In 2018, President Donald Trump spoke of the strategic importance of space stating that, “We must have American dominance in space” as a part of the country’s long-term national security. He then directed the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the Armed Forces. A little over a year later, the U.S. Space Force (USSF) came into existence when the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law. The USSF is now fully engaged in developing and employing new and important capabilities the United States needs to achieve dominance in space. Considering the historical role space has played in maritime security, the Coast Guard should partner with the USSF to help shape the doctrine and space-based capabilities that will directly contribute to the Coast Guard’s maritime security mission in the decades to come.
Space has been historically important to the security and defense of the maritime domain. Long touted as the global strategic high ground, space is as essential to maritime security as the sea itself. Space-based technologies provide a source of precision navigation and timing vital to maritime forces’ navigation, cryptography, networking, imaging, and real-time situational awareness.[1] Space applications are important for tracking collaborative and non-collaborative vessels and are used by global reporting systems such as the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System and Ship Security Alert System. Space-based sensors are also used for strategic planning in oil spill response and maritime pollution prevention.
The Coast Guard has historical ties to space. From the time Revenue Marines navigated by the stars in the 1790s aboard cutters to enforce customs duties and defend the southern coast to the present day, the link between the Coast Guard, maritime security, and space is as old as the Coast Guard itself. Two Coast Guard officers became NASA astronauts and completed multiple space missions. As the nation’s recognized premier maritime law enforcement agency and vital component of the nation’s maritime security efforts, the Coast Guard can position itself to again be a leader by nesting its strategic goals with those of the newly formed USSF.
Coast Guard cornerstone documents such as Publication 1: Doctrine for the U.S. Coast Guard, Publication 3.0: Operations, and various strategy documents emphasize the organization’s global reach in its mission to protect those on the sea, protect the nation against threats delivered by the sea, and protect the sea itself. However, although requirements on the Coast Guard to protect U.S. global Maritime Transportation System interests are increasing, the organization routinely finds itself facing severe budget limitations. The budget constraints are largely because the Coast Guard, although a military service, is separate from the DOD and finds itself competing for resources with 13 other operational and support components within the Department of Homeland Security.
In the coming decades, the Arctic will place additional requirements on the service (see Figure 1). The recent Coast Guard Arctic Strategic Outlook points to the area as a prominent strategic competitive space caused by reductions in sea ice that expose coastal borders and facilitate increased economic activity. U.S. strategic competitors, China and Russia, are now declaring the region one of their national priorities. Although the Coast Guard is the nation’s primary maritime presence in the polar regions, it has only two polar icebreakers (both near the end of their expected lifetime) and the United States is the only Arctic state not making serious investments in ice-capable surface maritime assets. The Coast Guard must seek other avenues to accomplish its mission in the Arctic. Having personnel assigned to, and establishing a partnership with, the USSF could allow the Coast Guard to take advantage of the increasing space-based capabilities to assist with its goal of ensuring a safe, secure, and cooperative Arctic region.
Figure 1. The Arctic Defined. Adapted from the USCG Arctic Strategic Outlook 2019, 11.
Assigning Coast Guard personnel to other components of the armed forces is routine and can easily be replicated with the USSF. For example, the Coast Guard has personnel serving in key leadership roles at SouthCom, AfriCom, IndoPaCom, NorthCom, the Alaska maritime region, Joint Interagency Task Force-South (JIATF-S), and others.[2] The other services and combatant commanders value having the Coast Guard’s highly adaptable people and platforms and consider them as force multipliers in securing the nation’s vast maritime domain.
Not only will the Coast Guard benefit from assigning members to the USSF, but the Space Force will also profit from the Coast Guard’s unique combination of military, law enforcement, and humanitarian capabilities. As a DoD component, the USSF’s primary focus is centered around the military aspects of space necessary to protect the country and provide space-based capabilities to the combatant commands. However, similar to the purpose of navies in the early maritime frontier of hundreds of years ago, the larger purpose of the USSF will eventually be to secure space for future commercial travel and trade.
In his article The Command of Space: A National Vision for American Prosperity and Security, Lieutenant Colonel Amrine compares the growth of European maritime trade beginning in the eleventh century and the current status of space as a new frontier.[3] For countries willing to make the investment, exploration of the seas and oceans resulted in new forms a trade and commerce. To control the sea, navies had to secure and protect these maritime trade routes. From this perspective, American dominance in space will not be limited to just securing the homeland and using space as a warfighting domain. Achieving space dominance will be the beginning step for the United States to secure routes in space that will allow for expanding space exploration and the safe increase of space travel and commerce so that America can take advantage of what one expert called the multi-trillion dollar space marketplace.[4]
The increase in commercial space activity is not far off in the future. There are increased capabilities for commercial transportation into Earth orbit and soon commercial transportation in space will include in-space transportation systems and their support infrastructure. These capabilities will include reusable space tugs, Moon shuttles with propellent depots and on-orbit refueling, orbit transfer vehicles, and Moon landers. In the near future, commercial rides will be available on suborbital flights and on flights to the International Space Station. It is expected that by 2024 commercial transportation service will be available from NASA’s Gateway, which operates between Gateway and the Moon. (Gateway is a transportation node where people and goods transfer between vehicles from Earth and a Human Landing System.) To prepare the USSF for growing commercial activities in space, the command should seek assistance from the Coast Guard in developing doctrine to support and regulate those activities, some of which are very similar to what the Coast Guard performs now in the maritime realm.
Interestingly, the same blend of military, law-enforcement, humanitarian, and regulatory skillsets that allows the Coast Guard the ability to carry out an array of civil and military responsibilities on the sea can help the USSF develop doctrine and procedures for similar non-warfighting requirements in space. In her article The Guardians of Space, Lieutenant Colonel McKinley points to the Coast Guard model as an organizational structure for successfully working with the non-warfighting aspects of future space activities. She makes a compelling comparison between current Coast Guard responsibilities and the requirements of space exploitation outlined in the table below:
Table 1: Comparison of Coast Guard Responsibilities and Space Requirements. Adapted from Table 2, The Guardians of Space, Pg. 43
Procedures, policies, and regulations must be created for each space exploitation requirement, and space professionals trained to support those activities. The Coast Guard is already shaping its future workforce to have people who are tech fluent, human focused, and skill stacking.[5] Coast Guard personnel with these qualities are just the right type of people to assign to the USSF to answer the challenges of the non-warfighting aspects of space exploitation.
In May of 2020, 86 new graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy became the first group of officers commissioned directly into the newly formed USSF. The new lieutenants joined 16,000 military and civilians from the former Air Force Space Command already assigned to the USSF. Together they will define the organizational structure that will achieve the Space Force’s mission and responsibilities to achieve American dominance in space. It would be wise for the Coast Guard to assign personnel now to work with the USSF so they can together forge an important partnership that will reap long-term strategic benefits for both organizations. Partnering with the USSF can be an important step in the Coast Guard being ready, relevant and responsive and able to address the complex maritime challenges across the full spectrum of maritime operations. That spectrum is sure to include space.
Endnotes
[1] C. Becker, “The role of space in maritime operations,” paper presented at the Maritime Security Dialogue, Washington, D.C., 2016.
[2] R. W. Warren, “The Coast Guard’s critical role as an Armed Service” (USAWC: Carlisle, PA), 2012.
[3] J. M. Amrine, “The command of space: A national vision for American prosperity and security,” (Air War College: Maxwell AFB, AL), 2000.
[4] S. L. Kwast, “The urgent need for a United States Space Force,” in H. College (Ed.), Imprimis, vol. 49, 1-5 (Hillsdale College) 2020.
[5] Project Evergreen, Workforce 2030 (Washington, D.C.: USCG), 2019.
