Space Strategy

Jean-Luc Lefebvre

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119413608
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mathematik
• Subtopic: Angewandte Mathematik

Strategy is the art of thinking about war before it occurs. Noting that space already plays a role in all of today's wars, Space Strategy studies how conflicts are extending into this new domain. The book defines extra-atmospheric space and focuses on its varying features and constraints. By exploring the opportunities for action provided by different strategic positions, the book analyzes the most plausible combat scenarios from, against and within space. It explains the concepts of militarization, weaponization and martialization of space and shows how space systems constitute an essential component of information literacy – the key to power in the 21st Century.
Space Strategy then demonstrates why our society, having become space-dependent, must take appropriate measures to develop its spatioresilience. Finally, the author summarizes his reflections in the form of a mnemonic listing twelve principles of space strategy.
Completed by educational appendices and a glossary containing one thousand entries, Space Strategy meets the needs of students, researchers or any other reader curious about expanding their knowledge of strategy.

1
Space Strategy: From Words to Actions

“Strategy is knowledge, will and ability”

Admiral Raoul CASTEX

Should we be talking about space geostrategy or simply space strategy?

What method should we use to approach this subject?

What are the key factors that may influence this strategy?

This first chapter aims to answer these preliminary questions.

1.1. Geostrategy of space and space strategy

Experts from the “space strategy workgroup”¹ take issue with the use of the word strategy when it comes to space beyond our atmosphere. The consensus is that most countries² will employ space policies rather than space strategies.

Among them, four nations can nonetheless claim to be developing a true space strategy in an aim to militarize space:

• – the United States³ without a doubt;
• – Russia, which has officially created an aerospace army as of August 2015;
• – China, which considers any common space as “critical security domain” for its country⁴;
• – India, which is now a major power in the field of outer space.

The European Union has struggled to develop a space policy that matches its own economic and geopolitical weight, as demonstrated by the difficulties experienced during the Galileo program. A few European states (France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom, Spain) have separate military aerospace assets that they try and coordinate together, but there is no proper national space strategy. Japan has the skills and the technological resources necessary to develop a real space strategy, but chooses not to for constitutional reasons. Lastly, Brazil, which does not yet have its own individual access to space, cannot be considered a military aerospace power.

Figure 1.1. La guerre en orbite, Serge Grouard, 1994 (© Economica)

In order to define the word “strategy”, we start with that of General André Beaufre, subsequently quoted by Serge Grouard in his book, “La guerre en orbite”⁵. To them, strategy is “the art of discourse of parties using force to resolve a conflict”⁶.

The military definition of strategy that was taught in the French war school⁷ by professor Hervé Coutau-Bégarie⁸ descends directly from the previous one: “Strategy is the dialectic of opposing intelligences within a conflict, based on the use or the threat of using force towards political aims”⁹.

This definition stresses the importance of intelligence, rather than determination, as “strategy is about intelligence, tactics are about determination”¹⁰. The reference to “within a conflict” aims to exclude any situation where there is no risk of fighting (diplomacy, economics, commerce, etc.). The “threat of using force” takes into account deterrence strategies. Lastly, “toward political end” means that strategy remains conditional to politics, which determines the ends and assigns the means to the strategist.

For General Vincent Desportes and Jean-François Phelizon, “Strategy is the way to best solve the equation between the aim, the method and the means”¹¹. This definition that overlooks the double restriction of a conflict and the submission to political ends supposes that the strategist has three parameters at his disposal, which he can affect: “aim, method and means”. This definition is quite different to the one offered to us by professor Hervé Coutau-Bégarie who considers that the strategist only has access to the method, as the ends and means are set by politics¹². It is also worth noting that for General Vincent Desportes and Jean-François Phelizon, strategy is not necessarily a military tool, it can also be used by companies, sports’ teams and any collective that is considered to be agonistic¹³.

As far as the other word appearing in the title and to avoid any confusion, the word space refers to extra-atmospheric or exoatmospheric space that cannot be distinguished from the exosphere. While this notion of ‘exterior to our atmosphere’ that the word space inherently carries is not necessarily difficult to grasp, the boundary between air and space cannot be defined since its atmospheric pressure and altitude decrease quite regularly, and we cannot identify a separation like the line that separates the surface of the oceans. The issue of the limit between the aerial domain and the aerospace domain remains crucial and will be discussed in Chapter 2. Let us, however, note that the consensus is that the atmosphere lies under an altitude of about 60 km where lift remains possible. Anything beyond an altitude of around 200 km and where a satellite can perform a number of orbits without being slowed down by residual particles can be considered extra-atmospheric space. Between these two altitudes, there is an area where objects cannot maintain altitude easily and that can only be crossed by rockets or atmospheric re-entry crafts at our current level of technological advance.

Figure 1.2. Atmospheric reentry craft¹⁴ (© ESA)

We can now look at the association of the words “strategy” and “space”. Hervé Coutau-Bégarie dedicates the last of his work titled Traité de stratégie to what he calls “space geostrategy” to highlight the notion that space is a global domain¹⁵. He presents outer space as a fourth strategic dimension, with land, marine and air being the other three. However, the functional approach that looks toward space applications to benefit strategy as a whole does not actually help in developing a working conceptualization of space strategy. We therefore need to approach the question differently.

If we consider geopolitics to be the study of great global balances, it grants us, for a given moment, a static view – like a photograph – of the state of the world. Basing ourselves on this definition, geostrategy is a natural progression of geopolitics, the same way hydrostatics leads to hydrodynamics: the height of the barriers and the ...