Dan Snow's History Hit - War in Space

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

On November 15 2021 Russia tested an anti-satellite weapon, shattering one of their own satellites into over a thousand pieces. This space debris will orbit the Earth for a very long time, posing a threat to space travel and other satellites.With space increasingly becoming a site of military activity, is war in space a real possibility? In this episode James is joined by Major General Robert H. Latiff, who retired from the US Air Force in 2006, to find out whether human conflict could really cross into the final frontier.Robert's new book Future Peace: Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War is available here.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I've got an episode of Warfare for you today. It's our special military history podcast. Go and subscribe wherever you get your pods. Presented by Dr. James Rogers. It covers, well, warfare from the early modern period, but particularly First and Second World War. So recently we've been doing a lot on Ukraine as well. It's fascinating stuff. It gets great guests. Enjoy this episode. It's an eye-opener. off. He gets great guests. Enjoy this episode. It's an eye-opener. On November 15th, 2021, Russia tested and demonstrated an anti-satellite weapon, shattering one of its own satellites into one and a half thousand pieces. These pieces will orbit the Earth for a very long time, posing a threat to space travel and other satellites.

But it also raises questions about the extent to which space is increasingly becoming a site of military activity. I'm your host James Rogers, and here on the Warfare Podcast, we wanted to find out the extent to which war in space is a real possibility. To find out, I invited Major General Bob Lafdiff onto the podcast. Bob retired from the US Air Force in 2006 after working predominantly on aerospace defence issues, and he continues to work on these issues as a professor at both Notre Dame and George Mason. He's also the author of a new book, Future Peace, Technology, Aggression and the Rush to War, which is out in March 2022.

This is a fascinating episode where we learn so much about the history of military activity in space, we debunk a few myths and we pause to consider the extent to which weaponisation and so-called militarisation is really taking place in space. Enjoy. Hi Bob, thanks for taking the time today. How are you doing? I'm doing just fine, thank you for having me. Not a problem at all. Where are you in the world? I am in the Washington DC area, just outside of Washington in Northern Virginia. In the seat of power, the perfect place to be discussing the future of space

and war, and maybe a little bit of that history as well. We are actually talking at a time on the exact day where the Chinese have just released their new white paper on the future of space and governing space. So this is prime time to be talking about all of this. But before we go into that, can we hear a little bit about your own background, your own history? When did you first join the military? And when did you first see space as a military issue? Great question. So I joined the military out of graduate school at Notre Dame, where I went and got an engineering PhD. I was in the Army for a while with infantry and nuclear weapons, and then made a switch

that was kind of unusual, made a switch to the Air Force, where they were allowing me to do advanced research. And I first encountered space when I was working in the Strategic Defense Initiative or the Star Wars program back in the mid-80s. And from there on, almost in my entire career, with a couple of exceptions, were involved in developing space vehicles or in developing radars to detect space vehicles or software to monitor space. And then I worked in major organizations in the intelligence community around space vehicles. So let's leave it at that. Okay, I won't probe you too much into the secret nature of the space vehicles you were working on. But for those who don't know, perhaps you could just give us a little bit of insight into what the Star Wars program was. This was under the Reagan administration, wasn't it? That's correct.

He announced it to great fanfare in 1983 when he called the Soviet Union the evil empire. And it was Reagan's view, pushed by some scientists, that we could create a shield over the United States that would be able to shoot down incoming missiles. I think most people thought even at the time that that was a little bit far out, but there was a lot of money spent and they developed space-based lasers and never launched one. But it ultimately, when Reagan left, it was scaled way back. And it is what you now know as the United States Missile Defense Agency, the Missile Defense Program. So it was very exciting. Lots of real, real high science was being done. And if we look at a bit of the history of this, is this the sort of space defense program, the militarization of space that we can talk about all the way back to the late 1950s,

early 1960s, the space race, JFK's push to land on the moon before the USSR. Is this the kind of space arms race and militarization of space that we can talk about? Well, I don't see early days of space. I wouldn't characterize that as militarization of space. I mean, clearly, there was a civilian, civil desire to be the first to develop the technology to orbit the Earth and to land on the moon and all of those. It didn't matter that it didn't have much utility. It was just that we showed that we could do it. matter that it didn't have much utility. It was just that we showed that we could do it. As it turns out, and this is no longer a classified fact, much of what was going on at the time was also in parallel with the development of intelligence uses of space. And I separate those from militarization because back then we were very worried about Soviet ICBMs and the missile gap. You may recall reading about the missile gap. And so the idea of having these systems that could detect those types of activities

over denied areas without having to fly a U-2 airplane and get shot down, that was a big deal. And that was Eisenhower's big program to develop those systems. Much beyond that, it isn't talked about much. So is this the ability to monitor the higher altitudes of space to detect anything that is rocketing towards the continental mainland of the United States, perhaps over the Arctic. I remember reading much about the polar concept, and it's one of the reasons why the United States maintains its presence in places like Greenland. Is that what we're talking about here? Well, that's a little bit of a confusing

question. So what I was referring to was the ability to see photographs of what was going in the missile fields in the Soviet Union and how many they were amassing and so on and so forth. What I think you're talking about was also, I view as intelligence, even though it was military systems, is the ability to put a satellite in space that could detect launches, not just take pictures over the launch fields, but could actually detect the launches from the heat of the missile and so forth. And they've done that for many, many, many years. We've got really good satellites to do that. And then what you were talking about, I think, in Greenland and up in that area is the radars. You detect the

launch with a satellite, and then later on, when it's getting closer, and you can actually pick it up with a radar, then you can figure out where it's going. And so that was, you know, it's all part of a system. It's all part of the system. How far back in the history of the 20th century does that sort of technology go? Because when we think of satellites satellites or the ability to watch different sites around the world or Google Earth, we very much think of the 2000s onwards. But how far can we take this technology back in history? Well, probably close to 40, 50 years. Eisenhower started it all. So that was in the 60s. Now, certainly things were not nearly as advanced then as they are today, but those systems and the missile warning systems that I just referred to, you know, you're talking about

late 60s, early 70s. It was 40 years, at least 40 years ago, maybe 50 years ago. So we've been doing it for a long time. So if we refer to that history as intelligence gathering, the ability to see more from space perhaps as well, then when would you argue that we start to see, if we have started to see at all, a militarization of space? That's a difficult question. What do you mean by militarization? One thing you have to do is really separate the word militarization from weaponization. Okay. Weaponization hasn't, as far as I know, has never happened. Militarization, you might call our ability to detect ICBMs a militarization, although I wouldn't characterize it that way. I don't think we have actually militarized space yet. So satellites, communication satellites, you know, the military uses communication satellites, ours, theirs.

Is that a militarization of space because you're using a space asset to communicate? It's a good question. I suppose it means that there will be potential military targets in space. And so if we move towards a near future where there's potentially peer-on-peer conflict and there is growing tensions between the world's great powers, then at the outset of any future conflict, do you think we would potentially see, I suppose, what you could call it, war in space? You would have a vying, a jockeying over the ability to destroy each other's space assets, which may in part be dual use. They have a civil aspect mixed with a military aspect, but they are most certainly military targets. They are most certainly militarily important targets, yes. So you may have intelligence assets up there, you may have civil assets up there, you may have navigation

assets up there. All of these things, like you said, are dual use, or many of them are dual use. And so to your point, I think, yes, if we get to the point on the Earth, terrestrial conflict, in which these systems are very important, and they will be, then it is totally conceivable that whoever we're fighting, whoever our adversary is, will want to deny us the use of those systems. Now, does that mean war in space? Or does that mean just somehow denying you the use of it without destroying it? That's a good question. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries.

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And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Well, take us through to the present day, because in November 2021, Russia acknowledged testing an anti-satellite weapon in space, shattering an old satellite into one and a half thousand pieces. Take us through the strategic utility of this. Why would Russia want to target satellites in space? What would that remove from its enemy's arsenal?

Well, so I think that you separate the broader question from the question at hand, why did they do that when they did? Frankly, they've been able to do that for decades. And in fact, let me just step back a little further. The United States actually did the very same thing in the 1980s. We shot down one of our own satellites in the 1980s, and the Chinese did it in 2007, and the Indians did it in 2008, if I get the dates correctly. So first of all, you wouldn't want to do it in this day and age because of all the debris it creates, which become a danger to navigation and all kind of things. There are other ways of interfering with a satellite. You know, you can jam it.

You can dazzle it. You can do all kind of things to it without having to shatter it into a thousand pieces. without having to shatter it into a thousand pieces. So I suppose if you couldn't do any of those things, having the ability to just rip it apart would be a last resort. But it's just one in an arsenal of various things that they could do to deny us the use of those systems. But back to the most recent one, I think it was just a show of force on the part of Putin, especially as he runs up to whatever it is he's up to in Ukraine. So both sides, I suppose if we were to talk in this in kind of Cold War bipolar speak, which is certainly not the case, but both sides in this instance of

Russia and the US have the capacity in some form to take each other's satellites out. So does this result in a zero-sum game here, where if there was to be some sort of outbreak of conflict, you would either continue to have both sides using their GPS satellite systems and their ability to communicate with their troops and to use their weapon systems through satellite linkage, or you would have both sides that are relatively blind and deaf communications-wise from these very high-tech systems that they rely on in battle. Is that the zero-sum game we're talking about here? Well, yes. I'm not sure if it's called a zero-sum game, but the whole idea in warfare, whether it's in space or on the ground or on sea, you know, is to

deny the adversary the use of their systems. And so, in this case, the domain is in space. One of the dangers, you haven't asked this question, but one of the dangers is they and we would have to be very careful about what we target. they and we would have to be very careful about what we target. The ones that are really devoted to nuclear matters are very sensitive systems. And when you start interfering with a country's ability to either detect nuclear things going on or control nuclear things going on, that's taking a big step. So targeting nuclear command and control systems

is something that both sides have to be very, very careful of. Because then what are you saying to the adversary? I'm creating a dangerous instability. So the whole idea of targeting space systems is one that is really fraught with danger. Yeah, especially if you start talking about weakening deterrence postures, second strike capabilities, loosening mutually assured destruction. It's not a game you want to play with. That's correct. But am I being overly pessimistic here? Because I can hint some hesitation from you when we start to talk about the idea of war in space. And it's something that perhaps is a little over-egged from time to time. And of course, there are international space

laws, the UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967, that dedicate space as the province of mankind, that all nations have the freedom to use and explore and to benefit all of mankind. Does this protect space? Or, I don't know, as more private companies go up into space, and we saw just this week that when the International Space Station crashes to Earth in 2031, NASA have said that all future space exploration will be done by private companies. Does this sort of treaty perhaps turn space into a bit more of a wild west environment? So I don't know, does the international law that's there, it may mitigate against more militarizations, we say, or the weaponization of space, but does it open up space as a bit of a free-for-all? Well, so it doesn't open up space as a free-for-all.

Space is already open because that Outer Space Treaty, good as it was and is, is very old. And it didn't prohibit, actually, a lot of people think it's prohibited the weaponization of space. It actually prohibited stationing of nuclear warheads. It doesn't say weaponization. Ah, I didn't know that. It was good as far as it went.

You know, you protect astronauts and you help, you know, so on and so forth. But it was written at a time when satellites couldn't conduct rendezvous. It was written before the first Gemini spacewalk. It was written way, way back. And a lot of things have changed. Computers and cyber and proximity operations and those kind of things. So there is no international body that governs the launch of commercial systems. There isn't any international body that will tell SpaceX that

they can't put 10,000 satellites in orbit. So it is, it is indeed the wild, wild west. And kind of to your point, there are a lot of people who would very much like, if we can't get a new treaty, at least to develop some kind of norms of behavior. treaty, at least to develop some kind of norms of behavior. If you get really, really close to my satellite, I don't know what you're doing, and it's going to worry me. So why don't we have some norms that say, you know, you can't get this close. If you want to get close for some particularly good reason, you got to tell me, you know, 30 days in advance, or just some kind of ways of behaving that will keep people's angst down i don't know we're not making very much headway in that area but presumably there are a lot of people at the united nations who are working very hard at it you would hope so because

that does sound like a worrying prospect the fact that there is very little regulation on who can put things into space and how many things can go into space and so it creates this congested well I mean I don't know how congested space is but if you have the ability or the potential for things to start crashing into each other and you don't know if that was accidental or deliberate then it can definitely send the wrong messages if there are already heightened tensions back down here on Earth. So it could trigger a broader conflict, if you will, like you say, to have a satellite that accidentally crashes into a system that's in charge of some areas of nuclear capabilities. That's correct. As a matter of fact, I use a scenario very much like that in one of the books

that I've written. People just, you know, they're unsure, they're uncertain about what happened. And these things are thousands of miles away. You can't really see it all that well. So you don't know what happened right away. And yeah, it could lead very quickly to an escalatory situation. So perhaps take us through some of the broader threats that there are in space or from space. Lots of people talk about emerging Chinese technologies or from other nations, but there's also talk about cyber war in space. What, for you, are some of the more worrying developments in that region? Ground-based lasers. A lot of people have research lasers.

They shine light on the moon. A laser pointed into space at a satellite, think about a very bright flashlight in your eyes. You could deny the use of a person's satellite by just shining a laser at it. Or, you know, think about jamming. You know, if you have a really high-powered jammer and the satellite is up there trying to communicate with somebody on Earth and all you do is just flood it with energy, then you've denied the use of that satellite. You haven't destroyed it, you just denied the use of it. And sort of like you said, we were saying earlier, in the last resort,

you could, you know, shoot an anti-satellite weapon or just run your satellite into their satellite. So they're all kind of threats to space systems. I guess I've kind of lost the ultimate question that you were trying to ask, the things that worry me. So some of the behaviors that we've seen, and I'll just point to a public article which talked about a Russian satellite sort of tracking closely with one of our satellites. It wasn't mentioned which satellite of ours it was, but it was a pretty important one. And they just stayed very close to it for a while.

I don't know what very close was. I don't want to know what very close was, but it was close enough that people got concerned about it. And it's that kind of behavior, maybe intended to be deliberately provocative, that is worrisome so i'm not sure if that addresses the real question you were after but it does and it triggers a memory in my mind we had uh peter w singer on the podcast one of the world's leading futurists and i know him yes i don't know if you read the book by him and August Cole on Ghost Fleet, but in the opening stages of the future war scenario that they present to us, I think it's the Chinese who open up one of their satellites and it reveals a laser that takes out other satellites in space. Is this something that is likely, or again, are we over-egging it here? Is it going to be more of a threat from ground systems to space as opposed to this idea of war in space? I think it's going to be the former. That said, I think there are people who want to think about war in space and being space warriors, and maybe preparing for those kind of things is prudent, but I have a tendency to believe that,

for instance, if Russia or China or anyone decided they wanted to do that, they would have to know that we also have that capability, should we choose to develop it. Going there would be a really, really big decision on the part of any country. I don't think, maybe I'm being a Pollyanna, but I don't think that either of those two countries is quite there yet. And so, yeah, I mean, it's interesting to speculate about laser zapping satellites and doing all of those things. I personally don't think that that's on the horizon. At least it's not on the midterm horizon, maybe in 40 or 50 years. We'll see. So you worked on Star Wars in the 1980s, but we're not going to be seeing any Death Stars or X-Wing starfighters anytime in the near future? I don't think so.

All right, Bob. Well, thank you so much for your time and taking us through this and dispelling some of those myths around just how tense it actually is in space. Now, I know you've written a new book. Tell us, what's the title and where can we buy it? The title is Future Peace, Technology, Aggression, and the Rush to War. It's published by the University of Notre Dame Press. It's available on Amazon. And as it says, it's all about how we allow technology to just lead us down a path that we may not want to go down. Bob, I look forward to reading it. Thanks so much for your time thank you thanks for tuning in remember to subscribe so you can access our original cutting-edge military histories each week twice a week every week And if you think there's a history we need to cover

or you want to share your own family histories, then email us directly on warfare at historyhit.com.