DAVID A. HOLLENBACH
Those familiar with air power theory know that well before World War II and soon after World War I, Italian Air Marshal Giulio Douhet advocated that the future of war could justify bombing civilian targets by declaring total war on an adversary, later coined “strategic bombardment.” Even at the dawn of military airpower in 1921, Douhet reasoned that war should be extended to civilian and industrial targets to terrorize the population and destroy resupply, thereby hastening the enemy’s surrender. Douhet’s thesis was about adapting to the change in the character of war, and to win by destroying the enemy’s will to win, which was not considered humane or gentlemanly in previous centuries. His theories influenced the Allies’ strategic bombing campaigns of World War II in Dresden and Hamburg where industry, political infrastructure and civilian populations were targeted.
The nature of warfare continuously evolves over time. Examples include trench warfare, guerrilla, limited, blitzkrieg and mutually assured destruction strategies. Just as strategic bombing changed the character of war in World War II, the world is at a turning point where space has become a war-fighting domain, and the United States is adapting to an evolving threat environment. Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, then commander of U.S. Space Command, recently stated, “Space is now a military operational domain, thereby warranting a national security responsibility to protect U.S. and allied interests.”
Background
There is little argument that space is now a warfighting domain that is becoming increasingly crowded and contested by near peers as well as adversaries who have identified and analyzed the potential Achilles’ heels of the U.S. space infrastructure. Key to winning in space warfare and information dominance is the ability to outmaneuver our adversaries. One of our obstacles is the ability to reconstitute space-based capabilities quickly. The Space Operations doctrine, published under the direction of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defines reconstitution as “… [consisting] of actions taken to restore functionality to an acceptable level for a particular mission, operation, or contingency after severe degradation. It includes launching additional satellites or bringing additional ground stations, new signals and spectrum into play to bolster the ability to provide the capabilities and capacity required for mission success.” Unfortunately, responsive “space lift,” the ability to rapidly reconstitute a constellation, has been a difficult problem to solve, despite more than 40 years of studies, investments and debate.
The OODA Loop
The OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) Loop concept provides a model that is informed and advanced by space-based assets. The side that can go through successful, consecutive OODA loops faster than their opponent will likely win the conflict. To win in space and on Earth, the U.S. must operate at a faster tempo than our adversaries, or better yet, get inside an adversary’s OODA loop.
Most in the space defense community are familiar with OODA. U.S. Air Force Col. John Boyd developed the concept as a model to understand decision-making processes during competition, including war. The goal is to “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain the advantage. Boyd postulated that “all decisions are based on observations of the evolving situation tempered with implicit filtering of the problem being addressed.” He went on to say, “In order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries — or, better yet, get inside [the] adversary’s Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action time cycle or loop. … Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries — since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing, as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns, they are competing against.”
The team that can make the adjustments — move through its own OODA loops — faster than the opposition, has a tactical advantage, which can allow even physically outnumbered or technically inferior teams a chance to win.
Speed of need
Today, most of our space-related processes are manpower-intensive and slow and would benefit from new strategies and automation to minimize response time and free up human decision resources to maximize new OODA cycles. Therefore, a new strategy and mindset should be contemplated to become more proactive in augmenting and replenishing (launching and orbiting) our vulnerable on-orbit space assets to minimize breaks in space support to the joint force. To win in space, we need to move faster and deliberately plan and execute in terms of OODA.
Assured access to space includes space lift operations and range operations. Currently, Space Systems Command (SSC), the acquisition command in Los Angeles, conducts space lift operations. Prior to that, Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), as the operational command, owned that responsibility starting in 1990.
As we learned from the Space Transportation Architecture Study and Advanced Launch System (ALS) days (1986-1991) and after the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the launch vehicle, payload interface, infrastructure, launch operations and even personnel need further modernization to provide a more resilient and responsive capability. Faster on-orbit reconstitution is the ability to respond to failures at launch, failures on orbit — due to adversary action, cascading on-orbit collisions, wear-out and/or random problems — and increased Earth (or orbital) coverage requirements that may require the critical or time-dependent placement of new satellites into orbit.
A more responsive launch capability is essential to effective space operations to provide combat space support. Today’s launch-on-schedule (LOS) strategy, typically planned years in advance, is insufficient to support the nation’s warfighting requirements, which demand faster reconstitution. Until the joint planning process and launch procurement changes, and the supporting infrastructure is modernized to accommodate the demands of proactive on-orbit reconstitution, we run the risk of being outside OODA as our near peers and adversaries exploit our vulnerable on-orbit systems and their inability to quickly replenish the vulnerable satellite.
Historical perspective
Despite years of launch-on-demand (LOD) study and initiatives, AFSPC was unable to advance the state-of-the-art launch systems and operations. Political wrangling with NASA and the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), predecessor of the SSC, along with constrained acquisition contracts and fiscal constraints, bureaucratic resistance, and a lack of vision and understanding of the evolving joint warfighting force need, stalled U.S. launch improvement programs. Stuck with an aging infrastructure on the Eastern and Western Ranges, AFSPC, SMC and the Pentagon opted for evolving existing launch systems with the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program designed to provide more affordable and efficient space launch services for national security and commercial space. EELV’s focus was on reliability, standardization of infrastructure, launch pads and payload interfaces. However, little was done to improve throughput and speed for an AFSPC LOD scenario. AFSPC even canceled ongoing efforts to capture and study launch processing data to incrementally inform and improve launch operations. This data may have provided insight to improving the reconstitution planning system. For instance, analysis would have probably shown that a warm storage facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Vandenberg Space Force Base to store payloads and launch vehicles for quick-turn launches would decrease overall processing time. Such a capability, like the prepositioning of military supplies for wartime use, is necessary to rapidly call up a launch.
With the space mission being transferred to U.S. Strategic Command in 2003, the command adopted by default a “Fight Tonight” mentality. Fight Tonight means executing the current Operation Plan — fighting with what you have now and not what you wish to have tomorrow or have in the acquisition pipeline. As late as 2020, the Space Operations doctrine indicated the approach to on-orbit reconstitution was and is still to capitulate to the reality of the LOS limitation: “Design intricacies and constrained launch schedules result in long lead times to replenish or replace spacecraft if lost, destroyed, or inoperable. Planners should recognize this and incorporate it into branch plans accordingly, recognizing that resources may be unavailable for the duration of a specific operation or campaign. Planners should identify critical nodes and alternate capabilities to allow for mitigation of a loss of capability.”
Future operability and resilience considerations
To operate on a high-operations tempo, we need LOD-capable satellites ready to go within a few days of decision. The ability to prepare and keep a satellite in a suitable state of readiness requires payload processing, facility flexibility and excess capacity. Like the intercontinental ballistic missile force, LOD-capable satellites will need to be received, inspected, tested, processed, encapsulated and potentially loaded with propellants and then kept in that state of near-launch readiness within a facility that provides clean, environmentally controlled, secure storage.
A then-lead technical member of the ALS team, Harry Bernstein, summarized in 1988, “If a space transportation architecture is to have good operability (resiliency, availability) characteristics, then it must consist of a mixed fleet of independent launch systems. (An independent launch system is one which would not be caused to stand down due to a failure in another.) Never again can the nation opt for a one-vehicle architecture, or one in which the vast preponderance of the traffic is assigned to one vehicle system. In such situations, the frequency and consequences of failures (and failures will occur) would be intolerable, namely, too often an inability to launch, payload backlog buildups and additional costs imposed on many programs because of the standdowns. Rather, the number of independent systems in the mixed fleet must be determined, and the architecture operated, such that each system is not used excessively in relation to its demonstrated or conservatively projected reliability and standdown times. Furthermore, each system used for cargo transport must have substantial surge capability.”
Today’s peacetime and wartime requirements point to needing both an LOS and LOD capability. As Bernstein surmises, the systems could be very separate from one another so as not to assume a risk of a failure with either system grounding the other. Knowing this, new attention from the joint requirements community should be placed on building-in extra facilities capacity to accommodate an LOD capability. Modular designs promise to enable launches to be called up on short notice, and small satellites offer significant promise for faster processing, flexibility and the ability to be launched from air-launched platforms from anywhere, any time. Standard vehicle-cargo operations will also add repeatability and predictable processes. Reduced on-orbit test and checkout time would reduce time as well. An LOD system with high operability and a mobile launch platform would seem to satisfy the requirement.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Summary
Rapid space force reconstitution provides responsive and flexible support to the joint force. The side that can move faster than the opposition has a tactical advantage. France had 3,000 tanks and Germany had 2,400 in 1940. But the Germans structured their military to support blitzkrieg. France was blind to this revolution in warfare and was decisively defeated.
Rapid force reconstitution is an urgent national priority. As retired Air Force Col. Jeffrey Caton said in his groundbreaking research in 1994, “A LOD strategy deserves serious and urgent consideration and advocacy by joint war planners to ensure that the future joint force has critical space-based support when and where they need it.” That same urgency should be extended to cover on-orbit reconstitution. Rapidly reconstituting is an important strategy to enable space operations to evolve to the changes in the character of war in the space domain.