Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb said this week that the Defense Department’s (DoD) ability to respond quickly to threats in space is critical to create credible deterrence against potential attacks.
During GovExec’s inaugural Space Project event in Washington on Aug. 28, Plumb keyed on the importance of DoD having infrastructure in place that can deploy against any adversarial threat in space within a matter of days.
Plumb – who left his DoD post in May – said the threat that immediately comes to mind for him is Russia’s potential to put nuclear weapons in space.
“Building an infrastructure that allows you to quickly respond, not take two, three, four, five years to build a rocket, build a payload, but just in a month or a few days, ideally, and be able to show that you can launch into a design orbit for that type of mission is a new thing,” Plumb said. “It’s pretty interesting. I think it’s actually pretty important for deterrence, frankly, and to get to the point of deterrence to be credible.”
DoD, in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit, announced last August that it’s expanding the scope of its upcoming mission to launch a satellite on 24 hours’ notice and hopes to reach an initial operational capability for “Tactically Responsive Space” in 2025.
The Pentagon requested $30.5 million in fiscal year 2025 for the effort, dubbed “Victus Haze.”
“We rely on space every single day. Every single mission uses space. It’s basically in the DNA of the Department of Defense,” Plumb said. “China is on the trajectory to be like us in that respect – relying more heavily on space, putting more and more mass into space, and they’ve built more into their missions … they intend to fight us if they have to.”
“Russia, on the other hand, you see a decline in that capability,” Plumb said. “It’s not keeping up with the pace of either the U.S. commercial and military infrastructure or Chinese. And so, Russia is not looking as a near-peer space competitor in the same way.”
“Those are two different relationships, and those drive two different types of behavior,” he said. “China [is] increasingly using space and so China and the United States both face this problem of, how do we make sure we can use our space services, and if I have to deny the other guy his ability to use space services, how do I do that?”
“Russia increasingly could be more of a disruptive asymmetric player, which is where that nuclear program starts to fit in in some type of grim logic. It’s against treaties. It’s a terrible, indiscriminate weapon,” Plumb said. “The big concern is to maintain deterrence. How do we prevent war between peer and near-peer adversaries? And to do that, you have to have credible deterrence.”
Plumb explained that it’s critical to keep peace with China and ensure that Russia continues to be engageable to prevent “even further deterioration.”
“The United States government is working on just pushing some just basic responsible behaviors, and demonstrating that every day, and trying to make the world come along with that voluntarily, because it’s the benefit of all space operators,” he said.
