon with sufficient range - artillery, that could negate the Mongol’s speed and mobility, measure and counter measure. The

Mongols strength was made vulnerable to a new development or advancement achieved as a common sense response to the Mongol’s strength. In Gilpin’s parlance, those with artillery experienced a differential growth of power as a result of developing a counter measure.

This traditional dynamic continues today in anti-aircraft warfare, where the surface to air missiles (SAM) become more lethal at longer ranges, while the aircraft adapt by becoming harder to detect and adopt longer range weapons to avoid the SAM threat envelopes. There are multiple other examples including

66 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 60. 67 Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1987), p. 5. 68 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 58. 54 surface versus subsurface vessels, mine and countermine technology, and offensive and defensive cyber-attack, where the pace is historically fast. At any given time, either side may have the advantage, however, any differential growth in power is attributable to the evolution of the military system(s) employed, and is usually fleeting, as the advantage exists only as long as the fielding of the next countermeasure. This process is characterized by the challenge to enemy military strengths, and always triggers a corresponding counter measure.

We are comfortable with this linear logic. It makes sense to understand these strengths and counters in direct relation to enemy capabilities. However, there is danger in using this traditional lens for every problem. The measure/countermeasure dynamic fosters force on force calculation thinking in terms of capability, for every measure, the countermeasure can be counted and assessed as adequate. This type of thinking locks states into threat oriented procurement, operations and planning. It naturally leads to addressing the latest countermeasure. The measure/countermeasure logic fits best the Clausewitz’ dictum that “the best strategy is be very strong; first in general, and then at the decisive point.” 69 As an example, the massive post WWII military power of the

United States was a direct counter to the massive military powers of the Soviet

Union, and vice versa, both in material and in explanation. However, as has been seen in the past decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the measure countermeasure logic only provides advantage in response to a specific adversary. Had the United States set out to build a force to combat global

69 Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 204. 55 terrorism, they would not have resulted in the Cold War force the US began with in 2001.

Non-linear Logic and Paradoxical strategy

The argument of this dissertation is that Chinese ASATs do not follow the traditional linear logic dynamic described above, rather it argues for the creation of military power differential through the exploitation of US space vulnerability.

Exploitation of an existing operational vulnerability can create a differential in power that leads to disequilibrium. In essence, while states are monitoring force on force factors, and developing novel technical countermeasures to attack adversary strengths, there may be approaches that trigger disequilibrium even as the dominant state maintains what appears to be a distinct advantage.

Luttwak’s ideas on the paradoxical nature of strategy provide the juxtaposition of the linear measure/countermeasure logic. Luttwak posits that military strategy is fundamentally paradoxical, that because the harder road is less likely to be used by an advancing army, it is therefore the logical choice to be used.70 He argues further that the paradoxical nature of strategy permeates from the technical to the grand strategic level whenever relations are conflictual.

He cites many examples of this at the tactical level. In the late 19th century, the technological development of self-propelled torpedoes threatened to create a low cost method of creating naval power, rendering larger battleships and cruisers, the dominant weapons at the time, highly vulnerable. The linear logic

70 Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, (Cambridge: Belknap Press 1987), p. 7. 56 that drove development of larger and more heavily armored ships made them vulnerable to the pursuit of cheap and novel torpedo boats. The French quickly built large numbers of torpedo boats, as did the Germans and British, however, the reaction was to quickly develop countermeasures, making fast torpedo boats practically irrelevant in the First World War.71

The repeating paradox is that the linear pursuit of a novel technological countermeasure triggers the eventual negation of the advance. The paradoxical nature of strategy leads Luttwak to surmise that in the long run, the pursuit of novel technologies designed to defeat broad adversary strengths will always lose in the end, allowing varying windows of success, until appropriate countermeasures are adopted. He writes, “Thus the broad prevails over the narrow to cut short its span of success.”72

Paradoxical Logic and Chinese ASAT Capability

This novel special weapons approach is repeated throughout modern warfare with examples of surface to air missiles (SAMs), anti-ship missiles

(ASMs), and anti-tank missiles, and each time, these examples have met with reactions and eventual counters. The significant difference in the case of

Chinese ASAT development is that while Chinese ASATs are a novel technological weapon, they are not designed to defeat a broad strength, but rather a very narrow strength, so narrow in fact that it has morphed into a vulnerability. In Luttwak’s examples of torpedo boats and anti-tank weapons,

71 Luttwak, p. 33. 72 Luttwak, p. 35. 57 the adversary strength targeted was always broad in capability and scope, capital ships and tanks, the premier weapons of their time. This is not a coincidence but a natural result as of their broad strength that spurs the linear response of an inexpensive counter.

Conversely for anti-satellite weaponry, the target set is a small number of utterly defenseless, highly specialized machines. For this reason alone, the

“repeating sequence”73 of broad strength facing and overcoming narrow technological challenge Luttwak predicts doesn’t hold. There are other significant reasons like physics and geography that also come into play that will be expanded upon later. Unlike all the other broad system examples where novel approaches have been tried, spacecraft cannot be landed or brought into port to be modified, or supported by additional equipment (currently at least) to defeat novel weapons. The restrictions of distance and physics in space practically eliminate material and operational reactions. In the case of space assets, the normal responses to the novel use of ASATs are largely unavailable, leaving the US extremely limited options in the near and mid-term to counter

Chinese ASAT threats.

Shashoujian and space

Thus far, this chapter has explained the security motivations behind

Chinese ASAT development, how the Chinese are seeking to increase their bargaining power vis a vis the US by targeting US vulnerabilities in space, and how this approach is rooted in both traditional Chinese strategy as well as the

73 Luttwak, p. 36. 58 paradoxical logic of military power. This section discusses the Chinese concept of Shashoujian, or the Assassin’s Mace and offers evidence that the Chinese are thinking very deliberately about game changing capabilities that target US space vulnerability.

The term Assassin’s Mace is one of many argued interpretations of the

Chinese term; others include trump card, leap forward weapon, magic weapon, killing sword and killer mace. There are as many as fifteen various interpretations that have been attributed to the three character phrase shashoujian.74 The use of the term assassin’s mace became popular in western security circles in early 2000 and was used extensively until around 2006 in policy circles. One researcher had compiled 14 different weapon systems described by the Chinese as “shashoujian” including “joint information warfare” strategies, “supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles”, “electromagnetic pulse weapons”, and others.75 The ambiguous nature of the concept, combined with the expected less than transparent approach from the CCP in their military budgets and communications has led to an eventual de-emphasis of the shashoujian concept. In a 2002 paper, leading China expert Alistair Iain

Johnston posted a working paper attempting to clarify the meaning. “Through term-frequency analysis Johnston showed that before 1999 shashoujian was

74 Jason E. Bruzdzinski, "Demystifying Shashoujian: China’s “Assassin’s Mace” Concept," Civil-Military Change in China: Elites, Institutes and Ideas after the 16th Party Congress, (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Insttitute, 2004), p 311. 75 Mark Gabrielson, Shashoujian: A Strategic Revelation or Simply an Idiom? Available at: http://www.chinausfocus.com/culture-history/shashoujian-a-strategic-revelation-or- simply-an-idiom 59 virtually undetectable in Chinese military and political rhetoric but had been widely used in economics earlier. It also was common in Chinese popular culture.”76 Johnston’s paper has since been removed, and the term shashoujian has been used less in western policy circles. The height of mystery surrounding shashoujian’s use in the West came with a study publication by the Strategic

Studies Institute from the US Army War College. Ironically the chapter titled

Demystifying Shashoujian: China’s “Assassin’s Mace” Concept, posed the possibility that it was a secret program, that it is a catchall reference for the inferior defeating the superior, or that it may be a strategic concept being adopted by the PLA.

What we do know is that “Chinese military writings highlight the need to interfere with, damage, and destroy reconnaissance, navigation, and communications satellites. China has satellite jamming capabilities and is pursuing anti-satellite systems,”77 and that in a 2002 supplement to the PLA

Encyclopedia, the discussion on the “space battlefield (taikong zhanchang; 太空

战场),” the entry concludes with the observation that the impact of the space battlefield on the land, sea and air battlefields will become ever greater, and the

76 Mark Gabrielson, Shashoujian: A Strategic Revelation or Simply an Idiom? Available at: http://www.chinausfocus.com/culture-history/shashoujian-a-strategic-revelation-or- simply-an-idiom 77 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Statement for the Record of James R. Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, February 4, 2014, Washington D.C. 60 space battlefield “will be a major component of future conflict.”78 These statements, combined with demonstrated ASATs show the Chinese are serious about exploiting US space dependence.

It is certainly possible that the Chinese do subscribe to the concept of a trump card weapon or assassin’s mace that can enable the inferior to defeat the superior. They have already deomonstrated the ability to attack low earth orbit targets, and there is strong speculation that they have adapted their kinetic

ASAT for higher altitude orbits as well. The Chinese launch of a mobile-based rocket from the Xichang satellite launch center in Sichuan in May of 2013 has been seen as a likely demonstration of an ASAT capable of reaching targets in

MEO, HEO and GEO orbits. In an analysis from the Secure World Foundation,

Brian Weeden writes “the available evidence strongly suggests that China’s May

2013 launch was the test of the rocket component of a new direct ascent ASAT weapons system derived from a road-mobile missile. The system appears to be designed to place a kinetic kill vehicle on a trajectory to deep space that could reach medium earth orbit (MEO), highly elliptical orbit (HEO) and geostationary orbit (GEO).”79

Placing ASATs within the larger Anti-access/Area Denial (A2/AD) Strategy

Studies done by the US on the growing Chinese A2/AD capability have

78 Dean Cheng, “Prospects for China’s Military Space Efforts,” in Beyond the Strait: PLA Missions Other Than Taiwan, eds. Roy Kamphausen, David Lai, and Andrew Scobell (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2009), pp. 213-214. 79 Secure World Foundation, Brian Weeden, Through a Glass, Darkly: Chinese, American, and Russian Anti-satellite Testing in Space, (Broomfield: Secure World Foundation, 2014), p. 1. 61 focused primarily on the conventional capabilities the Chinese are procuring to prevent entry of and dominance by US military forces. Anti-access strategies are described as adversary strategies that “aim to prevent US forces entry into a theater of operations,” and area denial strategies “aim to prevent [US forces] freedom of action in the more narrow confines of the area under an enemy’s direct control.”80 This focus on the adversary’s conventional capabilities however fails to take into account the US dependence on space operations. As argued earlier, US conventional capabilities have become grossly reliant upon space enabled C3ISR.

Even if one disregards the glaring omission of the vulnerability to China’s anti-satellite operations, the assessments of the current US ability to overcome a

Chinese A2/AD strategy of deterrence by denial are not encouraging. In the most comprehensive report to date on the growing Chinese A2/AD capabilities, published by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSAB), a non-partisan think tank focused on effective defense spending, they assess the

US approach to countering the Chinese as operationally and technically risky. In evaluating the US Air Force approach they conclude that “Against opponents with A2/AD capabilities, betting mainly on short range systems to find, fix, track and attack the deepest and most difficult target classed seems tantamount to embracing the riskiest of all paths available.”81 In evaluating forward bases used

80 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Andrew F. Krepinevich, Barry D. Watts, and Robert O. Work, Meeting the Anti-Access and Area Denial Challenge, (Washington: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2003), pp. 5. 81 Krepinevich, et al., pp. 28. 62 for US force projection, they assess that “Threats to land bases—including political impediments, ballistic and cruise missile attacks, and unconventional warfare threats—are increasing at a much faster rate than threats to sea bases.”82 This assessment would lead one to believe that US dominance on the sea would reinforce the use of sea power, however, later in the report, they surmise that “The DoN’s approach toward countering maritime AD networks— operating small crewed combatants in the area of maximum danger—raises as many questions as it answers. It thus appears that the overall plan has path, operational, and technological and fiscal risks that are formidable, if not insurmountable.”83

In summary, according to the CSAB report A2/AD capabilities are a natural and logical response to American military preeminence and demonstrated power-projection capabilities,84 and the combined response of the

US armed forces does not appear to be enough to address the growing A2/AD problem. The report concludes “each Service appears to be pursuing its own solution, for its own institutional purposes, within the boundaries of its traditional warfighting roles and domain.”85

This is particularly concerning when one takes into account that the primary role of space force enhancement is leveraged by each of these services, creating a single vulnerable dependence that could simultaneously adversely

82 Krepinevich, et al., pp. 52. 83 Krepinevich et al., p. 67. DoN means Department of the Navy. 84 Krepinevich et al., p. 93. 85 Krepinevich et al., p. 94. 63 affect all of the services. In essence, dependence upon space and the vulnerability that dependence has created has taken a back seat to the conventional challenges each of these services face in the area of A2/AD. By pursuing a largely uncoordinated approach to overcoming A2/AD, the services have created an overlap in reliance upon space that none are preparing to protect.

How many ASATs does China need? Numbers and survivability requirements to be effective

Testing a theory that the Chinese have developed anti-space capabilities as a part of a deterrence by denial strategy requires postulating the potential success of Chinese ASATs against US space capabilities. This type of information is difficult to obtain because of the sensitive nature and the implications for national security, however there has already been a successful demonstration of Chinese ability to intercept a low earth orbiting satellite using a direct ascent kinetic vehicle launched from the Chinese homeland.

Extrapolating this success into an actual ASAT system capable of achieving a deterrence by denial strategy would require the production of enough survivable launchers to place at risk enough US satellites to effectively deny the US the ability to fight in the near-China region. Factors affecting the number of launchers required include the number of US target satellites, success probabilities for intercept, launch facilities and their survivability, costs of production for the PLA, and finally a continued dependence on space by the US.

As a starting point, in Paul Stares’ 1987 book, Space and National

Security, he uses a simple probability equation to estimate the number of launches required to achieve a given probability of successful intercept assuming each attempt carries the same probability of kill.86 The table below shows the results for the range of three assumed probabilities of success being

.75 for the high range, .64 for mid-range and .45 for the pessimistic range.

According to open sources, the entirety of the National Reconnaissance Office’s

(NRO) on-orbit satellites fall between twelve and 24 in varied orbits. With ability to strike in multiple orbits, the number of missiles required to ensure complete destruction of US NRO assets is no more than 120 missiles, and moderate success for the Chinese puts the number of missiles required to ensure complete destruction at 68. The SC-19 that successfully engaged the FY-1C satellite is part the DF-21 family, veritably indistinguishable from the other variants, and already contains close to 120 mobile launchers, with an unknown number of missiles.87

86 Paul B Stares, Space and National Security, (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1987) pp. 92-95. The actual equation Stares uses to determine the number of attempts required is the natural log of the probability that a satellite survives any given number of attempts divided by the natural log of the overall probability of kill given the ln(OPS) same number of attempts, expressed by the equation n  where the operational ln(1 SSPK) n probability of a kill by n number of shots, OPKn= 1 – (1-SSPK) where SSPK is the single shot probability of kill and the overall probability of surviving n number of shots is n  OPSn = (1-SSPK) . 87 National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Ballistic & Cruise Missile Threat (Wright- Patterson AFB: National Air and Space Intelligence Center Public Affairs, 2013). 65

Table 1. 88 Target Set (Number of target satellites)

Single Shot 1 3 6 12 24 Probability of satellite satellites satellites satellites satellites Kill High (.75) 2 6 13 26 52

Moderate (.64) 3 9 17 34 68

Low (.45) 5 15 30 60 120

Table 1. ASAT Probability of Kill

While the table above is straightforward in highlighting the number of predicted launches required for any given number of targets, it fails to take into account the significant impact of debris created by any successful kill. The single success the Chinese have to date in intercepting a satellite created thousands of pieces of debris, most of which have the inertia to wreak havoc upon any satellite that is near the orbital path of the recently destroyed satellite.

This creates a dirty orbit path that will continue to exist for many years, up to decades or longer dependent upon the altitude of the event. Typical target satellites are generally designed in constellations that range from one to thirty- two or more, but the constellation size for low earth reconnaissance satellites is usually in the three to ten range, and they have approximately the same orbits, time phased to provide the most efficient coverage. In the most likely target cases of low-earth orbit reconnaissance satellites, one or two successful

88 Paul B Stares, Space and National Security, (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 1987), p. 94. 66 intercepts could endanger an entire constellation, creating a cascading wave of destruction that renders the entire orbital sphere at that altitude unusable.89

Thus, the impact of even a few successful intercepts could lead to the elimination of large portions of the US space advantage. This possibility, even if highly improbable, becomes a significant factor in the responses the US may be willing to use in the event of increased tensions over Taiwan.

The Chinese could be in a position soon to challenge the real distribution of power in the global system without following the traditional route of a rising power. Is it possible the Chinese can challenge the US military without actually ever exceeding aggregate US military capability?

Conclusion

This chapter makes the following points, that when taken together validate the assertion that the Chinese are preparing to exploit US space vulnerabilities. The Chinese cannot win in military combat against the US while the US possesses space enabled C3ISR. At the same time, the US cannot deter the Chinese in space because of the asymmetry of dependence upon space support; the US depends heavily on space, while the Chinese do not.

The Chinese are pursuing an over-arching A2/AD strategy as a rising challenger, and ASAT systems support this strategy perfectly by slowing US information flow, negating space based ISR, remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) platform use, and degrading US precision bombing capabilities.

89 This potential was first proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978 and is called the Kessler syndrome or effect. This is a probabilistic theory and is viewed somewhat skeptically by some members of the space community. 67

The most viable reason for the Chinese to pursue ASAT weapons is to increase their security and bargaining power. Prestige cannot explain the

Chinese ASAT program, nor can it be attributed to mutual deterrence. If the US is so critically dependent upon space that it constitutes a strategic vulnerability, then a fully operational ASAT capability of between fifty and seventy-five interceptors can provide the Chinese with escalation dominance. In an escalating crisis, the US would be forced to interdict Chinese ASAT capability in order to preserve the ability to win in combat. In other words, the US would be forced to start a war in their attempt to avoid war with China.

Attacking the Chinese mainland crosses a territorial and human casualty threshold that attacks on machines in space does not cross. This presents a difficult choice for the US and for China. If the US has confidence it can negate

Chinese ASAT capability, then the Chinese would be inclined to use them preemptively in an escalating crisis-use or lose assets. However, the Chinese

ASATs are road mobile and look similar to the 1000 or so other conventional ballistic missiles. Thus, their mobility and the difficulty of distinguishing them, make them survivable, which allow them to act as a deterrent. This deterrence by denial value makes them a critical asset for the Chinese in any crisis. Of course, the Chinese have yet to field, as far as we know, a significantly sized force of ASATs.

The successful use of ASATs to deter the US still rests on the question of whether or not the US has a strategic vulnerability in space dependence. If the

US is truly over dependent, and thus cannot win a war without space, then the 68

Chinese strategy of deterrence by denial will work. The next two chapters use a comparative case study approach to determine if the US really is over dependent on space.

Chapter 3: Enigma, Ultra and Operational Overdependence

“Without a quick, easy-to-operate and secure encoding system, there could be no radio; without radio, there could be no Blitzkrieg”90

The development of truly revolutionary events in military affairs have throughout history proven to be decisive on the battlefield. These events are quite often pegged to technological advances imparting advantage to one side over the other that prove to be as overwhelming in the short term for one side as they are intoxicating to the other. Revolutionary advancements in operational or doctrinal arenas have yielded significant advantages as well, often with longer lasting effects, adoption across allied and adversarial militaries alike. Examples of these advances, the levee en masse of Napoleon, the German general staff structure, the massing of airpower, suicide bombing, all provided something new to the game, creating an aspect of strategic surprise that proved decisive. Of course, all the would-be revolutionary ideas that failed to succeed, like dogs that do not bark, are relegated to footnotes in military history.

Why this case?

I have selected this case because of the importance the Enigma and Ultra intelligence programs played in the outcome of WWII, because of the potential parallels between the role Enigma played in facilitating German warfare and the

90 Brian Johnson, The Secret War (New York: Methuen Inc, 1978), p. 325. 70

way space force enhancement facilitates US warfare, and most importantly because it is a case of a technology that had significant operational impacts.

History has shown, and many have documented, how the exploitation of

German radio communications was instrumental in securing victory for the Allies in WWII. In a July 1945 letter to General Menzies, the British officer primarily responsible for the efforts of the Ultra program, Supreme Allied Commander

General Eisenhower writes “The intelligence which has emanated from you before and during this campaign has been of priceless value to me. It has simplified my task as a commander enormously. It has saved thousands of

British and American lives and, in no small way, contributed to the speed with which the enemy was routed and eventually forced to surrender.”91 Sir Harry

Hinsley, Emeritus Professor of History of International Relations at Cambridge posits that it is realistic to believe the exploitation of German signals shortened the war by at least four years, owing to the judicious use of information by the allies in economizing forces and through the advantages in the operational realm of warfare accruing from not only knowing ahead of time what the Axis force structure, posture and capabilities were, but also in many important cases, the intent of the enemy commander.92

This momentous case presents the opportunity to study the development of a relationship between a specific technology and its effects on an extremely

91 Frederick. W. Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers), p. 2. 92 F.H. Hinsley, “British Inteligence in the Second World War: an Overview,” Cryptologia, Vol. XIV, No. 1 (January 1990), pp. 1-10. 71

successful operational doctrine. This is most interesting because of the parallels with how the US has developed its very successful operational doctrine in relationship with space capabilities. Therefore, in this case, I will chronicle the technological advance of radio communications and the development of the

Enigma cipher machine, their adoption by the Germans in support of their operational approach to warfare and trace the conceptual movement from strength to vulnerability. The lessons of enigma will highlight both the operational and technological risks that were exploited by the allies. I will look at why the Germans failed to see the inherent risks of their over-reliance on

Enigma, why and how the Enigma technology became integrated into every aspect of their operations, and how they had chances to recognize their vulnerability and propose answers to why they failed. This is a case where the operational use of a technology that was initially a great strength, once over- relied upon, turned to weakness and eventually an exploitable vulnerability, in this case, with dire consequences for the Germans.

What Stopped Germany?

The result of World War II of course shows that the Germans were ultimately unable to sustain their victory, eventually succumbing to the overwhelming material superiority of the allies, however, there were several key points at which, had the Germans prevailed, the entire course of world history could have changed. The Battle of Britain, El Alamein, and the Battle of the

Atlantic, all were key turning points in the war, any one of which, and certainly if all were to swing in Germany’s favor, could have changed the outcome.

What foiled the German’s ability to carry the day in these decisive battles? In each case, the compromise of the German’s strategic and tactical communications was instrumental in their defeat. In each case, the allies were able to know what the Germans were planning to do, having intercepted and decoded large volumes of message traffic. Even with, in some cases, near perfect foreknowledge of German intentions, allied victories were tenuous. The closeness of these battles is a testament to the power of the German approach, as well as their skill and technology. The German military machine in the early parts of the war truly was invincible, how then did the allies manage to turn the tide? It was in large part due to the concerted code breaking efforts of the

British and the United States. The allied effort at breaking into German communications is held as the greatest secret of the war, even beyond the development of the atomic bomb. This case study looks at the German’s use of radio and the Enigma cipher machine, how the exploitation of the Enigma cipher, in combination with German overdependence on Enigma, affected the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic and allowed the allies to defeat the Germans.

The Importance of History: Technological & Operational Reactions to WWI

The experiences of both sides of the conflict in WWI were critical to the paths for those same combatants in WWII. Both the Axis and Allies took lessons from WWI in technology and operations that shaped their approaches to

warfare and signals. The German reliance on radio communications was rooted in the desire to avoid the type of stagnant and indecisive warfare experienced in the early twentieth century. The static type of attrition warfare or stellungskrieg of the First World War, from an operational perspective, was disastrous, incurring horrible devastation and endless indecision. The reaction to these experiences for the German General staff was a strong desire to rediscover the decision in warfare.93 Decisive action could avoid the bloody results of WWI while also enabling victory on the battlefield. Clausewitz, the revered Prussian author and icon of German military thought wrote “Wherever a great and positive goal exists, one that will seriously affect the enemy, a great battle is not only the most natural but also the best means of attaining it.”94 He goes on to write, “Our conviction that only a great battle can produce a major decision is founded not on an abstract concept of war alone, but also on experience. Since time began, only great victories have paved the way for great results: certainly for the attacking side, and to some degree also for the defense.”95 Thus, the way to great victory for the Germans was the promise of mobile warfare, or bewegungskrieg. The ability to engage in decisive battles, bringing decision and the art of operational maneuver back to warfare led the Germans to begin

93 Robert M. Citino, Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas), chap. 1. 94 Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 259. 95 Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 260. Clausewitz also writes in Chapter 1.4 about the desired aim in warfare is to disarm the enemy, meaning by way of engagement or battle to place the enemy in a position of disadvantage sufficient to produce victory, thus creating the conditions whereby the victor can “compel our enemy to do our will.” (Chapter 1.2) 74

envisioning, planning and eventually training for the highly mobile, radio- connected armor and air forces doctrine the world would later call blitzkrieg, or lightening war.

Another important reaction that shapes the Enigma story is the technological response of the Germans to the successful breaking of German naval codes by the British during World War I. The compromise of these codes was a result of the fortunate (for the Entente powers) event of “the German cruiser Magdeburg, which ran aground off the island of Odensholm”96 near

Finland in 1914. The incomplete destruction of the ship by the Germans before the Russians seized her led to the compromise of the primary German Imperial

Navy codebook. The Russians forwarded it to the British, the leading naval power of the Entente, who proceeded to try and break the code. Despite making little progress initially, further acquisition of a merchant marine code led the

British to discover that the same cipher was being used for the relatively easier to break merchant code as it was for the German Imperial Navy, thus the British were able to break the German Imperial Navy code, providing a decided advantage, one which was used to help cripple the German fleet at the battle of

Dogger Bank.97

96 Maurice Freedman, Unraveling Enigma: Winning the Code War at Station X (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2000), pp. 7. Rickard, J (26 September 2007) SMS Magdeburg, www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_SMS_Magdeburg.html 97 David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967), p. 271. 75

The British had intercepted and decrypted communications that a sortie of heavy German capital ships would be moving on the British coast. The British had previously tried to intercept German ships returning from shelling the coastal cities of Hartlepool and Scarborough in December of 1914. However, due to heavy weather and miscommunication, and despite having intercepted and decoded German naval traffic that allowed the British to accurately place ships in the path of the returning German High Seas Fleet, they were unsuccessful in closing on the Germans.98 However, this time in late January of 1915, the

British repeated the intercept tactic, catching the German fleet returning from shelling the coast and managed to sink the armored cruiser Blucher and heavily damage both the Seydlitz and Derfflinger.

The embarrassment of German Naval officers in the interwar years over the realization that their communications in WWI had been compromised, practically ensuring the marginalization of their high seas fleet, guaranteed they would search for a solution to better protect their communications in any future conflict.

English reactions

The success of Dogger Bank, a direct result of communications intelligence, had a strong impact on the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston

Churchill, who would later become the foremost proponent of the Ultra program in his position as Prime Minister during World War II. Dogger Bank was proof

98 David Kahn, 270. 76

that signals intelligence could have significant effects in the outcome of battles.

It also reinforced that codes can not only be broken, but also can and need to be broken quickly enough to become operationally relevant. This realization is a significant factor for the British in WWII. The British government did not immediately embrace the continuance of signals intelligence immediately after the war, but did recognize the value of cultivating and teaching code breaking skills. To this end, they established the Government Code and Cypher School in

1919.99 The school was staffed primarily with the denizens of hut 40 that had engineered the Dogger Bank intelligence, and included representatives of each of the service branches because of the frequent difficulties in sharing intelligence during the war.

Thus we see that both sides’ reactions led to different lessons learned.

The success of the British reinforced the importance of code breaking skills and the establishment of a core group to train future cryptographers and code breakers. They also maintained a healthy skepticism of the endurance and security of ciphers and codes. The German reaction led them to a different conclusion. Their response was to look for a better technology, to improve upon the status quo. They did not take away as strong a lesson as the British that code breaking skills are an imperative to teach and maintain. The Germans thought their coding system had not been secure enough, and that success would lie in a technological solution, whereas the British felt that no coding

99 Maurice Freedman, Unraveling Enigma: Winning the Code War at Station X (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2000), pp. 8-10. 77

system could be impenetrable, and therefore code breaking skills were more critical than technological solutions.

Why Radio?

German adoption of radio communications was a critical enabler to the development of Blitzkrieg and submarine Wolf pack operations. As the opening quote of this chapter from Johnson suggests, without the ability to quickly encipher, transmit and then decipher high volumes of traffic, the close coordination and rapid offensive movement of armor, infantry and air could not occur.100 There are many aspects of Blitzkrieg that create and reinforce the requirement for increases in radio traffic. The first has already been mentioned, the requirement to coordinate air in concert with ground forces. This can only be done by wireless or visual communications. Visual coordination is obviously not desirable, as components of the same force are required to be facing one another to visually communicate instead of facing the enemy, thus wireless communications offer the ideal method, one still predominantly in use today.

The second factor driving the need for radio on land was the intended pace of bewegungskrieg operations. Blitzkrieg was designed to exploit line breaks with fast moving armor formations. These breaks, when created, were like water filling low spots behind the traditional front lines, creating conditions that were too non-linear and dangerous for communications troops to install telephone or teletype wires. Only after German or Axis troops had secured an

100 Bradley F. Smith, The Ultra Magic Deals (Novato: Presidio Press, 1993), p. 24. 78

entire area, with the destruction or retreat of the opposing force, and the occupation of the ground, could wired networks be co-opted or laid. In this way, the operational concepts of Blitzkrieg contributed to the requirement for radio communications.

The third factor is the sheer size and distance of the theaters of operations during the war. The Germans conducted operations throughout the

Atlantic, the Mediterranean and North Seas, across the breadth of Europe, much of Asia and across North Africa. As the Germans advanced, the requirements for long haul communications capability increased.

Radio and Land Warfare

The development of and reliance upon radio for land operations began in earnest in the 1930s for the Germans. They hosted tailored radio exercises

(Funkubung) to test radio coordination among military troops. As early as 1932, the Germans discovered through exercising the importance of radio communications in successfully coordinating combined arms maneuvers, specifically for the offensive.101 The exercise stressed radio communications for both the simulated invaders as well as the defending German troops, and brought to light the difficulties of establishing communications nets outside the normal division structure. “It had taken almost one full day of exercises to make

101 Robert M. Citino, Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas), pp. 22-27. 79

the operational net (that is, between the component divisions and the corps headquarters) fully functional.”102

The Germans realized that highly mobile armor and air formations could only be controlled by radio communications. Teletype and telephone could not provide the mobility and freedom of action that radio offered. By 1935, one

German officer, Major Friedrich Berktau wrote, “It is part of the unique character of motorized and mechanized units that they can only be commanded with the assistance of technical means. The masses of motor vehicles in their extraordinarily long columns or widely dispersed battle formations, the noise of machines, the difficulty of observation from inside the tank, the speed of movement, the rapid change of the battle situation, the special difficulty in moving at night—all these demand a technical solution to command problems.”103 Thus the technological capabilities of radio helped to shape the operational doctrine of combined arms maneuver, in fact, without radio, blitzkrieg would not be possible. This constitutive relationship is a critical part of the process that eventually leads to overdependence. The radio technology helped resurrect mobile warfare in the emerging age of tanks and strike aircraft. The

German’s desire to connect air and armor in bewegungskrieg then placed pressure on radio communications personnel and technology to make advances in technology and techniques specifically to enable mobile warfare, like the

102 Robert M. Citino p. 25. 103 Robert M. Citino p. 27. Original reference cited on pp. 310 of Citino’s book. 80

operational use of radio, and eventually the adoption of a mechanical enciphering device to protect the transmissions.

The shaping or constitutive influence of radio communications on operational doctrine and equipment, and the reciprocal effects of the doctrine on radio communications equipment, operations, and security is key in developing overdependence. Many technologies are leveraged for warfighting, however, the unique relationship of a technology shaping operational doctrine and vice versa is a defining characteristic of the overdependence process, because it is through the constitutive relationship that overdependence, and therefore a potential for a exploitable vulnerability is created.

The heavy dependence of maneuver warfare on radio communications placed a premium on communications protection. The unique speed of communications also required specific technical solutions that would support the speed and high volume of communications. It would not be sufficient just to protect the radio messages; the security solution must be able to rapidly code and encode high volumes of communications, in a dependable fashion, over several different networks. “In the complex, three-dimensional battlefield, maintaining an adequate flow of quick and reliable information was not a luxury.

Indeed, the “rapidly changing conditions of battle” as well as “the necessity for

the commander to be far forward” meant that he had to have “highly mobile, fully armored, all terrain intelligence vehicles” at his disposal.”104

Thus the interaction of radio and German operational doctrine birthed the tank-aircraft-radio form of combined arms, and with it a profound dependence upon protected high-volume communications, since the operational foundation of blitzkrieg rests on communications, maneuver and speed.

Radio and the Sea

In addition to ground forces, German naval forces, and particularly their submarine forces, were also operating across vast distances. Traditional over the horizon operations entailed providing general instruction to the commanding naval officer and his fleet, which then sailed out of contact to fulfill those orders based largely on the circumstances and interpretation of the commanding officer. This rather decentralized approach to command and control often resulted in unexpected or unintended battles and outcomes that political entities then had to deal with later, once notified. This approach identifying general desires and outcomes and then relinquishing control is termed mission type orders, the beauty of which is that they do not require updating unless the mission needs to change.

The drawback of course is mission type orders requires placing a large amount of trust in the judgments and abilities of the commanding officer when

104 Robert M. Citino, Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas), p. 26. Internal quotes are from a military article published by General Heinz Guderian in 1936. 82

faced with potentially novel and unforeseen situations and circumstances, and can preclude the type of large scale coordination and synchronization of multiple types and numbers of forces. The realities of submarine warfare made the intelligence on convoy surface targets critical in bringing slow moving submarines into contact with faster moving convoys, and the only way to receive this intelligence on station was via radio traffic.

Additionally, this type of decentralization is out of character with the centralized command and control approach preferred by Hitler. While Blitzkrieg itself required high volume radio traffic, the insistence of Hitler on highly centralized command and control of his forces also led to the prolific use of radio communications of a highly strategic nature, which when eventually intercepted and decoded provided invaluable intelligence information for the Allies.

Therefore, whether for doctrinal reasons, operational necessity or strategic command and control reasons, radio was critical to German operations.

The radio communications requirements thus created a need for a robust, portable, and quick way to protect these radio communications.

Communications protection is as old as diplomacy, with secret codes, invisible inks and ciphers having been used for a thousand years.105 The desire to protect communications and the advent of technology in the late 1800s and early

1900s eventually led to the creation of mechanical ciphering devices. The

105 David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967), chap. 2. This chapter entitled The First 3,000 Years is devoted to the development and use of various means of disguised and coded writing by many societies including the Egyptians, Jews and the Chinese. 83

Enigma machine, the subject of this case study, represents a specific technical solution to the German’s high volume protected radio transmission concerns for both land and sea warfare.

Brief History of Mechanical Cipher Technology

The story of the Enigma cipher machine has been extensively recounted in many volumes, especially since the revelation of the Ultra program in 1974 by

F.W. Winterbotham in his book “The Ultra Secret” where he first revealed the effort and results of the British and American program to break the Enigma machine cipher used by the German political and military machine. While this case will not endeavor to best what many historians have already accomplished, it will draw new insights from the perspective of technical and operational vulnerabilities and how those lessons can be used to evaluate the United States’ current operational and technical dependence on space operations capabilities.

Thus, the case will in many ways read as a generalized history of the development, adoption, employment and compromise of the Enigma machine.

The Enigma cipher machine is one of several early machines to adapt a typewriter like input device to mechanically driven wired rotors. The first entrepreneur to envision rotor-based encipherment was an American named

Hebern who unfortunately died in poverty after over-extending his resources while counting on US Navy purchases in the early 1930s. The randomly wired rotor concept grew out of his early work connecting two mechanical typewriters via electrical circuits, one typewriter being the input mechanism, the other

providing the enciphered output. These early attempts at electromechanical ciphering only produced one alphabetic cipher per set of typewriters. In order to decode the cipher, one had to possess a set of machines wired in the same way and input the coded text on the second machine. The interconnections of the typewriters served as the foundational idea of randomly wired rotors.

Each rotor was wired such that an electrical impulse entering at one point on the wheel, for example at the alphabet letter A, would pass through a preset wired path to the other side of the rotor, where it would exit at some other letter based on the wiring of the wheel. (See figure below from Scherbius patent)

Along with each input, the rotors would rotate to a new position through a stepping mechanism that could be the same for all the rotors, or varied.106 The combination of differently wired rotors and steps creates unique alphabetic ciphers in large numbers. For example, in a patent filed by Hebron for his mechanical cipher machine, the use of five rotors with sequential stepping for rotors 1, 3, and 5 and cycle stepping (once every 26 inputs) for rotors 2 and 4 provides for the possibility of over 45.5 million unique alphabet ciphers.107 The enormity of possibilities will be important later in understanding the confidence the Germans placed in the security of the Enigma cipher machine.

106 For an excellent layman’s description of the Scherbius mechanical cipher see: C.A. Deavors and James Reeds, “The Enigma – Part I Historical Perspectives,” Cryptologia, Vol 1, No. 4, (October, 1997). See also David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967), Chapter 13. 107 Edward H. Hebern, Electric Code Machine, Patent No. US001683072, Filed Nov. 20, 1923, Granted Sept. 4, 1928. The Hebern machine was designed to be able to remove and reverse the rotors, leading to the possibility of over 90 million alphabet ciphers. 85

Figure 6. Image from Scherbius US Patent108

Ideas utilizing wired rotors or wired electrical circuits emerged near simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. The Dutch also had rotor enciphering technology patents applied for in the early 1900s by a fellow named

Koch who envisioned not only wired rotors, but drilled cylinders, or sliding plates to mechanically encipher. Koch’s patent rights were signed over to Scherbius’

108 Arthur Scherbius, Ciphering Machine, Patent No. US001657411, Filed Feb. 6, 1923, Granted Jan. 24, 1928. Available at US Patent and Trade Office, accessed 20 November 2013 at: http://patft.uspto.gov/ 86

company in 1927,109 and there was another inventor, a Swede named Gerhard

Damm who filed for a mechanical cipher patent in Sweden in 1919. Thus, mechanical ciphering technology, while new, was certainly not an exclusively held idea, nor was access to the fundamentals of wired and stepped rotors hard to come by. In fact, early versions of the first Scherbius Enigma machines were available for purchase openly before their adoption by the German armed forces, first by the Imperial Navy in 1926, followed by the Army in July of

1928.110

Of the four independent conceptions of rotor based mechanical ciphers, the Scherbius machine is notable for its use of a reflector rotor (umkhewaltz). In this design, the signal passes through three stepping rotors, and is then

“reflected” by a one sided rotor in which the letters were paired with a different letter of the alphabet. The result is that a letter can never be enciphered as itself, meaning A cannot be A, B cannot be B, etc. This arrangement was intended to ease the deciphering process, but it significantly reduced the cryptanalysis effort required to break the Enigma codes.

War Starts

There are two stories to be told in the case of Enigma, the first is the

German’s use and development of the system. Why did the German’s decide to use the Enigma? Why were they so confident about Enigma’s security, even in

109 David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1967), p. 420. 110 Kahn address to AHA annual meeting, Washington DC, Dec 1976. Transcript published in Cryptologia compendium, pg 1-14. 87

the face of contrary evidence? How and why did the Germans end up with just the one machine type? Could the German’s have done things differently that would have made a difference in the outcomes of WWII. The second thread is the Allies efforts to break into the Enigma. Why did the Allies think they could break the German codes? What were the keys to making the code breaks happen? Without luck, would the Allies have been able to break the Enigma? I answer these questions below focusing on the Battle of the Atlantic and the code making and breaking efforts that profoundly affected the outcome.

As noted earlier, the German Navy was the first to adopt the use of the

Enigma, however, the company that produced Enigma had attempted to market it for business use, thus, the Allies had all seen the advertisements for Enigma, and the Poles had actually acquired an Enigma machine. The German Navy upgraded the commercial version by increasing the number of rotors available for use from the basic three to eight, of which any three could be selected.111

The geographic expanse and domain of the sea made radio an irreplaceable medium for command and control, and the German reaction to code compromise in WWI as detailed earlier drove the need for a coding machine that was secure and capable.

Later adoption by the rest of the German military occurred for several reasons; the Germans were highly successful in their military operations; they were committed to operational and strategic doctrine that was highly dependent

111 David Kahn, “Why the Germans Lost the Code War,” Cryptologia, Vol. VI, No. 1 (January 1982), pp. 26-31. 88

upon radio communications; they opted for an evolutionary approach to improving their systems, anchoring them to the core Enigma technology, and they developed a high confidence in the system underpinned by their success and a mistaken belief in Enigma’s invulnerability. An overview of significant events in the proliferation of the Enigma is listed below.

Timeline of events112

1918 – Scherbius files for patent in Germany

1926 – German Navy begins using Enigma

1928 – German Army, Navy and Air Force are using Enigma

1932 – Polish mathematicians reverse engineer the basic three rotor-wiring scheme of the Enigma, allowing them to decrypt traffic

1938 – Germans increase rotors to 5, defeating Polish decoding ability

1939 – Poles offer their Enigma information to the British in face of invasion

1940 – British break into German Luftwaffe Enigma codes

1940 – 1945 Code breaking grows into the most secretive and centralized effort of the war for the Allies.

The Battle of the Atlantic: B-Dienst vs Bletchley Park

The Battle of the Atlantic was critical to the Allies hope, for without a sustained Britain, there would be no launching point to retake the continent.

Additionally, “Britain relied heavily on her Commonwealth and none more so than Canada. This meant that almost everything Britain needed was to come across the dangerous shipping lanes of the Atlantic. Food, fuel, munitions and

112 David Kahn, “An Enigma Chronology,” Cryptologia, Vol. XVII, No. 3 (July 1993), pp. 237-246. 89

later troops to prepare for the recapture of France.”113 From the German perspective, their aim was to starve the British to the negotiating table. Hitler had failed to understand the importance of the lowlands to British security, however, success in cutting the British lifeline from North America would have at the least greatly extended the war, and very likely would have resulted in a different settlement after the war.

The two primary players in the cryptanalysis wars during the Battle of the

Atlantic were the Oberkommando Kreigsmarine’s (OKM) cryptanalysis section and the Allied code breaking effort at Bletchley Park. The centralized Bletchley

Park efforts grew rapidly from the GC&CS and continued throughout the war to encompass nearly 10,000 people, while the German efforts at cryptanalysis were divided up amongst many different organizations. Each service, as well as the political and police arms of the Nazi party had their own efforts, sometimes in conjunction or liaison with the others, and sometimes less so. The most successful section was the Beobachtung-Dienst (Observation Service) or B-

Dienst as they were called.114 This section was part of the German Navy, and was formed in most part because of the embarrassment experienced in the

1920s as the facts about cracked German Navy codes were revealed. The unit focused on British Naval ciphers, and by the beginning of WWII, had cracked

113 Presentation at the British National Archives by Janet Dempsey, 10 Sep 2009. Available at: http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/the-battle-that-frightened- churchill-the-war-in-the-atlantic/ 114 David Kahn, The Codebreakers, pp. 465. This reference however to B-Dienst can be found in almost all the recounts of the Battle of the Atlantic. 90

and could read, in an operationally relevant timeframe, many of the British codes including the home waters code and the codes used by the British merchant fleet. These capabilities “enabled German surface raiders to elude the British

Home Fleet, spared German heavy ships from many a chance encounter with stronger British forces, permitted surprise attacks on British warships, and helped sink six British submarines in the Skagerrak area between June and

August of 1940.”115

The effectiveness of B-Dienst’s efforts were realized by the Germans very early in the war when their decoding of British intentions to mine the Norwegian port of Narvik helped the Germans successfully invade Norway. Determining through intercepted and decoded British transmissions that the British Home

Fleet was planning a large pre-emptive move toward the port city of Narvik in northern Norway, the Germans initiated a decoy move ahead of the British, departing earlier and steaming north toward Narvik, drawing away the British force. This decoy worked perfectly, pulling the British fleet north and west, opening the door for the real invasion targets along the Skaggerak and the more southern ports of Norway. The main portion of the British fleet turned to the south too late to prevent the German landings and the eventual occupation of

Norway. The decoy force ultimately pressed on to Narvik, taking the port with

115 David Kahn, The Codebreakers, pp. 465. The Skaggerak area refers to the Strait that passes between Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The Skaggerak and Kattegat constitute access to the North Atlantic from the Baltic Sea. This access was crucial for the Germans early in WWII and one of the primary reasons for the German invasion of Norway. 91

some resistance.116 Thus, the outnumbered and outgunned German Navy was able to execute the Norway invasion. The British, while successfully engaging the German Navy after the initial invasion, suffered losses enough to trigger a no-confidence vote in Parliament. This of course led to the ouster of Prime

Minister Neville Chamberlain, and his succession by Winston Churchill, who ironically was the sitting First Lord of the Admiralty, in charge of the Home

Fleet’s operations at the time of the invasion.

B-Dienst continued to have success against several of the British and

Allied ciphers throughout the remainder of the war, as the graph below shows.

For nearly the entire period of the war, B-Dienst was able to read at least portions of the British and Allied ciphers in use. The top half of the figure in red shows the timeframes for which each cipher was operationally useful for the

Germans. The lines represent the introduction and use of the individual ciphers.

The dip in the lines from December 1942 to March of 1943 represents the impact of the British beginning to encipher their message indicators along with the message itself, and will be expanded upon below.

116 Kahn, 465, Grove, Eric, history of WWII available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/norway_campaign_01.shtml 92

Figure 7. Allied Shipping Codes in WWII117

117 The Author while referencing multiple resources compiled the information in this graph. The timelines for presentation are monthly, whereas some information is available as to the specific dates, the transition from compromised code to actual operational relevance occurs over some period of time, thus, monthly increments provides a reasonable timeframe to understand B-Dienst’s efforts. When reliably available, specific historic dates will be used in the text. 93

Figure 8. Allied Shipping Losses and German U-boat losses

Figure 8 above shows the monthly figures for allied shipping losses to U- boat attacks and U-boat losses suffered by the Kriegsmarine. The trend lines are second order polynomial fits to each, and show the general action throughout the Battle for the Atlantic. The arrows mark key events in cryptanalysis and coding over the same time span. To be sure, there are certainly other events occurring over this time, some of which will be mentioned in the discussion that follows, however, the importance of the highlighted events is readily apparent in the rapid and radical directional changes in the Battle of the Atlantic over the course of the war. It is nearly impossible to single out one 94

specific technology amongst all the different technological efforts in the Battle of the Atlantic and claim causality, but it is useful to show the correlations between the successes of the two sides. Because the information on where the convoys would be was so critical to wolf pack success, we expect to see increases in shipping losses when the Germans have the information advantage. We should not expect to see any dramatic affect on German submarine losses however.

Because the convoys included escort destroyers designed to hunt submarines and later escort carriers, the risk to submarines occurred primarily when they were able to find the convoys. We do see a rapid increase in shipping losses with very low submarine losses in March to May 1942, but this is partly attributable to the failure of the US to adopt defensive tactics and convoy measures early in the war, and thus the Germans were able to sink many ships close to the US through May 1940. While this time doesn’t argue against the pattern of information dominance, it does produce a much higher rate of shipping loss to submarine loss.

The first change in British codes occurs with the introduction of Cipher two in August of 1940, and we see a marked downturn in the amount of shipping lost to submarines. This is the expected result of the slower moving wolf packs not being able to achieve closure with the quicker moving convoys, and occurs while the British are successfully reading German Enigma traffic. When B-

Dienst manages to crack Cipher 2, meaning both sides are able to read one another’s directive, shipping losses continue on a downward trend, owing to the

advantage of defense and convoy speed. In an environment of level information, the ability of the convoys to move faster and to decide on their route, places the submarines at a disadvantage. The low numbers of submarine losses experienced in this time frame supports this, there is just less contact occurring.

The first radical shift occurs with the introduction of the upgrade of the

OKM Enigma. At the point, marked on the graph as the introduction of the

Enigma M, or the Shark key as the British called it, Bletchley Park goes dark trying to work out the new code. The Enigma M version was enhanced with an additional fourth wheel that did not rotate when used, thus increasing the alphabetic ciphers by a factor of 26. If they had been able to introduce an additional moveable wheel, it has been speculated that the British could not have cracked the machine cipher. As it was, it took nearly a year of effort.

Once the German’s attained the information advantage, their success radically increased, being able to direct their wolf pack into the paths of the convoys. The average tonnage lost to submarines prior to the Enigma M was approximately

200 thousand per month. After the Enigma M, the losses skyrocketed to over

500 thousand per month.

The British, being moderately suspicious that their codes were being read, began to encipher the indicators that preceded their ciphered messages in

December 1942, around the same time they managed to first break into the

Shark key. The new operational change negated the German information

advantage, and a rapid dip in shipping losses resulted, following the same dynamic as the previous period. This respite was short lived however, as the B-

Dienst managed to break back into the British communications in February,

1943, and another rapid increase in shipping losses resulted. In April of 1943, the cracked Shark key intercepts were being processed fast enough to be operationally useful to the allies. In addition, the allies introduce Cipher 5 in May of 1943, a code, which many historians believe was never broken, and one, which certainly was never broken in an operationally relevant timeframe. These two events, the decryption of Shark messages and the introduction of the fourth new British cipher in less than three years, reverses the trend for the last time.

Once Bletchley Park breaks the new Enigma key, the information advantage of the Germans becomes negated again for both sides, the strength of the defense, and convoy speed takes over. Once the allies implement Cipher 5, they achieve a decisive information advantage, which not only helps in protecting allied shipping, but contributes to the rapidly increasing German submarine losses.

In addition to the decided codes advantage of being able to read the

German admiralty’s communications while theirs were secure, the use by the allies of escort carriers, improved Leigh lights, and the newly developed 10cm radar greatly increased the risk to the U-boats and their crews. 118 These very effective airborne means of hunting submarines lead to high levels of loss for the

118 Johnson, Secret War, chap 4. 97

Germans. By May of 1943, the worst month of losses for the U-boats, Admiral

Doenitz decides to withdraw most of his forces to an area that is less dangerous but also seldom used by the Allies. The advantages of the airborne sub hunters grow as U-boats are attacked as they attempt to leave their ports. Many of the heaviest losses in the last months of the war in Europe occur in port from air attacks.

Lessons from the Battle of the Atlantic

What are the lessons that can be gleaned from the Battle of the Atlantic experience? There are clear differences between the German and British actions in terms of code changes. The British used five different cipher systems during the same period in which the Germans used only two, which were versions of the same machine. Arguably, the more frequent changes by the

British were the most important factor in gaining and then maintaining the information advantage. Why were the British more amenable to changing their codes than the Germans during this time frame? One of the first reasons is that they were losing the battle, and thus were more likely to try a change in order to change the outcome. Their more frequent changes are also aligned with the skepticism they learned from the previous war. British skepticism of code security as a reaction to WWI helped them make choices to change code systems, even though it complicated operations.

Conversely, the Germans were succeeding in the battle of the Atlantic, and thus had little reason to consider changing their approach, and this success

not only didn’t motivate change to their code security, but also deepened their confidence in the Enigma machine. This confidence persisted even in the face of clear indicators that German U-boat operations had been compromised.

There were high level concerns with the potential compromise of operational U-boat information because of the wide availability of Enigma cipher machines as early as April of 1941 as indicated in the head of the U-boat corps

Admiral Donitz’ log books.119 “The impression is given that the English traffic is being deliberately routed to avoid the attacking disposition. It is therefore suspected that by some means the enemy has obtained information of our attack areas….All stations which have to cover the U-boat wave for operational or radio technical reasons have been informed of the suspicion and have been ordered by C-in-C Navy to observe strict security measures and limit the number of persons involved. In addition Supreme Command of the Navy have approved my request for the introduction of a special U-boat cipher.”120 In this entry, Donitz records the approval of the unique cipher for the U-boats, which triggered the development of a new thin beta wheel and thin reflector rotor for the Enigma.

119 Ralph Erskine and Frode Weierud, “Naval Enigma: M4 and Its Rotors,” Cryptologia, Vol XI, Issue 4, October 1987, pp. 235-244. 120 War Diary and War Standing Orders of Commander in Chief, Submarines, Office of Naval Intelligence translation of the German original. The original translated BdU-KTBs (Kriegstagebücher (KTB) & Stehender Kriegsbefehl Des Führers/Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (F.d.U./B.d.U.)) are in the custody of the Operational Archives Branch of the Naval Historical Center located at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. BdU-KTB log entry, 18 April 1941, pp. 54-55. Available at: http://www.uboatarchive.net/BDUKTB30287.htm.

The thin additional wheel and thin reflector were designed to fit in the same position as the original thick reflector. The new thin beta wheel did not rotate, but added an additional 26 possible settings to the existing Enigma machines by replacing the thick Umkhewaltz reflector rotor with an identically wired thin rotor and the thin beta wheel. The commitment to mechanical cipher devices due to the proliferation of the Enigma machine throughout the German military, and therefore the cost of fielding a radically different new system, ensured the upgrade would be forced to maintain compatibility with the existing system, thus in order to maintain backwards compatibility with existing machines, when the new beta wheel was set to letter “A,” the combination mirrored the enciphering pattern of the standard three rotor Enigma.

Though Donitz’ April concerns came primarily from the suspicion that U- boat information was being compromised, he did not express concerns that the existing Enigma encoded messages were being read. Rather, he sought to limit the availability of U-boat information via a unique Enigma cipher to be used only by the U-boat forces. His suspicions however grew as the U-boats continued to have less than expected success. Again, from his logbook, Admiral Donitz recorded on September 16th, 1941.

“Although previous attempts to intercept the enemy by means of shore controlled U-boat operations has in many cases been unsuccessful, and judging from experience alone, by far the greatest number of convoys are sighted more or less accidentally by boats in passage. This fact can on no account be considered a hard and fast rule. The reasons for non-interception and non- sighting of the convoy from fixed dispositions, must be presumed to lie in the fact that the enemy has information on the areas of these dispositions, obtained by methods as yet undiscovered by us. There is not a shadow of a 100

doubt that such fixed dispositions of U-boats provide the best conditions, both for the fixing and the actual attacking of the enemy, providing the areas of those dispositions are kept secret from him.”121

“The measures recently put into operation for this purpose, i.e., restrictions in the number of personnel informed of U-boat operations, as far as is practicable. Cyphering of the grid indicators and the limiting of knowledge of the key to departments to which this knowledge is indispensable, justify the assumption that the enemy is unable to gain any information on U-boat dispositions from the Communications Service.”122

Again, on the 28th of September, 1941, Donitz reiterates his fears that the

British are in some way learning operational information about his U-boats after a pre-arranged meeting of three of his U-boats (U-67, U-68, and U-111) to exchange torpedoes and a sick crewmember was encountered by a presumed

English submarine.

“It is more likely that our cypher material is compromised or that there has been a breach of security. It appears improbable that an English submarine would be in such an isolated area by accident. The Naval War Staff is therefore taking the necessary steps to safeguard cypher material.”123

On the 19th of November, the Admiral wrote extensively about why his groupings of submarines were generally unsuccessful in making contact with the convoys they were picketed for, while single submarines were generally more often the source of contact reports.

“The reason for this is not yet clear. Coincidence it cannot be - coincidence cannot always be on one side, and experiences extend over 3 to 4 years. A likely explanation would be that the British, from some source or other, gain knowledge of our concentrated dispositions and deviate thereby encountering perhaps boats proceeding singly. This knowledge could be gained by the enemy:

121 BdU-KTB log entry, 16 Sep 41. Emphasis added. 122 BdU-KTB log entry, 16 Sep 41. 123 BdU-KTB log entry, 28 Sep 41. 101

1) By disclosure. Everything that can be done has been, by disguise of squares, limitation of radio personnel and our own U-boat codes. The circle of personnel "in the know" is so small that there can be hardly any possibility of disclosure. 2) By deciphering our radio messages. This matter is being continually examined by the Naval War Staff and is considered as out of the question. 3) By a combination of radio traffic and reports of sightings. This possibility can, of course, not be investigated as it is not known what information can be gained by the enemy from sighting reports and radio traffic (particularly accuracy in bearing). This question forms the basis of continual discussions with B.d.U. In many cases it has been shown that the enemy has not drawn the conclusions to be expected from data which certainly became known to him. This may be due to the fact that the slowness of a huge organization does not permit of rapid action, as well as the fact that he may have, apart from that known to us, further information which influences his decisions. In any case, it has not been possible up to now to see into his train of ideas and the conclusions arrived at. Attempts to do this constitute a continual problem. In order to deal with this problem, a closer cooperation with the Intercept Service may perhaps help. I intend, to this end, to request the trial posting of an experienced Intercept Service Officer to the Staff of B.d.U., which should serve generally to investigate further possibilities of gaining intelligence on enemy measures, particularly of convoy control. 4) By location (DeTe = radar) and consequent deviation. There is no evidence on this up to now. All these possibilities do not suffice, however, at present to explain the lack of success by concentrated disposition, as proved by experience. This experience, however, must be taken into account. Therefore, loose dispositions will be adopted, in which the boats are assembled in Groups so that when one boat of a Group makes contact the other boats are able to come up comparatively quickly and, in addition, cooperation of the Groups amongst each other is still possible. I intend that these Groups shall not remain stationary but that they shall be continually on the move in order to make it more difficult for the enemy to deviate.”124 In each of the cases cited above from the recorded logs, Donitz has reason to suspect compromise, but in each case, discounts the cracking of the

German cipher in favor of other intelligence methods as the source. He even directly suspects their cipher materials may have been compromised in

124 BdU-KTB log entry, 19 Nov 41. 102

September, only to note in November that the Naval War Staff has determined that the interception and decoding of their ciphers has been determined to be

“out of the question.” This is the timeframe in which the Kriegsmarine version of the Enigma with the extra thin wheel was being pursued in order to limit the availability of operational U-boat information to the U-boat service. This version retained compatibility with the standard three-rotor version, which as it turned out, was key to the British breaking back into the Shark key by December of

1942. Throughout, the Germans took measures to increase the frequency of their code changes, and implemented boat specific key words that would trigger a change to the next set of codes. However, they did not consider the mechanical cipher itself for change. The British routinely changed their daily codes as well, but also went to the extent of introducing completely new sets of codes.

There are several reasons that have been cited for the continuing reliance on the Enigma machine. At the first international conference of cryptologists in

1978, the then head of German Naval intelligence was quoted at an evening social as saying “to have two machines would have cost more money and more training and would have engendered more errors and failures to get through, thus reducing the trust of the commanders in the machine and its communications.”125 This comment highlights two important pressures on the use of technology; the resource costs of proliferating multiple systems, and the

125 Kahn, enigma conference meeting notes, Cryptologia, Vol III, 1. 103

reliability of the information generated by the technology. In the case of Enigma, the numbers of systems already fielded and the subsequent cost to replace them all was a deterrent to change, and the intervening potential negative impact to operations also worked against implementing radical change in the code and cipher system.

According to research done by Reuevers and Weierud, there were over

3300 Enigma machines produced for the OKM from 1934 through the end of the war.126 Reliable numbers are unavailable for the total production of Enigma machines, however, for comparison, the OKM was the smallest of the OKW branches, totaling around 1.5M sailors from 1939-1945. The OKH during that same time fielded nearly 13M personnel, while the OKL and SS added another

4.4M.127 The OKM, with less than 8% of forces were equipped with over 3300 machines. Because unit size and operational approach are very different in the branches, a straight-line approximation of 41,250 machines produced in these years is inappropriate to assert, however, there have been estimates of total production numbers for all versions of Enigma of up to 100,000 machines, and conservative estimates of wartime Enigma I, II, III and IV versions of 30,000

126 Reuevers and Weierud, The Enigma Family Tree, v0.14, 10 Sep 2009. According to their research, a total of 3312 copies of Enigma versions M1, M2, M3 and M4 were manufactured. Tree available at: http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/enigma/tree.htm 127 OKW force numbers from the Jewish Virtual Library, available at: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Third_Reich.html. Other sources cited between 20M and 22M total German combatants. These numbers likely included the Volkssturm formed near the end of the war. 104

machines.128 The effort to ensure compatibility of the M4 version mentioned above supports the notion that the Enigma was highly proliferated throughout the force.

The amount of resources required to replace over 20,000 machines would be considerable, and the effort thus would require some sort of impetus or imperative to trigger the expenditure. This imperative was never determined in the case of the OKM as we see from the case above. Even when faced with factual situations, where enemy foreknowledge of their plans was highly suspected, the German Navy staff managed to determine that their ciphers could not have been the cause of the security lapse, and without a decision that the machine was compromised, the effort to replace the system would never be undertaken. Herr Meckel, a German WWII veteran participant at the ULTRA conference in 1978, is quoted by David Kahn as saying, “Meckel said he did his best. He said he didn’t mean he never made mistakes. But he had no certain indication that the Allies had solved the machine – there were always alternative explanations for the apparent Allied foreknowledge of German moves – and so he feels he did not err about the ciphers.”129 In 1970, Heinz Bonatz, the wartime head of the Kriegsmarine intelligence division wrote, “…the Enigma Cipher

Machine M was secure against break-in and the German naval radio signals

128 Friedrich L. Bauer: Decrypted Secrets Methods and Maxims of cryptography. Springer, Berlin 2000 (3rd edition), p.117 ISBN 3-540-67931-6

129 David Kahn, “The Ultra Conference,” Cryptologia, Vol. III, No. 1 (January 1979), pp. 1-8. 105

could not be read.”130 This of course was prior to Winterbotham’s revelations about Ultra in his 1974 book. These comments from participants show how deep the confidence in Enigma remained, even in spite of evidence to the contrary.

The second issue raised above speaks to the negative impact on interoperability during the phase-in of any new or additional system, whether it is printed tables or a new type of mechanical ciphering machine. There is risk in the possibility of a negative impact on the trustworthiness of information used for operations, or in broader terms, the potential negative impact on the success of operations. In essence, if it is working, why change it?

Up to and through 1943, the Germans were highly successful in their operations, and this success creates confidence in existing operational and doctrinal approaches. Success reinforces confidence. The introduction of a new coding system would have required resources to be diverted to training new radio operators and the attendant mistakes that come from operating new equipment. The Germans had been using the Enigma for half a decade, devoting pre-war resources to specifically tailored radio communications exercises. The introduction of a new process in the midst of such unqualified success did not make sense.

130 R. A. Ratcliff, "How Statistics Led The Germans to Believe Enigma Secure and Why They Were Wrong: Neglecting the Practical Mathematics of Cipher Machines," Cryptologia Vol. XXVII, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 119-131. Referencing Die Deutsche Marine Funkaufklarung (Darmstadt: Wehr & Wissen, 1970) pp. 86-87. 106

While operational success rightfully breeds confidence, there are other reasons why the Enigma machine was considered so secure. The first is the impressive number of possible combinations the Enigma could be configured into, each creating a unique cipher alphabet. The most common Enigma version was the three-rotor variant used by the land and air forces. The machine could use any three of five rotors, which could be set in any of 26 starting positions with notches that controlled the progression of the subsequent wheels. There also was included the reflecting rotor along with a configurable plug or stecker board which could be wired to additionally transpose pairs of letters. The

Germans used ten paired cables to configure the stecker board. When the possibilities are tallied for the three-rotor enigma machine, the total possible theoretical combinations are 3x10114, which is more possibilities than there are atoms in the observable universe.131 This staggering number was the foundation of German confidence in Enigma. Even if the machine itself were compromised, the tremendous amount of time it would take to process through the incredible amount of possibilities would make any subsequently revealed information useless due to the time lag from interception to decoding. The naval version IV, because it had eight rotors instead of five to choose from including the 26 position selectable fourth rotor had 2x10145 different combinations.

131 Dr. A. Ray Miller, “The Cryptographic Mathematics of Enigma,” NSA publication, Center for Cryptologic History, 1996.

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The reality was that because of coding procedures, the use of only ten stecker pairs, and especially the reflector rotor, which was so useful in facilitating speedier decryption of messages, prohibited the self-coding of any letter, therefore the actual possibilities of unique alphabets was only 1023, a significant number to be sure, but remarkably less than the number of theoretical possibilities.

Figure 9. Allies – German Case Comparison

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Lessons Learned about technology overdependence

Proliferation

The case of the Enigma and the Battle of the Atlantic yields several specific lessons. The overarching problem of proliferation is the largest and most dangerous result, one that will be repeated in the following case of the United

States and their dependence on space enablers. The proliferation and dependence on the Enigma machine has many sources from the case.

Operational success on the battlefield led to extended operational areas and thus the need for more machines. Conversely, convoy failures for the Allies led to frequent wholesale changes in codes. The Germans also had multiple categories of users across their entire armed services and for operational and strategic communications, while the Allies used different code systems for different military branches as well as having different code systems for US and

British diplomatic communications.

Concentration of capability

The concentration of capability also contributes to the creation strategic vulnerability. The Enigma continued to be used because of backward compatibility, operational capability and resource issues. It would have been dangerous indeed to try and change coding systems in the midst of so many operations. The risk of negatively affecting on-going operations to transition to a new coding and radio system was too great. No operational commander wants to say yes to a new system that is unproven while engaged with the enemy. The

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Allies position of losing the Battle of the Atlantic helped them overcome risk pressures, providing the incentive to accept the risk of change.

Backward compatibility flows naturally from the proliferated technology itself. The fielding of any new system must need be backward compatible, or have the ability to become fully employed instantaneously. This is unique to proliferated and leveraged technologies. More than one type of gun, tank or plane can be fielded piecemeal, as their functions are self-contained, but leveraged technologies like Enigma, or those that impact very large geographical areas or numbers of units and platforms like space communications and guidance enablers cannot, therefore any changes must accommodate the existing users, or risk failing to meet the combat needs of those without the new technology. This unwillingness to accept risk is prudent and rationally expected, but acts as an impediment to change. In the Allies case, the system of issued code pads helped alleviate backward compatibility issues, as demonstrated by the British ability to change codes five times in the course of the war.

Finally, limited resources also impede the development of new technologies. In the competition for resources, choosing to replace a functioning technology usually loses, especially in the face of the other operational factors already discussed above. The extra resource cost is usually the easy reason cited today, where resource pressures combined with rising costs and multiple aging systems combine to make continued dependence on existing space

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capabilities the obvious and easy decision. The Allies by virtue of having two separate governments and therefore code systems were better able to cope with resource constraints. The inefficiency of separate governments helped mitigate resource pressure to their advantage.

Constitutive Relationship

Blitzkrieg itself was shaped by the ability to rapidly move and communicate, made possible by the Enigma. The coordination of the U-boat forces and their wolf pack approach was also shaped and predicated upon the ability to coordinate over great distances, again made possible by the Enigma.

Finally, the central control of theater wide force by Hitler was also enabled by the confidence and early success of their radio command and control capabilities.

These operational and strategic functions being shaped by the radio and code technology are an integral step in the eventual proliferation and over dependence upon Enigma. This is another factor that will be echoed in the US space dependence case. Allied convoy operations were less dependent on coded messaging. Allied codes were a tool in support of convoy and anti- submarine warfare operations, but did not play a large role in shaping the assets that were used. Additionally, the decision to convoy for protection was not predicated on the ability to communicate via radio. Convoys maintained tight formations using visual communications to avoid exposing themselves to radio frequency direction finding.

Psychological Factors

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The psychological effects of this success also pervade the case, to the extent that even when faced with clear indications of potential compromise, the confidence in the Enigma technology continued. The operational success of the

Germans also led to the dangerous creation of operational doctrine that was predicated upon and shaped by radio communications and the Enigma cipher technology. As mentioned, the failures of the Allies ensured there would be no overconfidence in their codes.

The reactions as recounted in the interwar years also ensured the Allies were skeptical of coded signals and fully aware of the potential of exploiting signals intelligence. The British were also successfully using Ultra information, which naturally led them to respect the threat to coded communications. B-

Dienst’s success should have helped mitigate the German’s denial of the threat, but as Donitz’ logs indicate, the Germans never seriously considered their codes were being broken or that their operational and strategic directives were being intercepted and read.

Exploiting Overdependence

Two clear lessons can be learned from the preceding case. The first is the importance of high-level support for efforts to concentrate on exploiting technical vulnerabilities in pursuit of operational advantage. The Enigma case shows how high level support was critical for acquiring the materials, resources

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and expertise needed to crack the Enigma cipher.132 As history shows, tremendous efforts were required to make the Ultra program bear fruit, and without high-level support, the required resources would not have been made available.

The second lesson is illustrated by the difference between the Allied success experience and the successes of the B-Dienst section. Clearly, both sides in the conflict displayed the ability to break codes, but only one side ensured a centralized and controlled effort to keep breaking back into the codes once the other side had countered. The Germans had multiple organizations assigned to perform code breaking, and their targets were more varied because of the different systems used by their multiple Allied enemies, thus B-Dienst’s efforts, while successful at times, never translated into major successes across multiple theaters. This is especially constructive, since right now there is what seems to be a less than completely centralized effort from the Chinese to develop ASAT capability. Their lack of a centralized effort may mean more time for the US to decide on a mitigating course of action.

In summary, the Battle of the Atlantic case study shows that technological overdependence can become an exploitable operational and strategic vulnerability that can be used decisively in conflict. The key factors that

132 Kahn, Codebreakers, pp. 271. “This battle of Dogger Bank settled the confidence of the Admiralty in Room 40, (the codename for the Magdeburg codebook signals intelligence group) and shortly afterwards the terrifying Lord Fisher, the new First Sea Lord, gave Ewing carte blanche to get whatever he needed for the betterment of his work. Ewing augmented his staff, installed improved equipment in his intercept and direction-finding stations, and increased their number to 50.” (from less than 10) 113

characterize overdependence are proliferation of dependence on the system, driven by operational success that feeds expanded use, confidence and potential over confidence. Dependence increases risk avoidance and impedes the introduction of different approaches and new technologies. Proliferation also encourages backward compatibility, and grows the problem such that resources to move away from the technology or to mitigate the dependence become an issue. Finally, the most insidious driver of overdependence is the constitutive relationship between technology and doctrine. Once a particular technology, like ciphered radio communications, begins to shape operational doctrine, overdependence can emerge, and if left unmitigated, can create single point exploitable vulnerability. These are the factors to look for in the next chapter’s case of the US and space capability.

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Chapter 4: The US is walking into a trap: critical overdependence on space

“As US history has shown—whether at Pearl Harbor, in Lebanon or the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen—if the U.S. offers an inviting target, it may well pay the price of attack. With the growing commercial and national security use of space, U.S. assets in space and on the ground offer just such targets. The U.S. is an attractive candidate for a “Space Pearl Harbor.”133

Introduction

The above quote is from the Commission to Assess United States

National Security Space Management and Organization; more commonly called the Space Commission. The panel of experts led by former and then soon to be again Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld released the report in January of

2001. The report itself recommended changes in the organization and funding of US space activities, many of which were acted upon, and some of which have since been reversed. It is interesting to note that in 2001, there was an already significant concern about the vulnerability of US space assets and the potential impacts to the US if its space assets were attacked. The report went on to say,

“There are a number of possible crises or conflicts in which potential vulnerability of national security space systems would be worrisome. For example: …Conflict in the Taiwan Straits, in which the US attempts to deter escalation through the

133 Donald Rumsfeld, et al. "Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization." Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2001), p. 22. 115 conduct of military operations while seeking to bring it to a favorable end through diplomatic measures.”134

These warnings from over a decade ago are still valid, even more so in light of the continued increase in dependence on space coupled with the steady reduction in overall conventional forces. It is shocking that despite the importance of the Space Commission, US space dependence has continued to increase. The effect of the 9-11 terrorist attacks was to push many but the most critical space organizational issues to the rear as the entire command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR) complex geared up to help support first Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and then Iraqi Freedom, the war in Iraq.

The US has the most prolific military and intelligence capabilities in the world, and despite that and the warnings of the space commission, the US has failed to adequately recognize, mitigate, avert or prepare to overcome the orthogonal strategy the Chinese are pursuing. How is it possible for the US to almost willingly become overly dependent upon the force enhancement capabilities provided by space? This chapter will address this question by explaining the unique characteristics and advantages of the space environment, by describing space missions and their customers, and offering multiple reasons for the spiraling US dependence on space. The end of this chapter applies the

134 Donald Rumsfeld, et al. "Report of the Commission to Assess United States National Security Space Management and Organization." Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2001), p. 24. 116 factors of overdependence identified in the Enigma case as a comparative case study to test for US overdependence and strategic vulnerability.

Using the global common of space

Figure 10. Space Orbits and Altitudes

There are many attributes or characteristics of space that make using space a desirable proposition for civil, commercial and military operations.

According to President Obama’s 2010 National Space policy, “The utilization of space has created new markets; helped save lives by warning us of natural disasters, expediting search and rescue operations, making recovery efforts faster and more effective; made agriculture and natural resource management more efficient and sustainable; expanded our frontiers; and provided global access to advanced medicine, weather forecasting, geospatial information, financial operations, broadband and other communications, and scores of other activities worldwide. Space systems allow people and governments around the

117 world to see with clarity, communicate with certainty, navigate with precision, and operate with assurance.”135

Space operations as used in this chapter is a term which describes the conduct of activities in, from and through space, particularly the portions of outer space within some 23,000 miles or so from the surface of the Earth. Since the launch of Sputnik in 1957, states have recognized the potential for the exploitation of space, the ultimate high ground, if you will. There are a multitude of activities that take place in, from, and through space today. They are as mundane as enabling your credit card check when you purchase goods, to allowing for global communications when you are hundreds of miles away from the nearest phone or cell tower. Space enables precision targeting of weapons along with precision farming and on-the-fly directions when you change your mind about dinner plans. Space enables high fidelity earth mapping, radar mapping, infrared, and multi-color, multi-spectral images available to anyone with a credit card and an internet connection. Many space products are free and used by nearly everyone on the planet. Cell tower encryption is timed by GPS.

Weather observation is done almost entirely from space.

The list of space capabilities continues to grow, and the subsequent impact of space on the world’s economies has also become extremely important. The commercial space market, according to one source was nearly

135 National Space Policy of the United States of America, Executive Office of the President, 2010, p. 1. 118

$145B in 2008.136 Keep in mind, this total is from commercial space and doesn’t reflect the amounts that governments around the world spend in their own budgets for civilian and defense space ventures,137 so the total is likely considerably larger. It is clear that space presents opportunities across a broad spectrum of users. The remainder of this section will focus on the specific attributes space provides for military operations and the military uses of space.

The Physical Domain of Space

Space is a unique domain, dominated by hostile environmental forces and governed by the immutable laws of physics. The realties of space include extreme temperatures, predictable orbital trajectories, high technological requirements for entry and highly restrictive power and weight concerns, which translate into extremely high monetary costs for access and reliability.

Spacecraft orbit the earth at very high speeds, dependent upon altitude, but in the thousands to tens of thousands of kilometers per hour, making course changes difficult and costly because of the limited amount of fuel the spacecraft carry into orbit. Every ounce of weight dedicated to fuel is an ounce less for other components required for mission accomplishment, and each maneuver requires the expenditure of precious fuel, which translates into shortened operational lifetime for the spacecraft, thus unlike the domains of land, sea and air, maneuverability in space is severely cost limited.

136 US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table 817, Titled: U.S. and Worldwide Commercial Space Industry Revenue from 2000 to 2008. Available at: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0817.pdf 137 Of course, some of this activity may be conducted by or pass through commercial entities that may be captured in the 2008 number cited above. 119

Additionally, the continued operation of space assets relies on redundant and highly dependable components, since once on orbit, the assets are extremely difficult to access for repair. The capability does exist to access low earth orbit 138(LEO) satellites, but the missions are very expensive and have only been conducted infrequently by manned space missions. The preponderance of military spacecraft do not offer the potential for on-orbit repair, even if they could be accessed. Satellites beyond LEO in medium (MEO) or geosynchronous

(GEO) orbits are not accessible due to the weight requirements to achieve those orbits, meaning the space lift capability does not exist to get a “repair crew” sized vehicle into orbits higher than LEO, not to mention the cost ineffectiveness of the approach.

All these factors combine to make spacecraft inherently vulnerable. Their location can be predicted, they have weight and power concerns that practically preclude defensive capabilities, and maneuverability leads to shortened life and in some cases denial of operation (such as an imaging satellite that can not image while it is being maneuvered, or a communications satellite that is not in the correct position to be contacted from the ground). These inherent vulnerabilities are offset by their importance as sovereign capabilities; the protections afforded spacecraft via the Outer Space Treaty regime, and the comparative difficulty in reaching them either physically or electronically.

However, these treaty and technological protections are less costly to overcome

138 The generally accepted approximate orbital altitudes are: Low Earth Orbit (LEO) from 130km/81mi required to orbit up to 850km/530mi. Medium Earth Orbit- 20,000km/12,500mil, Geosynchronous orbit (GEO) 35,880km/22,500mi. 120 than replacing on orbit capabilities, thus in the end like nearly everything in life, it is much easier to disable or destroy a space capability than it is to create and launch one.

The Advantages of Space

There are many advantages to operating from space that stem primarily from the physical domain. The four most important are global perspective, access, persistence, and speed. A global perspective or what some term a

God’s eye view is dependent upon altitude. Low Earth orbit or LEO satellites, even at relatively low altitudes for spacecraft, can see broad swaths (1000-1500 miles) of the Earth’s surface as they pass overhead. Higher orbits, like the geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and the highly elliptical orbit (HEO) can see nearly an entire hemisphere. This global perspective makes space highly useful for military missions like intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications, and it enables a level of situational awareness that cannot be emulated with terrestrial or airborne assets. There is no substitute that can provide a global perspective. The Outer Space Treaty and the open skies policy envisioned by President Eisenhower at the beginning of the space race enable this attribute. Free over flight and the international treatment of space as a global commons is critical to preserving the global perspective of space.

Open skies also enable the second key advantage of space, which is access to denied areas. Unlike the land, sea or air domains, which can be defended as sovereign areas, the open commons of space allows satellite owners to see deep inside denied geographic confines from above. The 121 proliferation and commercialization of satellite imagery has transformed this space advantage from a national asset to one of a commodity, which can be purchased openly on the Internet. Anyone who uses Google Earth to view a prospective property purchase, or an ongoing weather phenomenon is leveraging the access that only space can provide. This access was critical to early verification via National Technical Means (NTM) of US and Soviet

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capabilities, and continues to be critical for tracking and identifying nuclear weapons developments in denied countries like Iran and North Korea as well as other military uses.

The third advantage offered by space is persistence. Not only can space offer a global perspective, but also from the GEO and HEO orbits, it can provide that perspective on a persistent basis. This has obvious advantages over other forms of surveillance, all of which offer only a temporary presence. Persistence is particularly useful for military and intelligence operations, in essence never allowing the enemy a chance to breathe, making the element of surprise very difficult. Persistence of course doesn’t guarantee information, but it will make the enemy adapt to hide or obfuscate their activity. Space provides persistence in another way as well because spacecraft, once placed in orbit, will continue to fall around and around the Earth for very long periods. Even LEO satellites offer frequent re-visit rates that will continue to recur as long as the satellite has enough power to use whatever sensor(s) are aboard and to transmit that information to the ground. It is not unusual for satellites to last for over ten years, providing persistent information from overhead. The quality of 122 persistence is one of the most valued military advantages, offering advantage across the entire range of operations from monitoring prior to any conflict, through the initial stages of crisis and into actual combat. Mimicking this quality has seen the most effort from other sources like airborne platforms.

The final advantage of space is speed. The extreme velocities of spacecraft provide extremely quick response from on orbit assets. From LEO orbits, any ground target is usually less than ninety minutes from access, while from higher orbits; the access is nearly continuous (persistence). The advantage of speed does not include getting assets into orbit, which takes a very long lead-time. However, if there is an orbiting asset, the time required to access a target is minimal. The long lead times to launch assets will be discussed more later in the chapter.

Restrictions on space operations

There are also some important restrictions on spacecraft. By treaty, weapons 139of mass destruction, which include nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, are not to be placed into space. This treaty convention has been obeyed since the adoption of the OST. There have been nuclear power generators used on spacecraft; however, they require high level approval, the

President in the case of US spacecraft. These generators are nuclear decay power sources, not fission reactors. There are also serious difficulties involved with any type of repair for spacecraft on orbit. Not only is it difficult and

139 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, Article IV, 10 October 1967. 123 expensive to launch a repair mission, but also conducting proximity operations at high velocities make it extremely difficult and thus rare. What is launched into space is generally what you are stuck with; changes or upgrades usually require a new satellite. This plays an important role in shaping support from space.

Military Space Missions

There are five general military space mission areas, which combine to create military effects. The first of these is space situational awareness (SSA), which is the ability to know and understand the space environment, both the man-made and natural, through surveillance, monitoring and intelligence gathering. Space situational awareness is fundamental to the other space missions. The key functional capabilities of SSA include detection, tracking and identification of space objects, and the ability to discriminate threats. This function is critical to defending space assets against threats, and is one of the less robust capabilities the US possesses. Corollary functions include threat warning, characterization and data integration required to process threats.

The space support mission area includes space launch and support, operating satellites once on orbit, and the command and control processes and infrastructure used to contact and control satellites. Every satellite system is comprised of three distinct segments, the ground segment, the on-orbit or space segment, and the electromagnetic spectrum links used to communicate between the ground and space. The ground control and link segments comprise the satellite operations function, used by the military to position, modify, and control on-orbit space assets in order for them to provide their capabilities. Space 124 launch is required to access space, and includes it’s own set of control equipment and links to ensure satellites reach their intended orbit. Once the payload is delivered into a useable orbit, the satellite operations function takes over command and control.

The space control mission area includes offensive space control (OSC) operations designed to deceive, disrupt, degrade, deny, or destroy (D5) enemy space forces. These operations can be conducted kinetically or non-kinetically targeting any or all of the space system segments. Examples of OSC include jamming or interference with spacecraft or ground station antennas, physical attack on satellite operations facilities or on-orbit assets, or directed energy attacks with lasers or high energy pulse weapons, or cyber-attacks directed at the space system or the operators controlling the system. Defensive space control (DSC), are the operations conducted to deter, prevent, counter, or overcome OSC measures. DSC measures can be grouped into active and passive measures. Passive measures like hardening against directed energy or distributing space capabilities to many different platforms do not require action or decision. Active measures, like maneuvering satellites or triggering lens shutters to deflect lasers, require action and decision, and often have the consequence of interrupting the mission of the space craft when activated.

“Space force application is combat operations in, through, and from space to influence the course and outcome of conflict by holding terrestrial targets at

125 risk.”140 This space mission area includes ballistic missiles that transit space and the ballistic missile defense systems designed to defeat them. This space mission area would also include the development of on-orbit assets designed to deliver ordinance or projectiles to the ground, however, there are currently no acknowledged orbiting weapons platforms. The previously mentioned Soviet

FOBS system is an example of a space based space force application weapons system.

The final and most familiar space mission area is what militaries call space force enhancement, or force enhancement for short. Force enhancement missions include imagery, intelligence gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance, launch detection, navigation, positioning, targeting, communications and weather.141 For advanced technological armies, space has become integral to their way of war. Particularly the United States has become very dependent on space capability as the quote by Air force Space command (AFSPC)

Commander, General William Shelton before Congress at the beginning of chapter two attests. The previous Commander of AFSPC, General C. Robert

Kehler, while addressing the National Space Symposium on April 13, 2010 pointed out that, “The Joint team relies on national security space so much that, according to the General, space “is woven through the fabric” of the Joint way of war. General Kehler pointed out that if the U.S. had been denied access to its

140 US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Doctrine for Space Operations, Joint Publication 3-14, (Washington, D.C: US Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013), p. II-9. 141 For complete treatment of military space force enhancement missions, see US Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Publication 3-14, Space Operations. 126 space assets should the Cold War have turned ‘hot,’ its loss – while damaging – would not have made any material difference to the outcome of the conventional battle in northern Europe. The case today is quite different – we cannot even contemplate warfighting without space, and so its loss or denial will make a substantial difference to victory or defeat in war.”142 Clearly, the United States is heavily dependent on space force enhancement capabilities as are many of its allies.

Force Enhancement Space Missions Further Explained

Space force enhancement is used to increase the effectiveness of traditional military power, like land, sea and naval forces. Force enhancement missions include imagery, intelligence gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance, positioning, targeting, communications and weather.143 For ease, I will use the acronym C3ISR throughout the paper, which stands for Command, Control,

Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.

For advanced technological armies, space C3ISR has become integral to their way of war.

The effects of space force enhancement enable the multiplication of ground, air and sea forces power; space is the ultimate force multiplier. The force multiplier effect has led to tremendous success on the battlefield; this section

142 National Space Studies Center, John B. Sheldon, “General Kehler Outlines Challenges Ahead,”April 15, 2010, http://nationalspacestudiescenter.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/general-kehler-outlines- challenges-ahead/ 143 For complete treatment of military space missions, see Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Publication 3-14, Space Operations. 127 offers examples of space force enhancement. The first is the effect of accurate global positioning on the conduct of warfare. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the advent of the global positioning system has allowed for markedly increased accuracy in weapons delivery. This increase multiplies the effect of munitions, allowing them to be more damaging with smaller warheads. This also allows for the servicing of more targets per platform, since the bombs are smaller, the plane or rocket launcher can carry more, and since they are more accurate, each target requires fewer warheads. The effects of accurate position also enhance precision ground operations like the recent special forces raid to kill Osama bin Laden. The GPS system allows for extremely accurate navigation without any external reference, thus even in the dark of night, one can find their way.

Space communications also offers tremendous force enhancement. The ability to provide communications from space frees up mobility for ground forces, allowing them to operate in smaller units with the ability to avoid strength and strike at weakness. Without space communications, forces would advance along fronts, incurring heavy casualties and sacrificing the element of surprise.

With satellite communications, smaller units can operate throughout the battle space in coordination with other friendly forces. A perfect example of space force enhancement combines accurate positioning with space communications.

This capability is called Blue Force Tracking (BFT). BFT allows for the simultaneous tracking of friendly units via pulse emitted location information that is collected and transmitted by orbiting spacecraft. “In this “hub and spoke” 128 configuration, each vehicle communicates with a satellite ground station that aggregates the blue force picture and transmits it to each [BFT] FBCB2- equipped144 vehicle by satellite.”145 The situational awareness that comes from

BFT multiplies combat power by enhancing timing, synchronization, security, and the ability to coordinate combat effects in time and space, allowing for smaller units to provide a much larger impact than would be possible without

BFT.

Space based imagery provides force enhancement by providing the

God’s eye perspective, seeing enemy troop dispositions and targets even deep in denied territory. This capability extends to moving targets and camouflaged targets through the use of multi and hyper-spectral imagers on orbit. While this capability was long the exclusive purview of the superpowers, commercial imaging has begun to make available space imaging for purchase throughout the world. There has also been an increase in the number of indigenously developed space imaging capabilities. These developments have led to two interesting phenomena during recent conflicts. First, the US has been in a position where they have had to formally ask for other nations to not distribute space-imaging products to our adversary, and have also had to “buy up” those images from some foreign operators to ensure they did not reach the enemy.

Secondly, the US, which has several commercial space imaging companies, has

144 FBCB2 is the system acronym for Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below, the U.S. Army’s blue force tracking system. 145 Northrup Grumman Mission Systems, Richard J. Dunn III, author, Blue Force Tracking: The Afghanistan and Iraq Experience and Its Implications for the U.S. Army, (Reston: Northrup Grumman Mission Systems, 2003), p. 5. 129 begun to supplement national technical means with purchases from these US companies, in essence privatizing some of their overhead collection requirements. These two phenomena are enabled by the 1/3 to ½ meter resolution that is now available from commercial space providers.

Space and military power

The connection between space capabilities and military power has been under-theorized. In the following discussion, the paper looks at the connections between space capability and traditional treatments of military power to better understand the role space capability plays and to argue that regardless of measurement approach, space capability for the US has direct effects on the amount of military power the US can bring to bear in any conflict. Many nations use or are actively pursuing space capabilities for varied reasons, in most cases, to be used as a force multiplier, described above as space force enhancement.

Having introduced the types of capabilities and missions of space operations we now turn to what they mean in terms of military power.

In order to further the discussion of the connection between space capability, space power, and military power, I will survey how power in other war fighting domains are conceptualized and measured, paying attention to the often neglected role and impact of space. John Mearsheimer spends time on power in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.146 He divides state power into two components, latent power and military power. Latent power is the socio-

146 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, (New York: Norton, 2001), Chap 3. 130 economic capabilities of the state that allow for the production of military power.

Military power is the resultant armies, navies and air forces the state produces.

He makes the case that land power is predominant, and he grants that “large bodies of water severely limit the power-projection capabilities of armies.”147 In his analysis, he gives little credence to naval forces, despite citing the great naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan. Mearsheimer argues that blockades by naval forces have never actually proven decisive. He also grants that the use of strategic bombardment may contribute to power, but that it is only a corollary to land power. Finally, he gives special treatment to nuclear forces, but ends by saying equivalent nuclear capability between great powers doesn’t significantly alter the security environment since they won’t use the nukes against one another, they are free to act conventionally as if there were no nukes.148

In Mearsheimer’s explanation of how to measure military power, he mentions three steps.149 “First, the relative size and quality of the opposing armies must be estimated.”150 “The second step in assessing the balance of land-power is to factor any air forces that support armies into the analysis.”151

The final step is to consider the power projection capabilities of the land army, which as mentioned earlier he believes is highly dependent on whether a large body of water must be crossed.

147 John Mearsheimer, p. 135. 148 John Mearsheimer, p. 135. 149 John Mearsheimer, p. 133-134. 150 John Mearsheimer, p. 133. 151 John Mearsheimer, p. 135. 131

In becomes obvious when reviewing how Mearsheimer looks at state power that space capability isn’t even worth a mention. One could assume that space power may potentially be seen as a component of airpower, however, more likely is that he just takes for granted the capabilities provided by space.

This assumption of space capability is not novel by Mearsheimer. In General

Kehler’s comments above, we see a warfighter perspective on the pervasiveness of space capability in the instrument of military power. This invisibility of space force enhancement has significant implications for trying to conceptualize space power. In essence, every aspect of Mearsheimer’s assessment of military power includes a reliance on space capability. For example, the United States Army’s small unit-based mobile warfare tactics depend heavily on networked information connectivity and thus do not work without space force enhancement. The overhead predator and global hawk assets that are pivotal to urban warfare today are controlled remotely via satellite. All the movement of combat units and the logistics that support those combat units use satellite navigation and timing to tell them where to go, and more importantly, encrypt the communications they use to ensure they are inside the enemy’s decision cycle. Thus even though Mearsheimer does not credit space capabilities directly, the realities of land-power for the U.S. have made space operations capabilities indispensable.

Stephen Biddle takes a different approach to assessing military power in his book, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle. Biddle argues that it is not numerical force preponderance or even technology 132 overmatch, but force employment that is the deciding factor in combat. In his argument for the primacy of force employment, he cites the conflicting nature of the numerical preponderance and technology schools writing, “Defense planners cannot maximize technological sophistication and numerical preponderance simultaneously. Quality and quantity trade off: for a constant defense budget, the more we spend on force structure, the less we can spend to modernize equipment, ceteris paribus.”152 This tradeoff is naturally exacerbated in shrinking defense budgets. His focus on force employment as an approach however, as I will show, reinforces the critical nature of space capabilities.

Biddle’s “modern system” of force employment he argues is the result of

“a process of convergent evolution under harsh wartime selection pressures”153 of World War I as a solution to the fundamental problem of modern warfare which is “how to survive the hail of metal long enough to perform meaningful military missions.”154 He bases his theory on the advancements in coordination between infantry units and indirect fire units155 (like artillery) pioneered by the

German Army in what many call the rolling barrage. Biddle builds on this coordination, offering keys for both offensive and defensive operations in his

152 Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2004), pp. 19. 153 Stephen Biddle, pp. 28. 154 Stephen Biddle, pp. 30. 155 Indirect fires are operational fires or attacks that arrive from beyond the line of sight of the battle the fires are directed upon. Biddle makes a distinction between frontal “open sight” fires of artillery and high arcing indirect fires. In modern military combat, indirect fires include aircraft fires (excluding strafing runs), long-range missile or rocket fires, artillery fires and naval offshore fires. More complete treatment can be found in Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Publications, Joint Publication (JP) 3-0 Operations and JP 3-09 Joint Fire Support. 133 theory. “Key elements of modern-system offensive tactics are cover, concealment, dispersion, small-unit independent maneuver, suppression and combined arms integration.”156 Of these key elements, I bring your attention to the latter three, small-unit independent maneuver, suppression and combined arms integration elements.

Combined arms integration, coordinating suppressive fires and small unit movement, are all critically dependent upon communications and information exchange, key space force enhancement capabilities. Biddle himself comments repeatedly on the increased complexity of the modern system, and writes the

“Proper use of suppressive fires requires tight coordination between widely separated, moving units and multiple commanding officers.”157 Space-based

C3ISR capabilities enable this high degree of information and communications processing that Biddle cites, as well as the encryption, timing and targeting required for these offensive capabilities. As for the keys to the modern system’s defensive tactics, they “demand[s] the same exposure reduction tactics of cover concealment, dispersion, suppression, combined arms and independent small unit maneuver that modern systems attackers require, albeit adapted to the particular problem of defense.”158 Just as with offensive tactics, information and communications enable coordination, integration, maneuver and suppression.

Thus, as with Mearsheimer, Biddle’s theory of military power, while not

156 Stephen Biddle, pp. 35. 157 Stephen Biddle, pp. 38. 158 Stephen Biddle, pp. 44. 134 specifically addressing space capabilities, clearly supports the importance of space capabilities to national military power.

Glaser takes a more relational approach to power in his book, Rational

Theory of International Politics stating clearly that the ability to convert resources into military assets is the source of power, in keeping with the concept of latent power as put forth by Mearsheimer.159 For Glaser, it is “the ratio of the state’s resources that can be converted into military assets to the adversary’s resources.”160 He combines both Mearsheimer’s and Biddle’s approaches by using “the term military capabilities to refer to the ability to perform military missions.” As a variable, power is measured in relation to the opposing military force, either there are more or less convertible resources, however, he also stresses the relational aspect of a states’ military capabilities, writing that “a state’s ability to perform military missions is not determined by the size, type and quality of its own forces or resources, but instead by how these forces compare with and would fight against the adversary’s forces.”161

Thus, Glaser rolls the employment aspect emphasized by Biddle and the material aspects of military power together in assessing the relative power advantages of states. Like the previous authors, Glaser’s approach to conceptualizing power easily encompasses space capability, but also highlights the importance of specific military missions and their impact. For space, this

159 Charles Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2010), pp. 41-43. 160 Charles Glaser, pp. 41. 161 Charles Glaser, pp. 41. 135 means the missions of space control can have specific impacts on the power relations between states, since space control forces are designed to specifically target space capabilities. This has unique implications for space power, since there can be large asymmetry between different nation’s dependence upon space, and their offensive and defensive space capabilities, potentially yielding high degrees of relative power.

Alternative to political theorists, there have been space professionals, primarily connected with the United States Air Force that have been thinking about space power for many years. Steven Lambakis, author of On the Edge of

Earth: The Future of American Space Power writes, “In the past, a country generally qualified as a space faring nation, and by extension a space power, if it had a manned space program.”162 He expands on this definition when he writes,

“It may be more useful, therefore to regard a space power to be any entity that has the capacity to utilize effectively the space medium for commercial or national security purposes, with some pieces of its space operations coming from dedicated national satellites and others belonging to the private sector and/or government initiated commercial activities. The baseline measure of space power will be a country’s ability to integrate space capabilities with other national activities and manage the rapid and immense flow of information.”163

Here I believe Lambakis is referring to space power as a property of a state, in other words, attributing the qualities of having and exploiting space to a

162 Steven Lambakis, On the Edge of Earth: The Future of American Space Power, (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2001), pp. 45. 163 Steven Lambakis, pp. 46. 136 state and terming them a space power. He also attributes this quality of being a space power to states with manned space flight programs. While his rubric may accurately describe states that have integrated space capabilities in order to increase military power he does not come close to conceptualizing space power when he only talks about the integration of space capabilities with other national activities. By extension, the ability to prevent the integration of space capabilities by a country would actually constitute space power as well. If space power equals successful space capability integration, then denial of that capability can also be understood as space power.

Again we encounter the difficulty in separating space capability from space power. At what point does this integration actually translate to real power that can be accessed and utilized by states to further their interests, as in

Mearsheimer’s material comparisons or in support of Biddle’s force employment theory of the modern system? When viewing power relationally, as in Glasers’ approach to military mission accomplishment, it becomes clearer that the ability to create or deny space missions is a true source of space power. Additionally, at what point does the level of integration of space capability into conventional military power become a vulnerability to be exploited? The reality is that regardless which theoretical approach is taken to evaluate state power, from a

US perspective space capability is integral to generating that power. Therefore the US must recognize the potential for attacks on its space in an effort to directly impact US military power.

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Space Dependence Enables Re-shaping the US Military

It is an empirical fact that in the decades since the advent of space as a war fighting enabler, there has been a marked decrease in the numbers of US military personnel, and platforms (e.g. airframes, ships and combat vehicles) the

US has procured. There are several potential causes for this reduction; a more peaceful world, budget pressures and increases in weapons capability can all be cited as explanations for these events, and it is not my assertion that space capability is the only or even the largest factor in these reductions, however, there has been an ever growing dependence upon the force enablers that space provides in order to maintain combat capability with fewer numbers of personnel and platforms. The remainder of this section surveys these reductions.

The services themselves have seen steady decreases in personnel, and can be viewed as a barometer for not only the size of the overall force, but for the numbers of platforms the personnel support. The table below shows the end strength numbers from 1940 to 2011. Even the recent post September 11, 2001 force increases have barely slowed the steady decline in military personnel. The recent low in 2001 of 1,385,116 active duty personnel represented a reduction of over 600,000 personnel from the 1991 Gulf War, widely considered to be

America’s first “space war.” That is a thirty percent drop in personnel in a decade. Even with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the services added less than 85,000 personnel, and are still twenty-six percent smaller than in 1991.

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Year Army Air Force Navy Marine Corps Total

1940 269,023 160,997 28,345 458,365 1945 8,266,373 3,319,586 469,925 12,055,884 1950 593,167 411,277 380,739 74,279 1,459,462 1955 1,109,296 959,946 660,695 205,170 2,935,107 1960 873,078 814,752 616,987 170,621 2,475,438 1965 969,066 824,662 669,985 190,213 2,653,926 1970 1,322,548 791,349 691,126 259,737 3,064,760 1975 784,333 612,751 535,085 195,951 2,128,120 1980 777,036 557,969 527,153 188,469 2,050,627 1985 780,787 601,515 570,705 198,025 2,151,032 1990 732,403 535,233 579,417 196,652 2,043,705 1991 710,821 510,432 570,262 194,040 1,985,555 1992 610,450 470,315 541,886 184,529 1,807,177 1993 572,423 444,351 509,950 178,379 1,705,103 1994 541,343 426,327 468,662 174,158 1,610,490 1995 508,559 400,409 434,617 174,639 1,518,224 1996 491,103 389,001 416,735 174,883 1,471,722 1997 491,707 377,385 395,564 173,906 1,438,562 1998 483,880 367,470 382,338 173,142 1,406,830 1999 479,426 360,590 373,046 172,641 1,385,703 2000 482,170 355,654 373,193 173,321 1,384,338 2001 480,801 353,571 377,810 172,934 1,385,116 2002 486,542 368,251 385,051 173,733 1,413,577 2003 490,174 376,402 379,742 177,030 1,423,348 2004 494,112 369,523 370,445 177,207 1,411,287 2005 488,944 351,666 358,700 178,704 1,378,014 2006 496,362 352,620 353,496 178,923 1,381,401 2007 519,471 337,312 338,671 184,574 1,380,082 2011 565,463 333,370 325,123 201,157 1,468,364 2012 562,000 332,800 325,700 202,100 1,422,600 2013 552,100 328,900 322,700 197,300 1,401,000 2017 (planned) 490,000 328,600 319,500 182,100 1,320,200 Table 2. Active Duty Military Personnel, 1940–2011164 NOTE: Figures for 1998 through August 2007 include cadets/midshipmen. Military personnel on extended or continuous active duty. Excludes reserves on active duty for training.

Few would argue that despite these personnel reductions, the US has maintained its military dominance and capability to project power anywhere and at any time throughout the world. The services have leveraged technology to increase effectiveness while reducing personnel, the result of a targeted offset

164 Table from infoplease.com available at: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004598.html#ixzz2HzBLUevJ. Source of data is from the Department of Defense. Data for 2012, 2013 and 2017 projection from United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Request, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer. 139 strategy pusued during the Cold War to counter or “offset” Soviet numerical superiority with superior technological capability. One of the most pervasive and successful groups of leveraged operational technologies are of course the

C3ISR space force enhancement capabilities provided from space.

In view of the continual decrease in personnel noted above, as expected, the reduction of combat platforms has also been dramatic. The Air Force for instance has seen a dramatic decrease in aircraft. The figure below is from a

Mitchell Institute report and shows the decline in aircraft numbers through 2008, since 2008, the trend downward has continued, with even deeper cuts projected should sequestration once again force the Air Force to eliminate aircraft.165

There is a significant drop in the post-cold war timeframe that corresponds with the 1991 Gulf War. This is also concurrent with the highly publicized use of precision munitions in that war, an event that has shaped

America’s expectation for accuracy, and by extension the demand for limited collateral damage. These factors help to fuel the expanded use of the Global

Positioning System (GPS) for munitions guidance. More accurate munitions have in turn led to the reduction in the number of airplanes required for delivery, which in turn has reduced the need for support aircraft like tankers, cargo aircraft, and escort fighters.

165 Col. James C. Ruehrmund Jr., USAF (Ret.) and Christopher J. Bowie, Arsenal of Airpower: USAF Aircraft Inventory from 1950-2009, A Mitchell Institute Report, 2010. 140

Figure 11. US Aircraft Inventory over the Decades

The Mitchell Institute report specifically cites the advent of satellite reconnaissance as a factor in reducing the need for reconnaissance aircraft, weather satellites for practically eliminating the need for weather aircraft, GPS for its ability to not only provide more accurate navigation and accuracy as mentioned above but also for enabling the creation and use of unmanned systems that are longer duration and require fewer personnel.166 All these efficiencies are direct results of space capabilities. Figure 9 below shows both the personnel and platform trends for the US Air Force over time. While both trend lines indicate rapid reductions, note that the trend line for aircraft is steeper than personnel, reflecting the persistent leveraging of technology. This expansion of technology has led to increasing missions being performed by

166 Ruehrmund and Bowie, pp. 10. 141 each aircraft platform. Design efforts like utilizing attack aircraft as forward sensors to feed information into the information-strike complex has led to even larger integration and dependence on space to move that sensor information back to centralized command and control nodes.

Figure 12. Air Force Personnel and Aircraft

The US Navy has also seen a significant reduction in ships since the end of the cold war. In the two decades previous to the Gulf War, the Navy averaged 575 ships, 207 of which were surface warships, which include all the combat ships except for attack submarines. In the decade immediately following the Gulf War, the average dropped to just under four hundred ships per year

142 with an average surface warfare fleet of 133 ships. As of 2010, the decade average has dropped to just over 290 ships and just under 120 surface warfare vessels, with the exact number for 2011 at a fleet of 285 ships with 122 surface combatants.167 These numbers represent a near halving of the US Navy in just two decades. For perspective on these numbers, consider the decade long commitment of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and the current ship and fleet numbers compared with Vietnam era highs of a 932 ship fleet and 304 surface combatants in 1968, or the post-WWII highs of a 1122 ship fleet in 1953 (the year the Korean War Armistice is signed) and of 355 surface warships in 1957.

Clearly, the current naval inventory is much smaller, but like the Air Force case above, the US Navy believes it has increased its combat power, as the vision statement from then Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Verne Clark explains.

“The 21st century sets the stage for tremendous increases in naval precision, reach, and connectivity, ushering in a new era of joint operational effectiveness. Innovative concepts and technologies will integrate sea, land, air, space, and cyberspace to a greater extent than ever before. In this unified battlespace, the sea will provide a vast maneuver area from which to project direct and decisive power around the globe. Future naval operations will use revolutionary information superiority and dispersed, networked force capabilities to deliver unprecedented offensive power, defensive assurance, and operational independence to Joint Force Commanders. Our Navy and its partners will dominate the continuum of warfare from the maritime domain—deterring forward in peacetime, responding to crises, and fighting and winning wars. By doing so, we will continue the evolution of U.S. naval power from the blue-water, war-at-sea focus of the "Maritime Strategy" (1986), through the littoral emphasis of ". . . From the Sea" (1992) and "Forward

167 Calculations by author based on US Navy Historical Command’s tables of U.S. Navy Active Ship Force Levels, 1886-present. Available at: http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm#1993

143

. . . from the Sea" (1994), to a broadened strategy in which naval forces are fully integrated into global joint operations against regional and transnational dangers..."Sea Power 21" will guide our Navy as we defend our nation and defeat our enemies in the uncertain century before us.”168

While the vision statement above hints at the profound reliance on many space based capabilities to achieve this ‘unprecedented’ offensive and defensive power, later portions of the document clearly call out enablers that are primarily the fruits of space capability, for instance, combat power, coined Sea

Strike rests on the “Knowledge dominance provided by persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance [and] will be converted into action by a full array of Sea Strike options—next-generation missiles capable of in-flight targeting, aircraft with stand-off precision weapons, extended-range naval gunfire, information operations, stealthy submarines, unmanned combat vehicles, and Marines and SEALs on the ground.”169 Every strike capability mentioned is critically dependent on space capabilities. The Sea Shield and

Sea basing portions of Sea Power 21 are also, though not as clearly, dependent upon space. Figure 3 charts Navy personnel and surface warship inventories over time. Note the same steeper decrease in ships than for personnel due to the leveraging of technology.

168 Vern Clark, “Sea Power 21: Projecting Decisive Joint Capabilities,” Proceedings, (October 2002), pp 1. Emphasis by author. 169 Vern Clark, Sea Power 21, pp. 6. 144

Figure 13. Navy Personnel & Ships

It is entirely plausible that these Air Force and Navy platform reductions are mostly a result of the end of the Cold War, and a desire to either achieve some ‘peace dividend’ or a belief that the world is indeed less dangerous without the Soviet Union, and thus fewer weapons of war are required. However, budget expenditures for the department of defense continue to be very large, and when using military spending as the yardstick, the United States is still the pre-eminent military in the world. If a more peaceful world were the primary driver behind fewer platforms being procured, then one could expect a lowering of defense spending as well, not only in the US, but also across the globe.

The reality however, is that defense spending in the US has risen steadily since the 2001 terror attacks and is higher than during the 1991 Gulf War. The 145 rising costs of personnel and equipment tend to obscure the actual gap between

US military capability and the rest of the world. Indeed, a council on Foreign

Relations report stated, “If military budgets were compared in a way that reflected varying personnel costs, U.S. military preeminence would appear smaller than it does using straightforward comparisons based on market exchange rates.”170 While more money is being spent on personnel, the costs of weapons acquisition continue to rise, resulting in fewer platforms purchased while spending the same or more money. There are many reasons for the rise in costs per unit, including reduced efficiency with reduced numbers, higher reliance on sophisticated technology, budget uncertainty and fluctuation.

Whether the impetus for reductions comes from a peaceful world or a greater reliance on space enablers, the result is the same; a dramatic dependence upon space. One can view the increasing expenditures on space capabilities as evidence of growing dependence on space and C4ISR. Figure 4 below indicates a near doubling of investment from the late sixties to the mid-2000’s, an increase from approximately 15% of Table of Allowances (TOA) or budget to

26%.171

170 Dinah Walker, Trends in US Military Spending, Council on Foreign Relations, 2013, pp. 10. 171 Ruehrmund and Bowie, pp. 4. 146

Figure 14. USAF Budget Allocation over time

US dependence on space based C3ISR continues to grow. In a speech in April 2013, the Commander of United States Strategic Command, General C.

Robert Kehler said “I don't have to remind anyone in this room how important space is to our national security and the security of our allies and partners. It is also important to our economy, to civil activities and scientific discovery. Make no mistake. Space operations underpin U.S. national military objectives and they enhance the combat capability of the joint force. No other armed force relies on space as broadly or deeply as the U.S. military and no other military force

147 derives the same unprecedented operational advantages from its use of space capabilities.”172

All this information supports the argument that a smaller US force is dependent and highly leveraged on space capabilities in order to maintain combat effectiveness. The exact amount of dependence on space for this combat power remains a matter of empirical investigation. The statements cited by experts in this paper and in many other areas attest to the dependence on space. Determining quantifiable detail on US space dependence is a future project requiring significant numbers of interviews, the construction of a scale of dependence for these major systems and platforms, detailed technical analysis, and classified access.

However, anecdotal evidence from early discussions and initial interviews indicate there is rarely, if ever, any attempt to practice or exercise without space capability. Interviews have also shown there are critical dependencies upon space that vary across mission types. For example, Remotely Piloted Aircraft

(RPA) missions are completely dependent upon space communications for control and data, and will automatically break off mission operations and attempt to return to base if their space control link is interrupted or lost.173 The critical dependence of RPA operations is interesting and concerning because RPA operations are currently receiving a significant thrust for expanded use in future

172 General C. Robert Kehler, speech to the 29th National Space Symposium, Colorado Spring, CO, April 16, 2013. Available at: http://www.stratcom.mil/speeches.

173 Colonel Scott Bruzinski, USAF (interview with author, May 8, 2014) 148

US military strategy. Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) missions are also critically dependent upon space, specifically space-based ISR, without which mission planning activities are unproductive, leading to flight operations that are more about flying around hoping for a target than actively suppressing the enemy, with huge reductions in efficiency and large increases in time and cost.174 Space capabilities are highly leveraged by all military users, across all services and missions, and

Studies on the level of space dependence have been undertaken before with mixed success. The information itself is sensitive as it identifies vulnerabilities of extant combat capability, and it is difficult to assess marginal impacts on system effectiveness. For instance, aircraft can still fly, navigate and deliver munitions without space enabled guidance and communications, however, the munitions may be less effective, and the lack of navigation can impact combat radius, while the lack of communications can inhibit operational timing. These types of factors will have to be assessed based on sound assumptions of space enabled dependence and cross-checked with the opinions of experts in these systems.

Because this type of comprehensive study doesn’t exist, and to avoid classified information hurdles, this effort utilizes the case study factors developed in chapter three to determine if the US is over dependent upon space capabilities. The remainder of the chapter will be devoted to assessing if the factors of proliferation, concentration and dependence are present in the US

174 Colonel Thomas Bruno, USMC, (interview with author, May 19, 2014) 149 space case to a degree sufficient to make the determination that the US is indeed over dependent on space.

Is the US over dependent on space?

As you recall from the previous chapter, the factors resulting in overdependence are multiple to include proliferation of the technology due to operational success which creates multiple users and greater demand for the technology. There are backward compatibility pressures that prevent new or different approaches being fielded, risk avoidance pressures impeding change from successful current options, as well as resource pressures that exacerbate risk avoidance and impede investment in new and different approaches. These all lead to the concentration of capabilities and risk, in the one case into the

Enigma cipher machine, and in the other, onto a small number of satellites.

There are also psychological factors like over-confidence in the status quo, likely tied to success or threat denial. Finally and most importantly, the existence of a constitutive relationship between the capability and operational doctrine is critical in moving from dependence to overdependence, creating an exploitable vulnerability.

Proliferation due to success

Successful use of space expands the scope of space support requirements

The old adage goes, nothing succeeds like success, and the case for space dependents definitely follows this adage. One of the major reasons the

US has become so dependent upon space is the extremely successful

150 leveraging of these unique capabilities. The evolution of space dependence was highlighted in chart form earlier. The reasoning behind this growing dependence is simple. The US was able to perform many military feats that before space were deemed impossible. Examples of these include the use of GPS to help armor navigate through the featureless desert, at night, during the 1991 Gulf

War. The “left hook” maneuver envisioned by General Schwarzkopf to achieve surprise required precise timing. If either the hook force or the frontal force arrived too late, the Iraqi forces would be able to fight the coalition forces piecemeal or escape. This maneuver would have been considered too risky without the navigation potential of GPS.

Another example involves the expanding use of overhead imaging. The resolution and volume of overhead imagery was initially created to monitor nuclear weapons facilities. As the technology improved, the US began to provide images for other uses beyond those for nuclear monitoring. These images were not originally intended to for operational or tactical use, and therefore were being discarded. Once US military agencies recognized that high quality images were available, they began the process of setting up exploitation and dissemination capabilities as a useful by-product of nuclear force monitoring. Of course, this new intelligence source proved extremely useful, which led the services to begin requesting more tailored capabilities, including the ability to survey moving ground targets, the capacity to look through foliage, and multi-spectral and hyper-spectral imaging.

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As the military began recognizing the potential of space, they established an organization called TENCAP, which stands for Tactical Exploitation of

National CAPabilities. TENCAP, established in the USAF in 1977 helped to bring existing intelligence and capabilities from the National space community to the tactical warfighter.175 The organization’s charter has three related tasks,

“First, exploit space for the tactical user. Second, train and educate the warfighters, and third, figure out how to build in future capabilities to space programs and to aircraft programs. In other words, tailor the acquisitions process to accommodate these future capabilities.”176 The TENCAP effort is evidence of a constructive relationship between space capabilities and how the

US operates and fights.

The Constitutive Relationship – US Operational Doctrine and Space

The striking advantage of space on the tactical battlefield has given great leverage to the emphasis placed on the third TENCAP task of shaping future space and aircraft capabilities. This shaping effect has contributed to the unintentional overdependence upon space programs. Col White, a commander of AF TENCAP provides an example in the Talon Namath program, which uses extremely accurate GPS capabilities to allow for the use of a small diameter bomb (SDB). This capability was instrumental in the development of the F-22

175 Ed White, “Air Force TENCAP celebrates three decades of impressive warfighter support programs,” Air Force Space Command website, August 26, 2008, available at: http://www.afspc.mil/news/story.asp?id=123112413, accessed 16 June, 2014. 176 Ed White, quoting AF TENCAP commander Colonel Robert F. “Bob” White in “Air Force TENCAP celebrates three decades of impressive warfighter support programs,” Air Force Space Command website, August 26, 2008. 152

Raptor. The SDB, which is highly dependent upon accurate GPS for effectiveness, increases the air to ground attack capabilities of the F-22 by

400%, from two 1000 lb Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), to eight SDBs, a point which was used successfully to argue for continued funding and support of the aircraft by the USAF.177 The USAF had argued for higher numbers of the very expensive F-22, (as high as 800 aircraft in the beginning of the program) as budgets rose, and the momentum shifted to reduced numbers or potential cancellation, the AF began touting the air to ground capabilities of the F-22 in order to save it. The SDB allowed the AF to emphasize the F-22’s ability to attack ground targets, silencing the critics who felt the expense of the F-22 wasn’t justified for an aircraft that could only carry two ground attack weapons.

“The F-22’s speed in attacking ground targets, at first with 1000 pound JDAMs and later with the equally powerful 250-pound SDB178, is what makes it of prime interest to the Air Force now, according to Gen. John P. Jumper, USAF

Chief of Staff.”179 In this example, the added pressure of limited resources resulted in a drastically reduced number of F-22 aircraft being purchased.

This is just one example of how successful space support has expanded the requirement for space, creating potential overdependence. There have been nearly seventy different successful projects in the three plus decades since AF

177 John A. Tirpak, “The F-22 on the Line,” Air Force Magazine, Vol. 85, No. 9 (September 2002), pp. 36-45. 178 The SDB is only considered equally powerful because the increased GPS accuracy allows the bomb’s energy to be targeted on a more precise (smaller) area, thus increasing the relative energy yield per target. Without the enhanced GPS, the bomb is only 1/4th the power. Emphasis added. 179 John A. Tirpak, “The F-22 on the Line,” Air Force Magazine, Vol. 85, No. 9 (September 2002), pp. 36-45. 153

TENCAP was established.180 There are also Navy and Army TENCAP programs, all part of a joint program, so the expansion of space support and requirements goes far beyond the very significant success of the AF program.

The end result of the SDB example is not only the effects on the aircraft, but the

SDB is now planned for use on most US combat aircraft. This example is typical of the pattern of successful use of space creating an expanded scope of space support requirements. The expanding usefulness of space however means that while scope and requirements proliferate, the numbers of space assets required for support generally do not. Thus the ratio of supported aircraft, tanks, ships, planes, et cetera increases, as the number of space assets that support them decreases, further concentrating risk.

The influence of C3ISR on the modern American way of war

The importance of C3ISR can be summarized in two words, information and connectivity. Space C3ISR has evolved to give the US a preeminent advantage in acquiring national security and military operational information or intelligence and then moving that relevant information to units, command centers and warfighters creating localized information dominance. Information dominance, even in the remotest areas, enables all the classic military advantages, including mass, maneuver, surprise, security, and economy of force. In a Marshall institute forum on national security and economic impacts of space, Dr. John Sheldon, professor at the USAF School of Advanced Air and

180 Ed White, “Air Force TENCAP celebrates three decades of impressive warfighter support programs,” Air Force Space Command website, August 26, 2008 154

Space Studies forcefully stated, “…without access to satellites, our communications become more expensive and laborious. The modern American way of war would be rendered impracticable…the modern American way of war is utterly dependent upon space.”181 This dependence extends beyond communications to intelligence gathering and to a great extent, the operations of our weapons systems.

Table 3. Evolution of the Space Enabled Strike Complex Bandwidth used per 5k Number US Operation forces Weapon Type Used Percentage Desert Storm 1991 1Mega-bit/sec Unguided 245,000 92% 37 days (Mbps) Laser/EO-guided 20,450 8% GPS guided Allied Force 1999 24.5 Mbps Unguided 16,000 66% 78 days Laser/EO-guided 7,000 31% GPS guided 700 3% Enduring Freedom 68.2 Mbps Unguided 9,000 41% 01-02 Laser/EO-guided 6,000 27% 90 days GPS guided 7,000 32% Iraqi Freedom 03 51.1 Mbps Unguided 9,251 32% 29 days Laser/EO/GPS 19,948 68% guided Table 3. Evolution of the Space Enabled Strike Complex182

The table above shows the steady increase in guided munitions. This chart only captures the pervasiveness of GPS aided munitions delivered from the air.

181 The George C. Marshall Institute, Dr. John Sheldon, A Day Without Space: Economic and National Security Implications, (Washington: The George C. Marshall Institute, 2008), p. 39. 182 The George C. Marshall Institute, Dr. Peter Hayes, A Day Without Space: Economic and National Security Ramifications, (Washington: The George C. Marshall Institute, 2008), p 30. 155

All US strike aircraft can now deliver these munitions.183 GPS has also been leveraged for artillery fire, with the first operational GPS guided artillery shell being fired in Afghanistan in 2008, and the first operational GPS guided mortar round being fired there in 2011.184 The communications throughput numbers in column one also show the exponential increase in information used per five thousand forces, from one mega bit per second (Mbps) in DESERT STORM to an average 60 Mbps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Powerful evidence of the shaping effects of space on the operational approaches of the United States.

“The impact of increased PGM use has been profound. One PGM is equivalent to dozens if not hundreds of unguided bombs in the effects that it achieves—neutralizing the target. Besides lowering the risk to the attacking aircrew (fewer aircraft/sorties are needed, thus putting fewer crewmembers at risk), PGM use dramatically reduces the amount of collateral damage. Yet,

PGMs are only as good as the intelligence used to guide them. If it is now possible to put a bomb through a specific window of a particular building, then it is essential to ensure that it is the correct window.”185 So, the accuracy provided by space precision navigation and timing leads to smaller bomb sizes, which creates a pull for more intelligence information, which increases the amount of space capability required to move the intelligence, and the secondary effect is

183 Anthony H. Cordesman, “The “Instant Lessons" of the Iraq War: Main Report,” Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 2003. 184 SSgt Todd Christopherson, “Soldiers fire first precision-guided mortar in Afghanistan,” April 7, 2011, available at: http://www.army.mil/article/54502/ 185 Phillip S. Meilinger, “Airpower and Collateral Damage: Theory, Practices and Challenges,” Airpower and the Environment, (Montgomery: Air Force Research Institute, 2013), p. 118. 156 an increasing reliance on C3ISR, a cycle depicted below which has led to the astronomical increases noted in the table above.

Figure 15. Space Dependence Cycle

It’s not all bad news however; the payoff can be seen in chart below.

Precision weapons cuts in half the number of aircraft required per mission. The

C3ISR complex, in combination with stealth technology, has led to even more dramatic reductions in the number of airframes required to accomplish operational missions.

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Figure 16. Effects of Space and Stealth on Aircraft 186

Of course, stealthy aircraft are also heavily dependent upon precision, intelligence and information flow in order to approach and successfully avoid enemy detection. The routes of stealth aircraft are highly complex, built around specific angles and altitudes that are most conducive to their stealthy effect, and reliant upon the intelligence of enemy radar and SAM sites provided primarily by space-based C3ISR. As Figure 13 illustrates, space dependence has concentrated risk into fewer numbers of aircraft as well as into smaller numbers of vulnerable spacecraft. The primary difference being the terrestrial, sea and

186 Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies, James C. Reuhrmund and Christopher J. Bowie, Arsenal of Airpower: USAF Aircraft Inventory 1950-2009 (Arlington: The Mitchell Institute Press, 2010), p 11. 158 air platforms ability to modify and improve to mitigate threats, something that on- orbit space craft cannot do.

Risk Avoidance

Space assets generate fewer political risks

The unique and treaty guaranteed right of free access to over flight in space makes the use of space assets for national and operational objectives less politically risky than over flight via aircraft or surveillance via sea platforms.

Additionally, the unmanned nature of space systems gives them a quality of political sterility that manned systems like the space shuttle do not. The political fallout of the US Air Force Dyna-SOAR manned orbiter program in the early

1960s was enough to help cancel the program, in large part due to the perceptual similarities between manned aircraft and spacecraft crewed by military officers.187 There is a clear political difference between unmanned and manned systems, even though in reality, the capabilities of these systems are relatively unaffected by the presence of human beings. This lowered political risk has led to the continual shifting of mission demands to the space domain.

The most classic and obvious case is the political fallout of the U-2 shoot down of Francis Gary Powers in 1960. This event “created enough concern for the Congress to inject funds into the SAMOS [Satellite and Missile Observation

System] project far in excess of the administration’s request for FY1961.”188 The loss of a satellite therefore has practically no political impact, provided it does

187 Dr. Roy K. Houchin, (interview with author, May 8, 2014) 188 Paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945-1984 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 46. 159 not contain any hazardous material. Satellites are also less risky than off shore collectors like ships in international waters, or aircraft in international airspace.

These means are unsuitable for denied areas in the interior of countries, but even when able to collect information, these assets run the risk of accidental maneuver into sovereign territory or even collision, as was the case with the

Chinese fighter jet and the US Navy EP-3 in April of 2001.

Acquisition, Cost and Risk conspire to concentrate risk in a handful of assets

The launch and acquisition process for spacecraft is one of the largest reasons the US has become so dependent on space, a dependency factor rooted in slow acquisition timelines and the eventual concentration of capabilities into fewer and fewer space assets. This process spawned the term the “vicious circle” of space acquisition by Major General Tom Taverney, as depicted in the figure below.189 In his article, Taverney describes the impacts of increasing costs of space acquisition, the technology risk and the pressures that result in negative effects on the process. As costs rise, the pressure to ensure successful launch and on orbit performance increases, which in turn increases the costs, launching another parallel spiral. In addition, the increased pressure forces technological risk aversion, locking-in older, proven technologies for use on orbit. This has the effect of converging space dependence, making more and more users dependent on the same aging technologies. The challenges of

189 Maj Gen Thomas Taverny, “Resilient, Disaggregated, and Mixed Constellations,” Space Review, 28 Aug 2011. 160 backward compatibility with later-fielded ground equipment user sets also exacerbate this problem.

Figure 17. The vicious Acquisitions Cycle190

While the cycle itself isn’t unique to space acquisition, it does have unique impacts to space capabilites because of the inaccesibility of space assets on orbit. The virtual inability to change or uprade a satellite makes space acquisition the worst case scenario for the vicioius circle. The effects of this process cannot be overstated. The reduction in the number of on orbit assets overall has been dramatic over the last two decades, causing a concentration of

190 Maj Gen Thomas Taverny. 161 capabilities into a small number of systems. The small denominator of systems makes the dependence and risk larger.

Decreased Defense Funding Overall

Because space capabilities are so prohibitively expensive, decreases in the defense budget generally create a cliff edge, where funding is maintained because of the sunk costs and dependence on the systems, squeezing money from other defense priorities, including space priorities, until the systems are abandoned. This happened with the Space Based Infrared System, which completely lost the LEO satellite segment, with the drop of Advanced Extremely

High Frequency (AEHF) satellites 8-10, as well as with the Milstar constellation that went from 12 to 6 satellites. This pressure feeds the vicious circle above, concentrating risk, and increasing dependence on space because other services are forced to use existing assets, continuing compatibility with on-orbit satellites, in order to justify the program.

Decreased funding for acquisitions tends to slow the development of new spacecraft, which slows the fielding of corresponding user equipment, which prolongs the dependence upon the existing satellites. Even after climbing out of a funding valley, because it is not cost effective to develop and field user equipment until there are enough on-orbit assets to satisfy user needs, the user equipment segment of the space system always lags the satellite segment. This lag is often cited as a reason for slowing down acquisition to save money, a catch 22 situation that has plagued many systems. This results in more

162 expensive interim solutions, which stresses resources, causing the entire process to begin another parallel spiral.

Concentrated capabilities make for a broad user base

There is an additional process reason beyond the vicious cycle described above for concentrated use of space technology, the joint requirements approach built into US defense acquisition. There is a statutory requirement, driven by a desire to efficiently spend US tax dollars, for large system purchases to be reviewed to prevent mission overlap and ensure joint interoperability where appropriate.191 This process stems from the lack of interoperability of service equipment brought to light in the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. Because of issues like radios that couldn’t talk with each other, service parochialism and reticence to cooperate, the Congress eventually passed the Goldwater Nicholls act, which forced the Services to think and act in a more joint manner.

Part of the implementation was the Joint Requirements Oversight Council designed to advise the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on the level of joint service applicability of service capability requirements. This process has created conditions where the best avenue for approval of any new system is to show how it can be used or leveraged by multiple services. A by-product of this process for space acquisitions has been to increase multiple service dependence on the same platforms in order to secure approval and funding.

This process of course, when laid on top of the vicious cycle leads to convergence of multiple services on small numbers of on-orbit assets.

191 10 U.S. Code § 181 - Joint Requirements Oversight Council 163

Conclusion

Figure 18 below shows the comparison of factors between the Enigma case and the US space case. The key factors that lead to overdependence are grouped into the categories of proliferation of the technology/capability, the concentration of the capability, the constitutive relationship or shaping effects of the technology/capability on operational military doctrine, and the psychological factors that contribute to and support these factors. As you can see, the factors for US space are nearly identical to the German side in the Battle of the Atlantic case and very different from the Allies. This is a significant evidence for US strategic vulnerability in space.

There are some minor differences between the German factors and the

US case. In the constitutive relationship category, the Enigma case is coded yellow for technology shaping operations and systems changing due to the technology. This is explained by the newness of encrypted radio communications technology and its adoption to support the mobile approach to warfare. The mobile combined arms approach required something like encrypted radio, but blitzkrieg doctrine itself was shaped more from the German reaction to WWI than it was by the technology of Enigma and radio. The reason system changes due to technology is yellow for the Enigma case is because of the short duration of the Enigma, and the high intensity conflict they were involved in throughout. There simply wasn’t enough time to see significant changes; however there was continued dependence throughout the war.

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Figure 18. Case Study comparison

The psychological factor of overconfidence is rated yellow for the US case because while confidence in space systems is very high, warnings, some over a decade old, like those from the space commission report have kept many in the space operations community from becoming over confident in space. US overconfidence is tempered because the US recognizes there is a threat. This is reflected in the red assessment for denying the threat for the US case. While

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Admiral Donitz in the Enigma case refused to believe the ciphers had been compromised, nearly the opposite is true in the US. Thanks to the efforts of past and current commanders of AFSPC and USSTRATCOM, and mostly to the

Chinese kinetic ASAT demonstrations, the US is clear about the potential of a threat.

The last set of case factors looks at the adversary and whether or not the over dependent condition is ripe for exploiting. In the Enigma case of course, we know the factors resulted in exploitation of German overdependence, leading to decisive results in the Battle of the Atlantic. In the case of US space, the

Chinese have shown high level interest in pursuing ASAT capabilities, and have demonstrated the capability on more than one occasion. The only factor where they are not matched is in the concentration of effort. The Chinese kinetic ASAT program is shepherded by the 2d Rocket Artillery (RA), but facets of the research and development are under other organizations. Additionally, there are other ASAT capabilities not addressed here to include directed energy and co- orbital weapons that are not currently controlled by 2d RA, therefore the ASAT program writ large is definitely not a centralized effort.

Overall the high degree of matching factors leads to the conclusion that the US is indeed over dependent on space capability, and that the Chinese are in a decent position to exploit that overdependence, which they can improve by centralizing their efforts. The next chapter will present conclusions and implications.

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Chapter 5. Conclusions and Implications

“The history of warfare from antiquity to the present records innumerable attempts to secure by some new contrivance an immediate tactical advantage, perhaps a decisive one. In such inventions the essential purpose is to obtain one’s end before the adversary can bring counter-measures to bear. It is the time interval that counts.”192 Bernard Brodie

Conclusions

The plan of this paper was to solve two related puzzles. The first was to explain why the Chinese government would choose to pursue the very specific technology of anti-satellite weaponry. A technology which has extremely narrow use, is very difficult to create, and offers less economic value in terms of spin-off than nearly every other space technology they could have pursued. The second puzzle posed the question of how it could be possible that the United States, the most powerful nation the Earth has ever known, could manage to negate their conventional military advantage without realizing they were doing it. The paper has provided and supported answers to both puzzles.

It is clear now why the Chinese decided to invest so heavily in ASAT technology. Their interpretation of US victories in the Gulf War, and their impotence in the 1995-1996 Taiwan straits crisis, led to their intense evaluation of US military power. Their study led them to the determination that information in warfare was a key to US power. They also identified many space capabilities

192 Bernard Brodie, Sea Power in the Machine Age (New York: Greenwood Press, 1943), pp. 6. 167 like communications, intelligence, and precision navigation and timing that enabled this information flow, resulting in profound speed and lethality. Chapter two provides the reasoning behind the Chinese effort, and explains their success. The Chinese were looking for an avenue to increase their bargaining power in relation to the United States; they identified a potential US weakness, and then undertook a concerted effort to develop systems to exploit what they believed was a significant operational vulnerability.

Thus we can conclude the Chinese have achieved what they set out to do. They have proven the capability to destroy satellites in LEO, and have demonstrated the ability to lift that same capability into higher orbits, placing

MEO satellites like GPS and GEO satellites like communications and signals intelligence gatherers at risk. There can be no other conclusion regarding

Chinese ASAT capability; however there is still the question of how many of these SC-19 ASAT rockets have been built.

The SC-19 ASAT rocket is a variant of the DF-21 mobile medium range ballistic missile (MRBM) system, labeled the CSS-5 by the West. This is the most common MRBM in the Chinese inventory. The use of the DF-21 ensures that if required, the targeting problem for the US is made more difficult because of the common nature of the launcher and its mobility. The current estimate is somewhere around 120 road-mobile launchers that would have to be targeted.

If one recalls the difficulties of targeting the similar sized road mobile SCUD missiles during the Gulf War, it is obvious why the Chinese chose this operational approach. The dismal results of the SCUD hunts took place in a 168 smaller geographical area in a completely uncontested environment. The conclusion is the Chinese will use the DF-21’s commonality to hide the exact number of SC-19 capable rockets and use the DF-21’s survivability to increase the level of risk and uncertainty for US satellites.

It is also logical to conclude that China will produce enough SC-19 rockets to achieve destruction of US C3ISR satellite targets. This is based on the overt demonstration of capability and Chinese intentions to thwart US warfighting success. These intentions are supported by additional robust non- kinetic and cyber ASAT programs that are outside the scope of this analysis.

As part of a larger program however, the US can expect the Chinese to bring the kinetic ASAT program to fruition by building enough ASAT rockets to destroy multiple C3ISR systems should they choose to engage in conflict. Without this rocket inventory, the threat and therefore bargaining power of the SC-19 is not credible. The amount of time it will take to achieve this level of inventory is unknown, however the combination of the common launcher and their already demonstrated capability means the Chinese could likely imply they have the inventory to do the job in the very near term.

The first conclusion we can make about the United States; The US is strategically vulnerable because of over dependence on space capability. The case study in chapter four matches significantly the factors of overdependence identified in the Battle of the Atlantic case. This is the first systematic analysis of space dependence, and provides support for years of senior leader warnings about the importance of space to the US method of warfare. Despite those 169 warnings, the process of overdependence has continued because of the factors identified in the case and shown to be present in the US military. The constitutive relationship that exists between space force enhancement and US military operations and doctrine, the proliferation of space dependence, and subsequent concentration of risk in small numbers of platforms are the most significant factors. This overdependence is a critical and exploitable operational and strategic vulnerability.

An additional conclusion is that mitigation of this vulnerability will take time. The vicious cycle of space acquisition, the difficulty and expense of providing space force enhancement, and the unique character of many space- based force multipliers makes quick mitigation unrealistic. There are current ideas as to how best to mitigate the current vulnerability. Trying to break out of this cycle is the focus of an article by Lt General Ellen Pawlikowski, the current head of USAF space acquisitions and Mr. Doug Loverro, Deputy Assistant

Secretary of Defense for Space Policy. In looking at the fragility of our current space capabilities, threats, and the need for resiliency in space, they conclude

“the best means available to affordably provide resilient space capabilities the war fighter can depend upon and adapt as mission needs evolve is to use a distributed architecture strategy coupled with a payload-focused acquisition strategy.”193 This approach may not actually reduce US space dependence,

193 Ellen Pawlikowski, Doug Loverro, and Tom Cristler, “Space: Disruptive Challenges, New Opportunities, and New Strategies,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 50. 170 however, it should at least decrease the concentration of risk, but it is a long way from realization.

Implications

The most significant implication of Chinese ASAT capability arrayed against US space vulnerability is that in order for the US to win a conflict with the

Chinese, the US must negate the Chinese ability to destroy the US advantage in space. In other words, the US faces a pre-emptive decision to start a war with the Chinese in order to preserve the ability to win one. The importance of thresholds cannot be overstated in this situation. While a Chinese initiated attack on US space capabilities is unlikely, such an attack does not create human casualties, nor is it an attack on US territory. Conversely, any pre- emptive attack on Chinese ASAT systems is an attack on China proper, and will result in human death. The clear difference in threshold plays an important part in the bargaining power of both parties.

To illustrate this difference, we will use the example of the Third Taiwan

Straits crisis. In that event in 1995, the Chinese postured aggressively toward

Taiwan, staging troops across the strait, and firing missiles over the strait in a threatening way in response to Taiwanese domestic events hinting at a move toward independence. The US response was to move two carrier battle groups into the strait, signaling American resolve to fight. The Chinese backed away with the knowledge they could not effectively defeat the US, and the Chinese were unwilling to cross the threshold of killing Americans. The US was able to effectively dominate the escalation without actual conflict, as both parties knew 171 the US would win should the conflict escalate further. Viewed as a bargaining situation, the US had more bargaining power than the Chinese, who rationally capitulated.

Chinese ASAT capability changes the relative bargaining power. If the same situation repeated itself today, the Chinese could launch an SC-19 as an additional escalatory move, signaling to the US their resolve to fight. The decision would then fall to the US. Would the US be willing to attack assets on mainland China to ensure their ability to prevail? If the US was willing to go to war with China over Taiwan, could the US actually complete a strike on the

Chinese that could cripple their ability to take out US space? These questions pose a significantly different situation than the US has faced in the past. This is the most important implication of the study. This hypothetical shows that the US does not have the same bargaining power it has always enjoyed in relation to the Chinese. Once the CCP has fielded a sufficient number of SC-19 rockets, they will have wrested escalation control from the US. This is a momentous shift in the power relations between the US and Chinese military.

The power shift argued here is one that has not been acknowledged by scholars of the international relations community. In a recent International

Security article, Evan Montgomery writes that both proponents of continued deep engagement with the Chinese and those favoring offshore balancing “are

172 in broad agreement regarding the durability of US military dominance.”194

Montgomery’s article highlights the rapid increase in Chinese capability, their

A2/AD strategy, and suggests that “Washington’s advantage over Beijing is not nearly as large as both sides in the grand strategy debate assume.”195 I applaud his analysis and skepticism of America’s military advantage, and have proven with this study that not only has the advantage waned, but that in a crisis scenario like the one described above, the Chinese will have the upper hand once they have a credible SC-19 threat.

This impending shift in bargaining power has further implications for future relations between the Americans and the Chinese. It can be expected for the Chinese to continue to be more aggressive in their foreign policy, not only because of their growing national power, but because of their ability to practice brinksmanship anchored by their ASAT capability. The progressing A2/AD capabilities of the Chinese are already recognized as a real problem for the US, evidenced by the establishment of the pentagon’s Air Sea Battle group chartered with devising a strategy to overcome Chinese A2/AD capabilities.

It is likely also that the US will be unwilling to provoke the Chinese, being less aggressive in their foreign policy because of the change in bargaining power. The rhetorical nature of the US pivot will likely continue, with little in terms of real military changes in the region. The US will continue to pursue less

194 Evan Braden Montgomery, “Contested Primacy in the Western Pacific: China’s Rise and the Future of U.S. Power Projection,” International Security, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Spring 2014), pp. 116. 195 Evan Braden Montgomery, pp. 116. 173 threatening avenues of economic cooperation with regional nations, but will maintain force levels and seek to build capacity while they search for mitigation to the Chinese ASAT advantage.

There is a very interesting question of what will happen to the US security alliance structure in the region if it becomes known and accepted that the

Chinese have achieved a superior bargaining position. The current order is predicated upon US military dominance, and the change in that dominance indicated by this study could have significant repercussions for the region. This question is an area ripe for additional research effort. If the US cannot be counted on to limit Chinese aggression, then the likelihood of deeper bi-lateral relationships between China and its regional neighbors increases, as clearly inferior military neighbors with deep economic ties to China will be forced to be more accepting of Chinese demands. Over reach by the Chinese could trigger a balancing reaction, however, the fissures between the regions’ nations will work to China’s advantage. The inability of the US to pass the Trans Pacific

Partnership and the placid response of Vietnam to recent territorial waters encroachment seems to be in line with regional acknowledgement of the shift in power.

The Taiwan Issue

There is a ticking clock on the Chinese advantage. The Chinese themselves are pursuing more advanced and global capabilities that are predicated on space enablers. One of the keys to exploiting the US advantage in space is China’s relative military independence from space. In the discussion 174 in chapter two, we see the difference in deterrence dynamic between the Cold

War case and the current situation. As the Chinese develop more dependence on space, they diminish the advantage of holding US space at risk, since the US has aptly demonstrated its own ASAT capability. The Chinese are determined to modernize their military forces as part of their overall modernization plan, thus by their own hand they will eventually diminish their bargaining advantage.

The US is also pursuing mitigation and will eventually arrive at some level of enhanced resilience, which also will diminish the Chinese advantage. The combination of these factors creates a time window for the Chinese to exploit. In my estimation, this window will close sometime in the next decade to fifteen years. This is enough time for the Americans to develop resilient space capabilities in combination with alternative sources and operational approaches.

During this time, Chinese space dependence will also increase to the point where creating orbits full of space junk from kinetic attacks will hurt their operations as much or more than the US. The implication for this time window then is that the Chinese will likely make a try for Taiwan sometime in the next ten years. There have been many books and articles written about the Taiwan issue, however none of them have addressed the change in military power this study identifies. The question then will be, is Taiwan worth fighting for in a war where the outcome is highly uncertain?

The conclusions and implications of this study run counter to all the prevailing wisdom regarding the balance of power in the Pacific region. The traditional calculation of power in international relations does not serve in this 175 contemporary case. The conclusion the Chinese are pursuing ASATs as a specific strategy to increase their bargaining power without triggering balancing is clear. The conclusion that the United States military is over dependent on space to the point of being vulnerable is also clear. The implications for power in the region and US and Chinese foreign policy actions are being played out daily. History has shown that power transitions always lead to conflictual relations and that the international system will find a way to sort out the power relationships. In this case, the Chinese have managed to change the power relationship in the Pacific without firing a shot and without the international community being aware of it. They will become aware when China retakes

Taiwan.

Way Ahead

It will take time to change American dependence on space, and there are significant choices in how best to mitigate current US vulnerability. The study identified multiple factors including proliferation, concentration of risk and the constitutive relationship between space and operational doctrine as most critical.

It is unlikely that the proliferation of space dependence can be reversed. The benefits derived from space outlined earlier are too advantageous to give up.

Users of space will not be willing to stop enjoying the advantages space provides. The US should however heed the multiple user categories lesson.

Efforts should be made to ensure that strategic, operational and tactical users have distributed their dependence on space assets. This is not to say that each of these users can’t use the same capabilities, but they should be aware of 176 space systems that are being used by multiple categories of users. This condition makes them a more inviting target, and will have a larger impact if attacked.

The previously mentioned approach of disaggregation is an effort to dilute risk concentration by spreading space missions across a larger number of platforms and hosts. This effort has gained momentum recently, but still requires a significant amount of research and funding to come to fruition.

Because of the reasons identified in the cases, the risk of failing to provide space force enhancement make moving to a new approach a difficult sell on

Capitol Hill. The rather large challenge is providing assurance to warfighters that changing from the current exquisite platform approach, where one or two satellites provide tailored, high quality images for example, to a disaggregated constellation of more payloads, each with less capability individually, but the same or similar capability in the aggregate, is possible. Some hosted payload operations have already been tested successfully, but additional information is required.196 According to the case factors, any approach that increases the number of platforms would spread the risk, helping to mitigate vulnerability, and thus should be pursued.

Movement toward disaggregation could help decrease backward compatibility pressures, however there are additional assurance and cost issues associated with this approach. The issue of the timing of ground segment

196 Government Accountability Office. (2014). Additional Knowledge Would Better Support Decisions about Disaggregating Large Satellites. (GAO Publication No. 15-7 DOD Space Systems). Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 177 fielding to on-orbit capabilities is detailed in chapter four. Disaggregating satellite communications payloads for example, if not done in close coordination with all the services and their radio terminal procurement, could lead to loss of communications for the warfighter. This of course is a non-starter for warfighters. However, there is potential in areas like communications for disaggregated payloads to help alleviate backward compatibility issues if done correctly. For instance, new hosted payloads could be placed on satellites servicing the Pacific theater first, scoping the terminal fielding problem to a smaller set of warfighters, allowing the new systems to be fielded piecemeal.

The most important long-term focus area should be on the relationship between space technology and operational doctrine. There is no reason to give up America’s asymmetric space advantage, but more serious thought needs to be placed on future platform acquisition to ensure they can operate successfully without space force enhancement. The US military must embrace the idea that space will be denied in future conflict, and procure materials and provide training for military members that will meet the nation’s warfighting needs without depending on space force enhancement. This is critical to avoiding strategic vulnerability in the future.

In connection with this fundamental change, the US should also pursue thought on enhanced defenses for space systems. As outlined in chapter four, there are immense physical challenges to operating in space, and DCS measures that add weight to space craft will come at a cost to performance and capability. The types of technologies that can provide defense for space 178 systems are beyond the scope of this paper, but significant thought and funding is needed to discover advanced DCS capabilities. The combinations of enhanced DCS measures and platforms that can operate successfully without space force enhancement are the best long term options to mitigate space vulnerability. Heeding the findings of this study will be a good start.

179

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