Issues with the Integration of Space and Terrestrial Military Operations

Paul Szymanski

It is critical that military space operations become coordinated and integrated with the more traditional military planning conducted on Earth (air, land, sea, and Global Integrated Operations). In my experience, this integration of space and terrestrial military actions has frequently encountered many problems. Space mostly provides information: sensors (imagery, signals intelligence, navigation, weather, missile warning, and so forth) and transmission of that info (satellite communications). Thus, any space control actions are mainly to deny, degrade, delay, deceive, disrupt, destroy, and such the flow of this information. It is easier to evaluate the effects of taking out a bridge on the ground and how this action impacts the overall conduct of the current terrestrial battle. It is very difficult to assess how information denial affects the overall battlefield. Consequently, in the 15 different military exercises I have participated in with space components, the terrestrial commander ranks space actions as very low priorities (even actions against terrestrial space terminals) compared to other immediate needs. The commander generally does not truly understand space and its importance to the overall war effort. The commander knows space is important but cannot objectively measure this value or qualitatively rank space communication targets vs. sensor satellite targets, especially if the commander only controls a few antisatellite weapons. Conversely, adversary commanders probably understand less than the allied side of the importance of space to their own war efforts and may discount any blue force counterspace actions taken against them. Both the allied and adversary disjuncts prevent any meaningful evaluation of space and terrestrial targeting analyses, without first establishing common measures of merit for ranking information flow targets on the battlefield (fig. 1).