NATO Needs a Proactive Space Posture
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to develop credible capabilities to deter and fight a war in the space domain. The Alliance faces its most volatile strategic environment since the end of the Cold War. Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine has changed the security environment in ways not seen since World War II, with the reintroduction of full-scale, protracted warfare on the European continent. With the advent of the Ukraine War, however, came recognition of a shift in warfare in space, a development that experts have readily acknowledged: space has played a role in the ongoing war in Ukraine not previously seen in past conflicts.
Commercial space providers have especially played a crucial role in providing satellite communications and overhead imagery to Ukrainian forces, leading many commentators to call the war the “first commercial-space war”. However, despite the commercial and international space assistance to the Ukrainian military, Russia has also launched a major cyberattack on these space assets, temporarily taking offline much of Viasat’s satellite constellation, owned by an American space company responsible for Ukraine’s military command, control, and communications, early in the 2022 full-scale war of aggression. This demonstrated the new reality of space conflict, in which adversary states can put satellites at risk. The proliferation of anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities among nations like Russia and China is especially concerning. The latter’s strategy specifically calls for information dominance, thereby denying the American military that dominance if war breaks out between the U.S. and China. This strategy could include denying both the United States and its allies an orbital ISR capability, leaving leaders blind to the battlefield situation in the Indo-Pacific theater. Russia’s anti-space and in-space capabilities are also very formidable: While possessing inferior space capabilities to those of the PRC, Russia also poses a significant threat to NATO’s assets in space. Russia has allegedly developed a nuclear weapon that could be used in space, alarming both policymakers and strategists alike. Additionally, it has developed and tested an arsenal of conventional antisatellite weapons to offset the perceived Western military advantage in space. Russia is also allegedly looking to develop capabilities that could deny access to Starlink, which is being actively used by Ukrainian military forces in the ongoing conflict.
In 2023, recognizing these realities and the increasingly dire situation in orbit, NATO stood up its Space Center of Excellence (COE). NATO Centers of Excellence are incubators for ideas to counter ongoing challenges faced by the Alliance in the geostrategic environment. As such, this institution is an important step toward exploring NATO’s capabilities in the space domain. However, NATO must take several steps further to meet the demands of an increasingly unstable space domain. NATO’s current timetable is too long and therefore too late. The urgency of now cannot be overemphasized.
To start, the United States could adopt something like a space capability-sharing arrangement with NATO member states. This would look a lot like nuclear sharing in terrestrial NATO strategy, in which the United States would retain command over U.S. space capabilities (when they are used), but, in execution, these capabilities would be operated by NATO member states when orders to use offensive capabilities are given. Another option would be exclusively NATO-owned capabilities, operated by multinational military teams, with authorization for their use in an Article 5 scenario, or with the NATO Secretary-General’s approval. This idea is not entirely new, as NATO collectively owns its AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) fleet rather than falling under the operational control of any member state.
NATO’s theory of success in space should be shaped by the concept of space control. This concept aims to allow free access for U.S. and Allied forces whilst denying space to Russia and China. NATO forces could secure a strategic advantage over an adversary early on in a conflict against either state by developing capabilities that could lead to space control. By creating and employing capabilities that could easily hold adversary assets at risk, NATO would be a force to be reckoned with in the space domain. Doing so would not only ensure strategic stability in space but also possibly play a significant role in deterring terrestrial aggression, thereby preventing, or at least imposing costs in the event of conflict or an Article 5 event.
Jack Casey Buckley is a Research Assistant at the Yorktown Institute and an MA candidate in his second year at American University, studying United States Foreign Policy and National Security with an emphasis on cybersecurity and defense policy.