Quick satellite replacement should send a message to China, Air Force No. 2 says

Correction: An earlier version of this report misinterpreted the word "repair," which was used to mean replacing disabled satellites, not fixing them. 

The Space Force is moving ahead with experiments to quickly replace satellites disabled by enemy activity—what service leaders call “repairing” the capability of a given constellation—as it prepares for a potential conflict with China, the service’s undersecretary said Monday.  

The goal is to have “tactically responsive space systems that allow us to if, for example, a satellite goes down, within five days get a repair package up into orbit to rapidly be able to repair that capability,” Melissa Dalton said during a Brookings Institution event. “That is something that we are demo-ing real time, and I think, is going to provide a really effective demonstration effect to the likes of the [People’s Republic of China].” 

That is, if a satellite were taken down by an enemy, the Space Force would rapidly deploy a new one. The service, which moved a satellite “from warehouse to on-orbit operations” in five days in its Victus Nox exercise last fall, aims to do it even faster in next year’s Victus Haze. 

Dalton’s comments come as defense officials raise concerns about militarized activity in space. 

U.S. officials have repeatedly warned of the consequences of a war that incorporates space-based weapons, noting that satellites are a critical part of everyday life, and that military missions and intelligence gathering increasingly rely on satellites for navigation and communication.   

China and Russia are developing “counter-space capabilities that are deeply concerning,” including an anti-satellite weapon Russia launched in the orbit of a U.S. government-owned satellite, Dalton said. 

“Russia, just in May, launched into a coplanar orbit with one of our satellites, a capability that is deeply concerning in close proximity to a U.S. government satellite. And then, of course, as has been discussed publicly, the potential Russian intention to launch a nuclear-capable satellite into orbit as well, which would be deeply destabilizing,” Dalton said. 

But there’s no indication that’s already happened, she added.

In May, John Plumb, then the Pentagon’s head of space policy, told lawmakers, “We can say that China has developed robotic satellites that are really probably dual-use. They can be used for nonmilitary purposes, but they can clearly also be used for military purposes, like grappling a satellite.”