The new head of the defence force’s space command says she is “scared” by the activities of China and Russia and concerned by Australia’s current inability to combat those threats.
Air vice-marshal Cath Roberts on Tuesday warned that a Beijing-controlled satellite could, for example, easily “take out” the National Broadband Network for regional Australia.
Roberts initially started with a quip when asked on Tuesday which adversaries scared her the most.
“Well, it’s not Darth Vader, but I do watch a lot of science fiction,” said Roberts, who is the commander of the new space division established within the air force.
“[But] the activities by China and Russia, which have been fairly well documented in the public domain, scare me. I think our lack of capability at the moment against those threats … that is concerning.”
Roberts, who is based at Fairbairn in Canberra and is leading a team of 105 people, added “we are really tight with the US” and “we can rely on them to an extent but we need to accelerate the capability so that we can deal with the threats”.
Part of her role, according to a document released on Tuesday, is to “increase the national understanding” of the threats in space.
Roberts said China’s SJ-21 satellite towed another Chinese navigation satellite “out of orbit and into a graveyard orbit” in January – raising concerns about Beijing’s capability to disrupt vital communications satellites.
“What do we have in geosynchronous orbit that is important for Australia? Well, we have Optus C1, which is all of our satellite communications, and we also have Sky Muster, which is our NBN feed for the country and all the remote areas.
“That Chinese satellite, which drifts around, and we watch it, can actually just, you know, if it decided to, take out the NBN for [regional] Australia.”
Roberts said space was “contested and congested and there are threats”. “We need to be able to protect our assets in space, otherwise it would change Australia’s way of life,” she said.
Roberts said her team would investigate Australia having the capability to generate “reversible and irreversible effects” on objects in space, such as “jamming” satellite communications, without creating debris.
In a speech to a conference in Canberra on Tuesday, the defence minister, Peter Dutton, insisted space must not become “a new realm for conflict”.
Dutton cited an anti-satellite missile test in November 2021 when Russia “destroyed its own redundant Cosmos 1408, which left behind a cloud of more than 1,500 pieces of lethal debris that will take decades to clear”.
At the time, the head of Nasa described the test as a threat to the safety of seven astronauts onboard the International Space Station, but the Russian military said it was aimed at boosting the country’s defensive capabilities and denied the fragments were dangerous.
At a media briefing on the sidelines of the air force-organised conference on Tuesday, Roberts said it has not yet been clearly defined whether towing or disabling a satellite would be considered an act of war.
“What is the line that takes you from competition to conflict? And if they did, you know, take one of our satellites out of geostationary orbit, is that a conflict? That has not happened in space yet. So we have to work through those red lines.”
Air commodore Nicholas Hogan, who joins the space command as the director general of space capability, raised concerns that the lack of established norms or laws in space created a “wild west” scenario.
Hogan said it was worth considering the response if the Russian anti-satellite test in November had occurred on the land or in the sea or air. “If another country created such a lasting impact on one of those domains for 10-plus years, what do you think our reaction would be?”
The commander of the US Space Command, Army General James Dickinson, told reporters in Canberra: “What we’ve seen over the last few years is really an increase in trackable pieces of debris that we look at each and every day. I think today we’re up to close to 44,000 objects that we track, and in having an event like that just adds more to that problem.”
Dickinson also described China as “our pacing threat” and said “we’re watching very closely” but wouldn’t comment on whether the US has similar capabilities. He said the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, has issued him with five tenets of responsible space behaviour, including limiting the creation of long-lasting space debris.
Space for strategic restraint
Dr Cassandra Steer, a space law and policy expert from the Australian National University warned against “accelerating a global strategic race to the bottom”.
“We are already in a security dilemma in space: as each greater power points the finger at the other for threatening the space environment, in response the other great powers ramp up their own space military programs, and we find ourselves in an upward spiral towards a less stable, more risky space environment,” Steer said.
Steer said Russia and China saw the very existence of the US space force to be a threat. In addition to the Russian anti-satellite weapon test in November last year, she cited previous tests by China (2007), the US (2008) and India (2019).
While Steer believes Australia needs a space command and a space strategy, she also said Australia must be “very conscious of the policy positions and statements we make”.
“Together with the UK, Japan, Canada, NZ, Germany, France and others, we should be advocating for responsible behaviours in space, and a return to strategic restraint,” Steer said. “We cannot afford to have space become a theatre of war.”
While Dutton appeared to keep the door open to a US-style space force in the future, Steer said Australia did not have the size nor the technological capability to build a separate force.
“We don’t need to do a copy-cat of our largest ally,” Steer said.
“Space command, and even US space force, is about technological capabilities in space to support terrestrial military operations, and to protect space systems. That doesn’t need ‘boots on the moon’ or even people in space. To talk about an Australian space force is misplaced, and potentially an escalatory statement.”
On Tuesday, the defence department revealed space command’s logo, together with the slogan “the ultimate high ground”. These attracted some mirth online, but were perhaps not as contentious as the logo for the space force launched by the former US president Donald Trump in 2019.
How much money went to a consultant to come up with "The Ultimate High Ground"?
— Greg Jericho (@GrogsGamut) March 22, 2022
And did anyone say "you realise that makes no sense, right?" https://t.co/WbMnz6W2BJ
Defence has earmarked plans to invest $7bn in space capabilities over the next 10 years – spending that has been supported by the opposition in the lead-up to the federal election due in May.
That includes a tender known as JP 9102, with a winning bidder expected to be announced this year, to deliver at least two, and as many as four, military communication satellites.
Roberts said she wanted that capability to be achieved urgently, amid concerns Australia is “so far behind” in its awareness of the space domain.
“We need to be able to deliver and contribute space capability a lot faster than was planned in the integrated investment plan.”
