The three tools of irregular space warfare highlighted by the conflict in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine demonstrated how irregular warfare tactics work in the modern era. The contenders and their allies have moved into the "Grey Zone" which does not belong to the official instruments of conflict and which directly involves civilian instruments, taking the confrontation to a new and unexplored level.

The new battlefield of irregular warfare was space, and as the head of space operations of the US Space Force points out “Adversaries actively create and exploit 'grey areas' in which they achieve political objectives through actions that avoid the traditional triggers of conflict". A war is fought, but not declared.

Today the attack against the adversary's space capabilities are at the center of this gray area also because officially, they can practically only take place against commercial infrastructures: at least in theory space is demilitarized, and then commercial infrastructures are the ones that are able to distribute services in a widespread, generalized and retail way in the field.

The three examples of irregular space warfare on the Russian-Ukrainian front

Let us now analyze what the conflict in Ukraine has taught us, from the point of view of irregular warfare.

1. Precede the war with a cyber attack. The attack on Ukraine was preceded by a cyberattack on the corporate IT structures of the American Viasat. On February 24, 2022, an attack was triggered against this company which temporarily interrupted the KA-SAT network for the distribution of the commercial connection broadband service. A technically well-developed and carefully prepared attack that not only caused disruptions in civilian services, but also led to the loss of the Ukrainian military's communications services which, without reserve backup, would have been lost. Cyberspace is often the soft underbelly of these space systems
   

   starlinks

2. The role of commercial space companies in the provision of services. The Viasat case introduces the second problem. Telecom infrastructures now rely on commercial service providers for broadband services, and so these are a target, but their scale allows them to resist attacks. The second case is that of Starlink, in which Russia tried to block the communication signals of the satellite constellation, only partially succeeding in its purpose. The structure put in place by Elon Musk proved to be redundant and robust enough to never lose the ability to provide the service completely.
   

   SJ-17 Chinese satellite

3. Beware of proximity operations . Let's leave the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and move on to China. Beijing has demonstrated sophisticated rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) and inspection capabilities in recent years, making the national security space community take notice. For example, China's satellite Shijian-17 (SJ-17) conducted in-orbit activities with other Chinese cooperative spacecraft in geostationary orbit in 2018, and a Space Threat Assessment Report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that “China is not a novice at performing RPO in GEO. SJ-17 has a documented history of RPO activity with other Chinese satellites in GEO, and in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Space Command Chief Gen. James Dickinson said SJ-17 had an arm robotic on board, which was previously undisclosed. As with the land, sea and air domains, space proximity operations can help achieve political or military objectives beyond the actual use of force or armed attack. The transparent and publicly known movement of satellites and space systems in close proximity to a rival's spacecraft can convey an implicit or explicit threat of some potential harmful action, thereby intimidating or forcing a competitor to decide in favor of something that is not in the his best interest.

The war of the future will be fought in battlefields almost invisible to the common man, but its consequences will also be felt outside the military sphere, and will be all the stronger the greater our dependence on modern digital information flows.

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The article The Three Tools of Irregular Space Warfare Highlighted by the Ukraine Conflict comes from Scenari Economics .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/i-tre-strumenti-della-guerra-spaziale-irregolare-evidenziati-dal-conflitto-in-ucraina/ on Sun, 13 Aug 2023 06:00:00 +0000.