U.S. Space Force Maj. Gen. David Miller, U.S. Space Command Director, Operations, Training and Force Development, addressed Academic Fair attendees at the USSPACECOM inaugural event, Mar. 8, 2022, held at the U.S. Air Force Academy Falcon Club. (Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class John Philip Wagner, Jr.)
WASHINGTON — The Space Force urgently needs to develop a broad range of offensive and defensive counterspace weapons based on orbit to counter China — starting with a clear policy statement of US government intent and the development of an integrated plan for building such an arsenal, argues a new paper from the Mitchell Institute.
They’re recommendations that “resonate with almost every Guardian that’s out there” and with “United States Space Command in particular,” said Maj. Gen. David Miller, US Space Command director of operations, training, and force development (J3), during an online Mitchell Institute event today to unveil the policy paper.
“We’ve got to … stop debating if it’s a warfighting domain, stop debating whether there are weapons, and get to the point of how do we responsibly, as part of the joint and combined force, deter conflict that nobody wants to see, but if we do see it, demonstrate our ability to win?” he said. “We have to get about the process and the prospects of — from multiple domains, not just the space domain — providing capability to find, fix and deny any adversary capability to find and target US forces or allied forces.”

The paper, “Building US Space Force Counterspace Capabilities: An Imperative for America’s Defense,” acknowledges the value of diplomacy for norm setting and the service’s current focus on building resilience, but it says that these to approaches are not enough to provide deterrence to a more aggressive China and Russia — both of which have been steadily working to build up their own capabilit …