How the US can counter Russian and Chinese nuclear threats in space

The reliability of the US nuclear arsenal is based on the “never-always rule.” This means that the nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) system must never permit nuclear weapons use unless authorized by the president, while always enabling their use in the specific ways the president authorizes. There must never be doubt about the United States’ ability to command and control its nuclear forces under any circumstances. Even perceptions of weaknesses in the US NC3 system can undermine deterrence and assurance.

But that’s exactly what Washington is facing right now, as the comprehensive modernization of the US nuclear triad continues. Despite warnings from top national security officials, important improvements to NC3 have been fragmented; in 2017, then US Strategic Command Commander General John Hyten testified that “NC3 is my biggest concern when I look out towards the future.”

An important part of the United States’ NC3 is space-based equipment, such as communications and early warning satellites. Efforts to modernize these space-based components have started, such as eliminating exploitable cyber and supply chain vulnerabilities and reducing overreliance on a small number of satellites. These efforts are part of the Department of Defense’s work to deploy a resilient, hybrid architecture to support all national security space missions. But the Department of Defense’s efforts so far have not focused enough on NC3, and it is not clear that the modernizations currently underway will meet the stringent requirements for nuclear surety.

The United States needs to ensure it has a secure and effective NC3 because of the devolving threat environment challenging nuclear surety, as China is aiming to join Russia as a nuclear peer of the United States at the same moment that Moscow and Beijing are strengthening their counterspace capabilities.

Evolving threats

The geopolitical situation has fundamentally shifted since space-based NC3 systems were first deployed in the 1960s. The United States and the Soviet Union pursued strategic arms control, sought to constrain the dangers of inadvertent use, and often considered limited nuclear use to be easy to prevent so long as overall strategic deterrence held fast. Today, two evolving threats pose new challenges for NC3.

First, China is improving the quality and quantity of its nuclear arsenal, which raises the two-nuclear-peer problem: NC3 must now enable the United States to deter or, if deterrence fails, restore deterrence against, two nuclear peers—Russia and China—that may attack the United States or its allies in coordination, in sequence, or in overlapping timeframes. Beijing may also lack understanding of, or appreciation for, the idea that deliberate attacks on NC3 constitute a “red line” (meaning an unacceptable action that could trigger a nuclear war). Unlike Russia (at least during the Cold War), China has avoided arms control talks, has only recently deployed missile warning/missile tracking satellites, and may see value in uncertainty over red lines.

Second, it is imperative that NC3 better cope with the growing potential of limited nuclear use, given Beijing’s evolving nuclear doctrine and recent reports that raise concerns about what Moscow might do with its weapons, including the possibility of it deploying a nuclear weapon in space.

Countering Russia and China in space

Space systems provide three essential NC3 capabilities: missile warning, assured communications, and nuclear detonation detection. Infrared sensors on space-based missile warning can detect missile launches worldwide and indicate an attack first. The Space-Based Infrared System currently provides missile warning, and several complex upgrades have begun. Assured, survivable communications are essential for the president to convene with senior leaders and command and control nuclear forces globally. Today, the Advanced Extremely High-Frequency system provides communication links for nuclear command and control; this system is to be augmented and then replaced by the Evolved Strategic Satellite system during the 2030s. Finally, the US Nuclear Detonation Detection System supports adaptive planning in the event of a nuclear conflict using sensors across several satellites to locate nuclear detonations in the atmosphere and space.

But much more needs to be done, as Chinese and Russian counterspace capabilities increasingly challenge the ability of space-based NC3 to deliver nuclear surety. For instance, if Russia wanted to disable satellites currently supporting Ukraine, it would only need to detonate one nuclear weapon in low-Earth orbit (LEO). A high-altitude nuclear detonation would raise radiation in LEO, causing failure in as little as weeks of most, if not all, LEO satellites that have not been specifically hardened against this nuclear-pumped radiation. Direct financial damages could approach five hundred billion dollars, and potentially over three trillion dollars in overall economic impact. With Russia apparently on the verge of violating its Outer Space Treaty obligations by orbiting a nuclear weapon, this scenario is no longer hypothetical. The United States must counter this daunting challenge multidimensionally, including by ensuring that LEO satellites supporting NC3 address high-altitude nuclear detonation threats.

Meanwhile, China’s new Aerospace Force now fields a range of significant and comprehensive counterspace capabilities, including satellites with rendezvous-and-proximity and robotic arm capabilities in geostationary Earth orbit (GEO). This is particularly threatening, as Chinese counterspace assets could grab noncooperative satellites belonging to its adversaries, including crucial US NC3 satellites in GEO. For its part, Russia has long developed doctrine and capabilities to target US satellites, including NC3 systems. Russia is also fielding several counterspace systems, such as Nudol direct-ascent antisatellite missiles. Moscow tested this system against a defunct Russian satellite in November 2021, creating thousands of pieces of potentially lethal LEO debris that still threaten spacecraft and astronauts.

How the US can ensure nuclear surety

Many of the Department of Defense’s bureaucratic structures that have acquired current NC3 systems have changed. Primary acquisition responsibility for space-based NC3 systems is now divided between the Space Systems Command, the Space Development Agency, and the Missile Defense Agency. None of these acquisition organizations are focused on nuclear surety, and this structure makes it more difficult for the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center to meet its overall responsibility to acquire and sustain the NC3 weapons system. A hybrid national security space architecture with commercial, international, and government systems clearly benefits most missions but is not necessarily optimal for NC3.

Before overly committing to a hybrid architecture for space-based NC3, the Department of Defense should better understand how new approaches can be certified to meet stringent nuclear surety requirements. In particular, it must consider the benefits and drawbacks of disaggregated nuclear communications, and it should carefully assess how proliferated space and ground architectures, such as the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution and Rapid Resilient Command and Control, can integrate data from many systems. If proliferated LEO architectures cannot be made sufficiently resilient to nuclear attack at an acceptable cost, then the Pentagon should not entrust these systems with the crucial NC3 mission.

The United States must field space-based NC3 that matches today’s and tomorrow’s threats, appropriately harnesses hybrid national security space architectures to strengthen deterrence, and meets nuclear surety requirements across a range of increasingly challenging scenarios. The Department of Defense should recognize the challenges and incompatibilities it faces in rapidly and simultaneously modernizing space-based NC3 and fielding an overall hybrid national security space architecture. It should not rush to deploy space-based NC3 that is not well integrated, suffers from avoidable supply chain and cybersecurity vulnerabilities, or contains other weaknesses that adversaries and hackers could exploit during the decades in which the next generation of space-based NC3 is likely to operate.

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Peter L. Hays is an adjunct professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, senior fellow for the Prague Security Studies Institute, space policy advisor for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, and senior associate (nonresident) for the Aerospace Defense and Missile Defense Projects at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Sarah Mineiro is the founder and CEO of Tanagra Enterprises, a defense, intelligence, space, science, and technology consulting firm. 

This article was adapted from the authors’ previously published issue brief, “Modernizing space-based nuclear command, control, and communications.”

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