The US is practising for war in space
Welcome to the space age.
The US is preparing for the future – by practising a military attack in space.
The Space Force, the unintentionally comedic wing of the country’s military created by Donald Trump, has announced a first-of-its-kind mission to demonstrate how it might defend against ‘on-orbit aggression’.
In the exercise, named Victus Haze, a spacecraft will be charged with chasing down a satellite.
The first satellite will be built and launched by Rocket Lab, with the second made by True Anomaly. It will be launched on a ‘rapid rideshare’ mission, most likely on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
True Anomaly’s Jackal satellite will be launched first, posing as a spacecraft from one of the country’s adversaries, such as China or Russia.
When given the order, Rocket Lab will launch its craft to go and inspect it.
The craft will then switch roles, with the Jackal satellite manoeuvering around the Rocket Lab craft.
Both spacecraft are due to be ready no later than autumn 2025.
Unveiling the operation, General Michael Guetlein, the Space Force’s vice chief of space operations, said: ‘When another nation puts an asset up into space and we don’t quite know what that asset is, we don’t know what its intent is, we don’t know what its capabilities are, we need the ability to go up there and figure out what this thing is.
‘If a near-peer competitor makes a movement, we need to have it in our quiver to make a counter maneuver, whether that be go up and do a show of force or go up and do space domain awareness or understand the characterisation of the environment—what’s going on?’
The mission is the latest designed to develop the country’s tactically responsive space (TacRS) capabilities, including showing how quickly a launch can be carried out.
True Anomaly has said it could have a satellite ready for launch within 82 hours.
Speaking in January, General Guetlein said: ‘We no longer have the luxury of time to wait years, even 10 or 15 years, to deliver some of these capabilities. A tactically relevant timeline is a matter of weeks, days, or even hours.’
Announcing Victus Haze, he added: ‘Victus Haze is about continuing to break those paradigms and to show how we would rapidly put up a space domain awareness capability and operate it in real time against a threat.’
Space is rapidly becoming a new frontier in international relations, with low Earth orbit (LEO) quickly filling up with satellites and numerous countries planning landings and even settlements on the Moon.
In February, US intelligence sources suggested Russian president Vladimir Putin was preparing to launch a nuclear weapon into space.
The commercial space industry has also been expanding rapidly in recent years, with both Nasa and the military working in partnership with private companies.
‘We recognise the significant opportunity to leverage the commercial space industry’s innovations to counter China as America’s pacing threat,’ said Colonel Bryon McClain, from the Space Force’s Space Systems
Command.
The Space Force, established by Mr Trump in December 2019, has often been the butt of the joke since its inception, not least for accidentally adopting a logo very similar to that of Star Trek, and using horses (fabulous, but very low tech) to patrol its home at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
It was also the subject of a Netflix comedy series of the same name.