For as long as humans have waged war, controlling the high ground has meant controlling the fight. From ancient hilltop fortresses to the elevated positions that dictated victory in modern battles, elevation offered a point from which to project power and subdue adversaries. But what happens when the high ground isn’t a mountain or a ridge but an orbit thousands of miles above Earth?

In this new theater, the rules of conflict aren’t just rewritten, they’re reimagined. There are no trenches to dig, no skies to dominate. Only the silent vacuum of space, where satellites drift like pieces on a multidimensional chessboard of extraordinarily vast proportions. Here, war might never be declared, but nation-states could still lose or win through actions so subtle they go unnoticed by the billions below. This is the paradox of orbital warfare: capability measured not in firepower, but in strategy, finesse, and control over the unseen.

The Evolving Nature of Space Conflict

Space has always been about vantage points. From the moment we entered the space age, we extended our reach beyond Earth’s surface and transformed the vastness of space into a new domain for military operations. At first, it was about watching, listening, and staying ready. But as our dependence on space grew, so too did the risks.

During the Cold War, space became the ultimate perch for observation. The US CORONA program, a series of early reconnaissance satellites, revealed troop movements, missile sites, and critical infrastructure from hundreds of miles above. These satellites were silent but omnipresent, changing the calculus of warfare by providing something every commander craves: information.

Meanwhile, missile-warning satellites took their place as the sentinels of mutually assured destruction. The Soviet Oko system and America’s Defense Support Program satellites scanned the globe for the telltale heat plumes of missile launches. Their purpose was simple but profound: ensure that an attack would never go unanswered. In this way, the space race wasn’t just about reaching the stars—it was about holding the line.

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967—a now antiquated multilateral treaty aimed at preserving space as a domain of peaceful research and scientific exploration—specifically prohibited the use of nuclear weapons in space and the establishment of military bases in orbit or on any nearby celestial body. This reflected the thinking at the time that if war were to come to Earth’s orbit or in cislunar space (that physical space between low-Earth orbit and the orbit of the Moon) it would likely reveal itself through a declaration of hostilities between great and powerful nations that would mobilize their conventional forces to violent and destructive action against one another.

By the 1980s, orbital conflict shifted from a theoretical concern to a practical demonstration. Both the United States and the Soviet Union tested anti-satellite weapons. The US ASM-135, a missile launched from an F-15 fighter aircraft, demonstrated the capability to destroy satellites in orbit. The Soviets had previously developed co-orbital systems—satellites designed to approach their targets and destroy them up close—as early as the late 1960s. These were examples of kinetic threats: efforts to physically destroy the capabilities of a rival asset through brute force or explosive ordnance.

These early experiments left scars, not just diplomatically but physically. Destructive kinetic impacts have the potential to create debris that can limit access to space and orbital altitudes and pose a threat to crewed stations like the International Space Station and the Tiangong. Each shattered satellite adds debris to Earth’s orbit, creating more hazards for every future mission. Destroying a single satellite might seem like a tactical win, but the aftermath—a field of uncontrollable fragments—can jeopardize entire orbital regions. The scenario of a cascading chain of collisions, called the Kessler Syndrome, is no longer a theoretical risk, but a real possibility. A cloud of uncontrollable debris crashes into other systems along its orbital path, destroying them in the process, and creating more and more debris. This cascade of exponentially increasing debris eventually grows so large and becomes so destructive that it limits the very ability to access certain orbital altitudes and threatens costly and critical assets indiscriminately.

This debris problem can shift the focus of orbital conflict toward disruption rather than destruction. Nonkinetic capabilities like cyberattacks, jamming signals, and disabling systems—methods that leave no trace but achieve the same goal—may be the means of preferred strategies. Directed energy or lasers on the ground or in orbit can degrade imagery satellites or deny their ability to perform their intended operations without destroying them or creating more debris.

Russia has honed its electronic warfare capabilities in recent years, regularly testing systems that signal its readiness to disrupt adversaries in orbit and create effects on the ground by disrupting systems overhead.

Electronic warfare can include jamming the uplink or downlink of a system to prevent an orbital satellite from communicating with its ground transceiver. Uplink jamming requires complicated technology and enormous power to disrupt the signal from a ground transmitter to the orbital asset. This is costly, but it has incredible effects that can be spread over entire regions of Earth. Downlink jamming, where the signal from the orbital system is disrupted on its way down to its intended receiver, is cheap, widely accessible, and comparatively easily combated given its limited field of influence. While the former may still be only in the purview of governments, the latter has propagated to individuals with little resources and has been a persistent, mosquito-like threat to military forces for decades.

These two categories of measures, kinetic and nonkinetic, though varying in their degree of physically measurable effects, still reflect a twentieth-century definition of conflict: easily detectable and identifiable by both target and actor. The principle characteristics of modern orbital warfare are far less discernable and even more complicated in attribution.

The Modern Era of Orbital Power

Today, space conflicts are no longer determined solely by the destructive potential of one asset over another or the effectiveness of nonkinetic capabilities employed from Earth or orbit. Instead, victory is defined by the silent choreography of positioning assets into place before an adversary has the chance to counter or react. The ability to cloak military objectives behind civilian operations adds another layer of strategic ambiguity, allowing state actors to maneuver across the orbital chessboard unnoticed and unchallenged.

No nation-state has mastered the art of blending commercial and military operations quite like China. China has an established governmental and military space infrastructure with agencies that have a proven record of space-based achievements. These agencies blur the line between civilian and military operations and objectives, which indicates that any capability its civilian space sector has could easily be militarized. Satellites designed for communication or weather monitoring can just as easily support military objectives. “We believe that a lot of [China’s] so-called civilian space program is a military program,” former NASA administrator Bill Nelson told lawmakers during congressional testimony in April 2024. “And I think, in effect, we are in a race.”

What is discernably categorized as civilian or military operations is becoming increasingly vague and attempting to sift through the sheer volume of Chinese assets may prove futile. There have been consistent and steady increases in technology and assets in space made by the Chinese. “The number of different categories of space weapons that [China has] created and… the speed with which they’re doing it is very threatening,” said the head of the US Space Force General Chance Saltzman in November 2024.

China continues to advance launch vehicle technology and now private Chinese companies are creating reusable launch vehicles, a commercial space-launch facility, and orbital internet providers similar to Starlink. Chinese commercial satellite imagery companies were recently sanctioned by the United States for providing satellite imagery and assistance to the Wagner Group to aid in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In response, the US military is developing its own hybrid exploitation of civilian assets in space, albeit in a far less clandestine and more public manner. In December 2024, General Stephen Whiting, head of US Space Command, spoke on the growth of the Commercial Integration Cell, a platform where private sector assets in space can share information with their defense counterparts. This information may come in the form of imagery from observation satellites, but also indirectly through electromagnetic interference commercial assets may be experiencing.

Other partnerships with commercial industry are expanding the capabilities the US military can exploit in orbit as well. The Air Force Research Laboratory recently awarded a major contract to a California-based space startup that aims to develop orbital warehouses. These warehouses are designed to store in orbit and deploy cargo anywhere on Earth’s surface within thirty minutes.

While the specific nature of this cargo and its intended users remain undefined, such developments underscore the increasingly indistinguishable roles of commercial and military operations in space. This dual-use character represents the gray zone of modern orbital conflict, where civilian assets integrate with military capabilities.

Why Orbital Warfare is Different

Unlike battles on Earth, space presents challenges that are as technical as they are strategic. Satellites can’t simply dodge an attack. Their movements are dictated by physics, where even small adjustments require precision and energy. Reactive moves aren’t just difficult; they’re often impossible.

These challenges mean that today’s orbital conflicts are fought in subtler ways. A recent space wargame involving senior DoD, State Department, NASA, and intelligence officials showed that satellites can be repositioned to block access to key orbital slots. Communication signals are disrupted without a trace. Diplomatic moves on Earth shift alliances and access to resources in space. Strength is no longer about overwhelming force—it’s about playing the long game, quietly positioning assets, and leveraging international agreements on commerce, exploration, and strategic space partnerships to shape the battlespace before a conflict begins. As space becomes more critical to state’s security and economic stability, the shape of conflict in orbit is becoming clear. Tomorrow’s wars in space are not black and white like yesterday’s wars on Earth. The space domain is a gray zone, where success is determined before the first public move is made. In this arena, subtlety is power, and dominance means seeing the board before the opponent even realizes the game has begun.

In the wargame, role-players acting as China were able to present the United States and her allies with a problem for which there failed to materialize an actionable solution—by quietly positioning civilian spacecraft onto orbital trajectories that could threaten US military position, navigation, and timing or communications satellites. They were then able to reinforce their own positions by quickly launching low-cost and disposable bodyguard satellites to protect their own assets from being threatened in retaliation. All this occurred in the game under the guise of peaceful space exploitation that is as far from a declaration of war as geosynchronous orbit is from Earth’s surface (some thirty-five thousand kilometers).

Herein lies the crux of the issue: what is determined to be a hostile act by an adversarial state may not be recognized until the chessboard is fully arranged and the outcome inevitable—a fait accompli that is set into motion weeks before the first indications are ever made visible.

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in the Gray Zone

In this gray zone of orbital warfare, where actions can go unnoticed until it’s too late, artificial intelligence offers a critical advantage. By processing massive amounts of data and detecting patterns invisible to human analysts, AI can identify potential threats and provide early warnings to decision-makers.

The US Space Force is currently experimenting with a new AI-based software dubbed R2C2 (Rapid and Resilient Command and Control), which aims to automate the detection of threats, data collection and organization, and daily operations for satellites. This automation can handle some of the workload traditionally delegated to human operators as the ratio of satellites to operators continues to grow rapidly.

“We get enough data—but we [still] get so much data that our analysts are overwhelmed anyway,” Chief of Space Operations General B. Chance Saltzman said. “The ability for a machine to collect all the data, process the data, and tell the analyst what’s most . . . high priority, and structure that data in a way that they can make the decision they need—think that’s ripe for software engineering and artificial intelligence.”

Placing AI onboard in-orbit satellites extends its impact to operations on the ground as well. By processing satellite imagery in real time, AI can quickly distinguish between routine patterns of life and signs of military activity, such as formations or deployments. Tasks that once took the CORONA program days to analyze can now be accomplished in seconds, providing decision-makers with actionable intelligence at unprecedented speeds.

But the United States is not alone in leveraging AI as a tactical force multiplier in the orbital domain. The China National Space Administration is developing its own AI-driven satellite imagery analysis alongside capabilities to track space debris. This highlights the dual-use nature of space-based systems: AI designed to monitor the orbital telemetry of debris can just as easily be used to track other objects in space, whether they are friendly or adversarial.

The most recent edition of the Pentagon’s annual report on the “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” further highlighted China’s use of AI systems integrated with surveillance satellite data to track forces on the ground and to enhance high-precision missile strike capabilities.

As artificial intelligence continues to redefine orbital warfare, it also raises questions about how the United States and its allies can maintain an edge in this rapidly evolving domain. The integration of AI into space operations represents an opportunity, but taking advantage of it demands constant innovation and vigilance. With rivals like China making parallel advances, the race for AI superiority in space is as critical as the competition for orbital dominance itself.

Toward Orbital Supremacy

The history of space-based warfare mirrors the future in many ways. Decades ago, the United States and the Soviet Union consistently adapted their Earth-based military technology to function in the space domain. Today, the United States and China are developing new technologies specifically for orbital warfare to have effects back on Earth.

They aren’t developing these alone, however. Alongside them stands a growing contingent of private space companies advancing dual-use technologies. On the one hand they offer new and innovative technologies catering to civilian customers; on the other, a militia-like reserve of assets ready to be pressed into service to support their home nation or allied government.

In 2025, artificial intelligence is no longer a distant concept in warfare; it is here now, and it is evolving as an essential tool in shaping conflict as we know it. As great powers continue to integrate AI into their orbital strategies, the stakes grow higher, and the lines between technological advantage and vulnerability blur. The ability to process vast data streams, identify hidden threats, and act with speed and precision is beyond human capabilities and underscores the importance of protecting AI systems from neutralization or destruction. They are critical in this era of orbital warfare and the United States and China are locked in a second great space race; this time, not to the Moon, but to quietly command the orbits that shape global power.

Orbital warfare operates under conditions unlike any on Earth The challenges of maneuvering satellites and the risks of escalation that may ensue create a new kind of conflict—one defined by calculated positioning, ambiguous intent, and preemptive moves that often go unnoticed until it’s too late. In this gray zone, success isn’t about force ratios or explosive ordnance; it is instead about foresight, precision, and the ability to dominate without confrontation.

Captain Alan T. Dugger is an assistant professor of military science at the University of California, Davis. He holds the additional skill identifier of 3Y (Army space enabler) and has a master of science degree in space studies with a concentration in astronomy. His article “Space Cadence: Orchestrating Fire Support in the Space Domain” was published in the Field Artillery Journal in 2024.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: NASA