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Approximately 700 US Space Force “Guardians,” along with 12,000 US airmen participated in the large-scale Resolute Space 2025 exercise recently, the Space Force’s first major “orbital warfare” simulations. The Resolute Space drill aims to give the newest military branch fundamental preparations for military actions in space including “space electromagnetic warfare, space domain awareness, orbital warfare, and navigational warfare,” per a statement from the Space Force.
As its largest training exercise since the force’s inception, the “orbital warfare” drill aims to confer an in-depth understanding of performing various combat operations in a “contested, degraded and operationally limited environment”. The drill will take place through simulated, “synthetic” and real-world exercises.
The meaning of “orbital warfare” is defined by the Space Force as combat between spacecraft. Top officials like Lt. Col. Shawn Green, commander of the Space Force’s 527 Space Aggressor Squadron, emphasized the need for a militarized space presence and the ability to respond to threats in space if needed using kinetic and non-kinetic weapons.
“We do have space electromagnetic warfare, as well as cyber warfare, and orbital warfare, aggressors that are participating in live, virtual and constructive environments that will present challenging scenarios for the Blue Forces to fight through a contested environment throughout the scenario,” Green told reporters in mid-July.
“[W]hat that looks like is we have a mission planning cell that’s looking at the synchronization of those fires across orbital warfare, cyber warfare, and electromagnetic warfare, to have a series of moves and countermoves for our Blue Forces to fight through. And we’re using those types of activities to fuse into this large, globally integrated exercise for live, virtual, synthetic scenarios so that our training is realistic, relevant, and challenging,” Green said.
As near-peer competitors like China and non-aligned powers such as India enter further and further into the domain of space, Space Force command has become more and more concerned about possible interference with American infrastructure in space, such as when the Chinese manned space program debuted autonomous satellites that used robotic retrieval arms to tow GPS satellites out their orbit in 2023.
“Resolute Space sends a clear message: Guardians are prepared to fight and win in space shoulder to shoulder with our joint and allied partners,” said Chief of Space Operations General Chance Saltzman, adding, “by training at this unprecedented scale, we’re sharpening warfighter instincts, strengthening combat credibility, and proving our commitment to deliver peace through strength in the face of any challenge”.
It’s unclear what “instincts” a “warfighter” needs when operating in space, or what exactly would generate “credibility,” or even what kind of spacecraft would engage in orbital warfare.
An international airspace exercise
Much of the Space Force’s MO and brand, as WaL has reported before, is centered around protecting US satellites in space, and disrupting those of other nations in the case of conflict. Despite this relatively straightforward mission that could almost certainly be done by the Air Force, this 6th branch of the military cuts itself from a bizarre 21st century cloth, and nowhere is that clearer than the word used for their deployed personnel: the Guardian.
Whether this is a case of gender neutral language use, part of diversity principles the Force has openly admitted to pursuing, or even an attempt to capitalize on the success of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and better attract young people, is anyone’s guess.
According to the Space Force, the Guardians are “part of an elite team…military, civilian, and contractors, and we’re all mission-focused and in the fight together”. An active duty Guardian will have responsibilities that include monitoring enemy satellites or debris, protecting systems from cyber attacks, and ensuring tools like GPS and satellite systems give early warning of any ballistic objects launched into space.
In comparison with past training exercise, Resolute Space 2025 is claimed to allows Guardians to experience both virtual and real-life simulations to enhance their readiness. A past exercise known as Space Flag 22-3 was entirely virtual, and aimed to test Guardians in a challenging environment of limitations.
Resolute Space 2025 was launched out of Joint Base Pearl-Harbor-Hick, Peterson, Schriever, and Buckley Space Force bases, as well as the Indo-Pacific region, Guam, and Japan. Partnerships with Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and New Zealand came into play or will do during the operations through the Combined Space Operations Center, which the Space Force statement on the training exercise said aided in creating a concept of distributed operations, necessary to grapple with threats emerging from the other side of the globe.
The Air Force will also be heavily involved, as it used to be the branch responsible for national security in space, and 350 bomber, fighter, cargo, and refueling aircraft were used in the operations.
“If space domain feels pain, the rest of the Joint Force will likely feel that pain as well,” said Lt. Col. Green. “The whole Force will be effectively weakened as will its ability to respond to threats without space-based infrastructure”.
Not shying away
The US Joint Force—referring to the entire military—loves to brag about where its biggest and most powerful weapons are and what they can do. But up until very recently, placing weapons in space wasn’t discussed openly.
The United States was a founding signatory to the Treaty on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space, which was signed at a time when access to space was extremely limited. An article states that treaty parties will not place weapons on the Moon or other celestial bodies, but didn’t preclude space per se from hosting weaponry.
As WaL has reported before, the preamble and language in the treaty is quite direct: it’s in the name itself. Outer space is the domain of peaceful human cooperation; articles on weapons placements were limited to the technologies and mental scope of the day.
But at the Space Foundation’s 40th annual Space Symposium, a gathering that thrums with military contractors and military brass, Space Force higher-ups could not be clearer on their intent to weaponize space. Fresh from creating the first Space Warfighting Framework, the Space Force sent Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of US Space Command to declare he wanted things “called ‘weapons'”.
He called them “orbital interceptors,” which he described as a spacecraft. He called them “space superiority capabilities” or “integrated space fires,” and said they were necessary “to deter a space conflict and to be successful if we end up in such a fight”.
Why did they need weapons? To fight a war if need be with China in space—which Whiting said has “accelerated their terrestrial and on-orbit space weapons, expanded their space-enabled kill chains and are moving at breathtaking speed”.
His comments follow on from those made at last-year’s Space Symposium, during which he said that “there is no longer any debate that space is a warfighting domain”. If space is a warfighting domain, then it isn’t one intended for the peaceful purposes, in the same way that other domains claimed by the Pentagon are not for use by civilians for peaceful purposes. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Space Force Guardians gather to receive instructions from their commanding officers during Resolute Space 2025. PC: Space Force / Lt. Col Victoria Hight
