Star wars ‘not science fiction’: US Lieutenant General John Shaw

Any military conflict involving major powers – such as the US and China – could start in space and involve the destruction of satellites critical for most aspects of modern life.

The development of anti-satellite weapons provides ‘potential threats to all space capabilities for nations operating in lower domain space’, says US Lieutenant General John Shaw, the Deputy Commander of US Space Command.

Any military conflict involving major powers – such as the US and China – could start in space and involve the destruction of ­satellites critical for most aspects of modern life, as well as leaving vast amounts of potentially deadly ­debris floating around and complicating any efforts at post-­conflict reconstruction.

This is just one scenario reluctantly sketched out by US Lieutenant General John Shaw, the Deputy Commander of US Space Command.

“Our society is more reliant on space today than it has ever been, and it will be even more reliant on space tomorrow than it is today,” General Shaw told The Australian in an exclusive interview.

“That is also true for allied war fighters. Our potential adversaries have noticed this and they have started developing for some time threats to those systems.”

The senior US military official is visiting Australia to participate in a 1.5 track dialogue on space, involving government officials, academic and think-tank figures and private industry, held by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

General Shaw believes that nations will have to come together to work out more detailed operational protocols for space, just as there are for maritime traffic and for civil aviation.

He nominated in particular the actions of both China and Russia in shooting down satellites as evidence of this, and as dangerous and unnecessary developments in themselves.

In 2007, China used a missile to shoot down one of its own weather satellites.

“The 2007 China anti-satellite test was the first of a series of indicators, and there have been many since then, that they were developing counter-space capabilities,” General Shaw said, adding “we are still tracking thousands of pieces of debris from that test”.

“Then of course Russia did the same thing on November 15 last year, a kinetic intercept of one of their old satellites. We’re still tracking hundreds of pieces of ­debris from that.

“Both these actions did not need to happen and they’re causing navigation hazards in space, and potential dangers to astronauts, whether at the international space station or the Chinese space station.”

The development of anti-satellite weapons, in his view, provides “potential threats to all space capabilities for nations operating in lower domain space”.

The chaos caused to normal society from a disruption of space capabilities could be devastating.

“Space is woven into everything we do on a day-to-day basis,” General Shaw said.

“You probably use space three times before your morning coffee – if you check banking transactions overnight, if you check the weather, or if you drive to work and use a GPS system.

“A lot of our space architectures were designed and deployed in a period before they were under threat.

“Space used to be like the Arctic Ocean, it was very sparse, there were few actors there, most of it was exploration or for national security. Now it’s more like the Mediterranean Sea, there’s all sorts of traffic of all kinds.”

In the period when space was seen as completely benign, critical space architecture was designed purely to be efficient and deliver capabilities.

Communications satellites were big, and security from ­potential attack was not part of their design brief.

“These particular platforms are vulnerable,” he said.

“I’d liken them to super tankers in the maritime domain.”

Apart from deterring an enemy from attacking satellites, General Shaw believes allied nations need to undertake a range of actions. “We need to change our space architectures,” he said. “That might be the way we design satellites, or there might be ways satellites could be defended.”

One response would be to have redundant capacity built into the system, or to have many and dispersed satellites, as opposed to bigger satellites.

“A proliferation of satellites is one means to get resilience,” General Shaw said.

“I would point to the Starlink satellites that Russia has threatened because of their use in Ukraine. Russia is not able to target thousands of satellites.”

The Starlink system has thousands of satellites in low orbit operated by SpaceX, which was founded by Elon Musk in part to support an ultimate manned mission to Mars.

General Shaw, despite his military responsibilities, is optimistic about what space offers the human race.

“I’m a space enthusiast,” he said. “We’re going back to the moon (with manned missions) and continue the great journey of exploration beyond the planet.”

This will have practical and economic implications in the near future, he believes.

“The futurist in me would say it’s inevitable there will be economic activity beyond our planet in the earth/moon system to begin with, and beyond that in time,” he said.

“Every domain that human beings have come in contact with has led to some sort of economic engagement that drove further exploration and expansion.”

General Shaw is a strong champion of intimate co-operation between the US and Australia on space security. Already, he says, the two nations effectively run joint space operations.

“I’ve been working with Australian partners for many years,” he said. “At our combined space operations centre in California, which oversees all our military space operations on a day-to-day basis, the deputy commander of that centre is an Australian.”