Countering Threats in Space Through International Cooperation

The U.S. military's dependence on inherently vulnerable space assets creates an incentive for its adversaries to target U.S. space systems. Establishing mission assurance through resilience and reconstitution is a critical challenge for the United States. One of the U.S. approaches to strengthening resilience and reconstituting space systems is to engage in international cooperation with its allies. Such cooperation can effectively improve three elements of resilience: disaggregation, distribution, and diversification. International joint development of satellites with allies would also improve the reconstitution of U.S. space systems, which involves rebuilding these systems after damage by adversaries. These efforts could benefit both the United States and its allies through imposing quantitative and political costs on adversaries for attacking U.S. space systems. Several issues prevent close cooperation. Considering these benefits and obstacles, establishing space systems, especially an SSA(Space Situational Awareness) satellite constellation, with allies could be an effective undertaking for the United States. The United States has an advantage compared with its adversaries as it possesses a number of strong allies and partners; thus, the United States should maximize this advantage to improve the resilience and reconstitution of space systems. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.