dominating space: Space domination

Most mea­sures aimed at infor­ma­tion supe­ri­or­i­ty and bat­tle­field trans­paren­cy are space based with a very heavy depen­dence on satel­lites. War fight­ing capa­bil­i­ty to win with­in an accept­able time frame would demand bat­tle­field tem­po and simul­tane­ity in actions. The for­mer can be achieved by effec­tive­ly exploit­ing sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness to enable bet­ter and faster deci­sion-action rel­a­tive to that of our ene­mies. The aim here is to get inside the enemy’s deci­sion-action cycle by exploit­ing infor­ma­tion and act­ing upon it before the ene­my has time to react. Simul­tane­ity implies the abil­i­ty to address the ene­my all across the bat­tle space, simultaneously.

The aim is to over­load the enemy’s com­mand set up, deny­ing him the abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate on one prob­lem at a time, or even estab­lish pri­or­i­ties between prob­lems. This would require improved col­lab­o­ra­tive plan­ning between com­po­nents and lev­els of com­mand and bet­ter exe­cu­tion of coor­di­nat­ed action through­out the bat­tle space. The enabling tech­nol­o­gy is digi­ti­sa­tion of com­mand sys­tems, weapon plat­forms and struc­tures. Mil­i­tary satel­lites are crit­i­cal to the above operations.

This arti­cle is pub­lished with the kind per­mis­sion of “Defence and Secu­ri­ty Alert (DSA) Mag­a­zine” New Delhi-India

Defence and Security Alert (DSA

 -
Click to enlarge

Sit­u­a­tion­al or bat­tle­space aware­ness is a sine qua non of the mod­ern bat­tle­field which is char­ac­terised by hith­er­to unimag­in­able lev­els of trans­paren­cy. This has to be a major thrust area and must include both the satel­lites and the ter­res­tri­al infra­struc­ture of launch sites, track­ing, teleme­try and con­trol (TT&C) facil­i­ties and the data links that bind the sys­tem togeth­er. India has a very high degree of core com­pe­ten­cy in the space sec­tor. The ISR archi­tec­ture will entail the use of Air­borne Warn­ing and Con­trol Sys­tem (AWACS), Geo-syn­chro­nous Earth Orbit (GEO) satel­lites, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satel­lites, Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cles (UAVs), Unmanned Com­bat Air Vehi­cles (UCAVs) and Micro Air Vehi­cles (MAVs).

Mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ty to pro­tect the nation’s core val­ues and inter­ests is essen­tial to pre­vent sub­ju­ga­tion and pre­serve own free­dom of action. Defence thinkers con­tin­ue to search for the one sin­gu­lar elixir that will deliv­er oper­a­tional suc­cess. While tech­nol­o­gy has thrown up many tan­ta­lis­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties and has offered us the poten­tial to change the way we choose to fight, the sil­ver bul­let which can deliv­er all-encom­pass­ing suc­cess is as elu­sive now as it was in the years gone by.

Nei­ther today’s con­flicts nor the wars of tomor­row will have a clear­ly defin­able, two-dimen­sion­al bat­tle­field. This has giv­en way to bat­tle space. In the Indi­an con­text, it encom­pass­es our land­mass and island ter­ri­to­ries, the high seas, ocean depths, air­space, space, cyber­space and the elec­tro-mag­net­ic spec­trum. It also includes the minds of our lead­er­ship and the pop­u­la­tion of the coun­try. The spec­trum of con­flict can­not be per­ceived in terms of a neat eas­i­ly com­pre­hend­ed lin­ear esca­la­tor – with peace at one end and war at the oth­er. It will remain a con­tin­u­um with­in which lie a range of mil­i­tary and non-mil­i­tary con­flict pre­ven­tion, con­flict and post con­flict activ­i­ties. The dis­tinc­tion between these is blurred.

While there may be no prover­bial sil­ver bul­let to win future con­flict, the side that has bet­ter sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness is more favourably placed to achieve vic­to­ry. The knowl­edge of the strength, dis­po­si­tions, capa­bil­i­ties and like­ly inten­tions of friend­ly and hos­tile forces will remain a key bat­tle win­ning fac­tor. This by itself is not a new thought or opin­ion. As Sun Tzu observed in anoth­er age and era:

‘It is only the enlight­ened ruler and the wise gen­er­al who will use the high­est intel­li­gence of the army for pur­pos­es of spy­ing and there­by they achieve great results. Spies are a most impor­tant ele­ment in war, because upon them depends an army’s abil­i­ty to move’1.

In Sun Tzu’s time, two and a half thou­sand years ago, depen­dence was sole­ly on human intel­li­gence. Today, tech­nol­o­gy has giv­en us the pow­er to look all across the bat­tle space – a func­tion not pos­si­ble in Sun Tzu’s era. The abil­i­ty to look deep into the enemy’s rear is depen­dant to a large extent on space dom­i­na­tion – and the side which dom­i­nates space will have the edge in future conflict. 

Indi­an imper­a­tives

India’s dis­pute with Pak­istan over Kash­mir has already led to four major con­flicts, the last being Kargil where Pak­istan once again suf­fered a humil­i­at­ing defeat. But this has not less­ened the prospects for future con­flict. On India’s bor­der with Tibet, dif­fer­ences with Chi­na over ter­ri­to­r­i­al claims could once again lead to con­flict. With two of our major neigh­bours then, the casus bel­li for future con­flict exists. This neces­si­tates that our field force must have the capa­bil­i­ty to take to field at short notice and have the capac­i­ty and capa­bil­i­ty to defend our nation­al inter­ests. In turn, this would imply:

  • Main­tain­ing a high state of oper­a­tional readi­ness at all times.
  • Time­ly warn­ings of ene­my build-up in our areas of concern.
  • The abil­i­ty to engage hos­tile forces all across the com­bat zone.

Dom­i­na­tion of space would be essen­tial to achieve the above. This implies the abil­i­ty to con­trol the use of space, at times and places of one’s own choos­ing, while deny­ing an oppo­nent the same ability.

 -

ISR in the mod­ern bat­tle­field can­not be devot­ed to ‘one run over the tar­get area’ sur­veil­lance. It has to be con­tin­u­ous and on line. Thus, the ISR archi­tec­ture will entail the use of Air­borne Warn­ing and Con­trol Sys­tem (AWACS), Geo-syn­chro­nous Earth Orbit (GEO) satel­lites, Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cles (UAVs), Unmanned Com­bat Air Vehi­cles (UCAVs) and Micro Air Vehi­cles (MAVs). Mid­dle Earth Orbit (MEO) satel­lites have a large ‘dead time’ (the time over the ocean) and hence are not suit­able for sup­port­ing land operations

This then has to be a major thrust area and must include both the satel­lites and the ter­res­tri­al infra­struc­ture of launch sites, track­ing, teleme­try, and con­trol (TT and C) facil­i­ties and the data links that bind the sys­tem togeth­er. Own sys­tems need to be pro­tect­ed while capa­bil­i­ty to destroy ene­my sys­tems must be devel­oped. India has a very high degree of core com­pe­ten­cy in the space sec­tor. This needs to be dove­tailed into a defen­sive framework.

For effec­tive and time­ly force gen­er­a­tion and bat­tle­field dom­i­na­tion, the force must have real-time ISR (Intel­li­gence, Sur­veil­lance and Recon­nais­sance) capa­bil­i­ty. In the oper­a­tional / tac­ti­cal sense, ISR, via aer­i­al / ground plat­forms and sen­sors, means the inte­gra­tion of ISR sys­tems to per­mit com­man­ders to com­pre­hend the bat­tle­field in real-time. This would per­mit reduced force gen­er­a­tion time tac­ti­cal­ly as also main­tain the bat­tle­field tem­po. Tech­nol­o­gy of course can­not be a stand-alone sys­tem and would have to be sup­ple­ment­ed by Human Intel­li­gence (HUMINT). But an aggres­sive peace­time ISR would enable both mon­i­tor­ing of the war pre­pared­ness of the adver­sary and his intent. ISR in the mod­ern bat­tle­field can­not be devot­ed to ‘one run over the tar­get area’ sur­veil­lance. It has to be con­tin­u­ous and on line. Thus, the ISR archi­tec­ture will entail the use of Air­borne Warn­ing and Con­trol Sys­tem (AWACS), Geo-syn­chro­nous Earth Orbit (GEO) satel­lites, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satel­lites, Unmanned Aer­i­al Vehi­cles (UAVs), Unmanned Com­bat Air Vehi­cle (UCAVs) and Micro Air Vehi­cles (MAVs). Mid­dle Earth Orbit (MEO) satel­lites have a large ‘dead time’ (the time over the ocean) and hence are not suit­able for sup­port­ing land oper­a­tions. GEO satel­lites, with large cov­er­age, would sup­port ISR require­ments of a strate­gic nature, while LEO satel­lites would play an effec­tive role in the com­mand and con­trol of inter­ac­tive sys­tems in the bat­tle­field since it has a low ‘laten­cy’ sig­na­ture (time delay for a sig­nal from earth to the satel­lite and back). How­ev­er, owing to their low orbit, a large num­ber of such satel­lites would be required. This would derive pos­i­tive advan­tage, as it would also cater to off­set dis­rup­tion in the event of a nuclear blast in space aimed at dis­abling the satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tion and allied systems.

The use of UAVs and UCAVs are going to be major bat­tle win­ning fac­tors in the years ahead. Their util­i­ty has been val­i­dat­ed in some of the recent con­flicts across the globe, such as the Gulf war where over 330 mis­sions of the Israeli Pio­neer UAVs were flown. The con­flict in Bosnia too, has val­i­dat­ed the con­cept and employ­ment of UAVs. Over the last few years, the RQ‑1 Preda­tor drone has become the pri­ma­ry UCAV for offen­sive oper­a­tions by the Unit­ed States Air Force and Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency in Afghanistan and the Fed­er­al­ly Admin­is­tered Trib­al Areas (FATA) of Pak­istan. Its util­i­ty rein­forces the belief that UCAVs would soon become a ubiq­ui­tous part of the future bat­tle­field. Over the Tibetan plateau, the nature and vast­ness of ter­rain again places a very heavy pre­mi­um on air assets. Con­trol over the air would be an essen­tial pre­req­ui­site for suc­cess­ful con­duct of ground oper­a­tions. Air capa­bil­i­ty to hit at tar­gets at depth would neces­si­tate hav­ing a strong and capa­ble air force, supe­ri­or to that of our poten­tial adver­sary. Inabil­i­ty to defend our air­space may lead to unac­cept­able con­se­quences in the ground battle.

Force mod­erni­sa­tion

Thrust on force mod­erni­sa­tion must fac­tor the real­i­ty of future con­flict where­in space dom­i­nance will be an essen­tial com­po­nent of war fight­ing strat­e­gy. The major con­cern for India remains Chi­na, which will con­tin­ue to be India’s long term strate­gic chal­lenge. Mil­i­tary capa­bil­i­ties to address Chi­na would ipso fac­to be ade­quate to negate hos­tile designs by oth­er coun­tries on India’s periph­ery. Chi­nese capa­bil­i­ties in the field of infor­ma­tion war­fare, cyber war­fare and inte­grat­ed net­work elec­tron­ic war­fare are well devel­oped and need to be coun­tered. The thrust of mod­ernising India’s Armed Forces must increas­ing­ly start look­ing towards space based assets. Besides bud­getary allo­ca­tion for space dom­i­na­tion, we would also need to review our organ­i­sa­tions and war fight­ing doc­trines accord­ing­ly. The writer is the Addi­tion­al Direc­tor, Cen­tre for Land War­fare Stud­ies (CLAWS), New Del­hi, India. 

————————–
1. Sun Tzu: The Art of War; Edit­ed by James Clavell, Dell Pub­lish­ing, New York, 1988; p 82. 

Defence and Secu­ri­ty Alert (DSA)
Defence and Secu­ri­ty Alert (DSA) mag­a­zine is the only ISO 9001:2008 cer­ti­fied, pre­mier world class, new wave month­ly mag­a­zine which fea­tures par­a­digm chang­ing in-depth analy­ses on defence, secu­ri­ty, safe­ty and sur­veil­lance, focus­ing on devel­op­ing and strate­gic future sce­nar­ios in India and around the world.

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →