The Case for Space Control: An Australian Perspective

Space is an operational domain that is highly contested and in a crisis could quickly become a warfighting environment. Space is “militarized” through the deployment of satellites to support a range of terrestrial military tasks. Both the Soviet Union and the United States developed anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon technologies during the Cold War, yet it is only much more recently that such counterspace technologies proliferated in the hands of adversary actors such as China and Russia.

The perception of adversaries that western democracies are increasingly dependent on space for joint and integrated military operations gives them an incentive to threaten access to the assets that enable this capability prior to beginning of a conflict. The United States and its allies, including Australia, are now responding to this changing strategic dynamic, with a much greater focus on the challenges of undertaking space control as an important new task, along with the potential opportunities of establishing dedicated space forces.