The US needs to get real about maneuver warfare in space

Recently, senior Space Force commanders have been articulating support for the use of maneuver warfare in space deterrence and warfighting operations. While laudable, upon further review, it appears that these statements are not speaking about maneuver warfare as much as they are about rapid movement of spacecraft to avoid intercept by an enemy spacecraft or ground-based threats.

These passive defensive actions are not true maneuver warfare. And if the Space Force wants to get serious about being able to defeat enemy nations in space, it needs to stop tip-toeing around the issue. It’s time for America to put real investments into space weapons capable of targeting earth-bound targets.

As defined by Robert Leonhard in his book, The Art of Maneuver, “maneuver warfare” as “the means of defeat[ing] … the enemy.” The objective is to achieve victory, not the sustainment of competition. To achieve this victory requires an aggressiveness that under current DoD space policy and strategy, is considered irresponsible. As Leonhard proclaims, “maneuver warfare is, to put it simply, a kick in the groin, a poke in the eye, a stab in the back. It is quick, violent for a moment and unfair. It is decisive, even pre-emptive, at the expense of protocol and posturing.” To use Chinese military terms in their strategy document, The Science of Strategy, this type of attack should be “rapid and destructive.”

Second, in implementation, Leonhard correctly states that maneuver warfare “puts a premium on being sneaky rather than courageous, … because it typically flees from the enemy’s strength.” By maneuvering for the “kick in the groin” or a “rapid and destructive” strike, instead of attacking the enemy’s advantage — its concentration of forces arrayed against friendly forces — the space force can hit the decisive points to win against the enemy. It means that a space warfighting force needs to render an enemy force irrelevant at the decisive point, whether that be “a theater (area of responsibility), an area of operations, or on a battlefield.”

Here’s a real world scenario for how this could play out.

It’s not hard to figure out where China has put its heaviest investments: numerous open-source intelligence reports show China now has a very robust, multi-layered system of air, land, and maritime based weapons to achieve counter-intervention or in Western parlance, anti-access/area-denial, in the first and second island chains of the Indo-Pacific.

Beijing has large numbers of ships and missiles, interior lines between mainland China and Taiwan, industrial capacity that harkens back to the United States in World War II, and a centralized command structure sitting atop a authoritarian state. Its space deterrence and warfighting strategy and capability are proactive, pre-emptive and follow the principles of “rapid and destructive” maneuver warfare to seek and sustain the advantage all the way to victory.

In fact, according to the Army War College, wargames indicate that the United States, in a traditional, air, maritime, and land-based terrestrial fight, will lose significant combat power quickly. This is because terrestrial US military forces are too small, their supply lines are too vulnerable, and “American’s defense industrial capacity is far too eroded to keep up with the material demands of a high-intensity conflict.”

The way to beat this situation and to render the enemy force irrelevant terrestrially through attack operations within the space AOR, is to re-frame the Space Force from a mere support service into the primary door kicking, maneuver force for the United States.

To do this requires the development of space-to-ground weapons (SGWs), whose focus would be to make Chinese concentrations of terrestrial and space counter-intervention forces in the Western Pacific irrelevant by holding them at risk. Once deployed, SGWs would provide enhanced space deterrence during peacetime and crisis, and if necessary, destroy threats to US terrestrial forces by rolling back barriers to entry for our smaller air, land, and maritime forces.

The current technology at our disposal, coupled with less expensive lift, heavy lift, and soon to be super heavy lift rockets, means there are ways to get small constellations of SGWs deployed around Earth, capable of achieving five-minute target revisit rates with little defense to stop them. The Chinese have already demonstrated they are pursuing similar capability through their Fractional/Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) system. Therefore, we should position our space forces into the front of the line to ensure decisiveness in such a conflict.

There is no need for US forces to attack using an old 20th Century method of terrestrial concentration of force and lose, when we can negate the A2/AD advantage/barriers to entry for terrestrial air, land, and maritime forces through orbital strike forces. Granted, this advantage would only last as long as the adversary lacks an effective counter-force, but those issues can be addressed as well by a proper organizational and budgetary perspective grounded in the strategic reality of the current threat environment.

This is the role the Space Force should be accomplishing-providing for the decisive advantage over enemy terrestrial force advantage through maneuver warfare in and from space.

Christopher Stone is Senior Fellow for Space Deterrence at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies in Washington, D.C. He is the former Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy. The views and positions are those of the author and do not reflect the positions and opinions of the Department of Defense or the author’s employer.