America’s space force is preparing for the risk of war

As China and Russia build arsenals of weapons that could target American military and civilian satellites, those threats are growing, and Agrawal’s unit is part of a relatively new military branch that is quietly preparing for a new era of warfare.

With 15,000 military and civilian personnel, and an annual budget of about $30 billion, Space Force is far smaller and less well known than any other branch of the military services.

Founded nearly five years ago under former President Donald Trump, Space Force met with initial ridicule for its quirky dress uniforms, calling its members “Guardians," and adopting an anthem hastily penned by a Nashville-based Air Force veteran. A triangular emblem that resembled those worn on the uniforms in the “Star Trek" TV show only added to the jokes.

Now, Space Force is emerging from the shadows—and the late-night punchlines—and its leaders are beginning to talk about its preparations for a potential war involving space—even as they say their aim is to deter, not destroy.

“We don’t want anyone to get the impression that we’re trying to be offensive in nature," said Agrawal, whose unit is known as Delta 2. But, he added, “you can’t show resolve without the ability to attack."

American combat in space wouldn’t necessarily involve satellite-killing explosions. The U.S. would likely use less brute-force tactics, such as blinding a spacecraft’s sensors, scrambling its electronics, or interfering with its communications with ground stations, officials in Colorado and Washington said.

U.S. military officials’ new willingness to openly discuss conflict in outer space reflects what they say are startling advances by China and Russia. Beijing is developing fleets of surveillance satellites and multiple types of satellite-killers aimed at eroding U.S. space superiority, they said, while Moscow has tested components for a nuclear-armed anti-satellite device.

Moscow says the device suspected of being a prototype satellite-killer is for scientific research, and China’s foreign ministry spokesman has accused the U.S. of being the “main driver in turning outer space into a weapon and a battlefield."

The U.S. wants to deter countries like Russia and China from using their space weapons, Gen. Chance Saltzman, the head of Space Force, said in an interview. But if those efforts fail, he said, then the U.S. must be able to “deny, disrupt and degrade" enemy space systems.

The ‘War Room’

U.S. lawmakers had pushed for a Space Force for years, arguing that threats in, and from, space were growing, and that the U.S. Air Force, with its emphasis on manned jet fighters and bombers, would never give space the urgent focus it needed. Trump became a vocal supporter of those efforts, and in December 2019, he signed the law bringing Space Force into existence.

Even in the early days, there were concerns about portraying Space Force as something that would actually be involved in combat.

In 2019, when Delta 2’s Agrawal helped lead the effort to prepare for the creation of Space Force, it was overseen by a unit within the Pentagon dubbed the “war room." The name was changed after civilian leaders deemed it too bellicose. “At the time, the policy was, ‘Space is not a warfighting domain,’" Agrawal said.

The Pentagon relies on space systems for almost everything it does: collecting and disseminating intelligence to assist with troop and ship movements, communicating, and finding adversary battle formations and targeting them. Being blinded in space, if only partially or momentarily, could have catastrophic consequences for U.S. military and intelligence operations.

U.S. adversaries, especially China, have seized on these vulnerabilities. According to Space Force officials, China now has nearly 500 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance satellites operating in space, which can detect aircraft carriers, air wings and ground forces. Nearly half of China’s intelligence satellites were deployed just last year.

With these spacecraft, “China is able now to detect, track, target and kill U.S. forces," said Jay Raymond, a retired general who served as Space Force’s first chief.

China is also looking for ways to disable U.S. satellites. It is planning to field ground-based weapons that can destroy satellites at up to 22,000 miles above the earth’s surface, Space Force officials say. China has also demonstrated the ability to use a spacecraft to move another satellite from its position.

Despite Russia’s reliance on outdated technology, U.S. officials call Moscow a real, if lesser, threat to U.S. assets in space. Moscow, like Beijing, has demonstrated its ability to strike satellites using ground-based missiles. And since at least last year, Russian satellites have been parking on orbit near U.S. and Western commercial communications satellites, perhaps in an effort to disturb their function.

But the most concerning development by far, U.S. officials say, is Russia’s 2022 launch of a satellite to test components for an antisatellite weapon that would carry a nuclear device. The weapon would allow Russia to disable numerous satellites with a single strike, rendering low-earth orbit, currently crowded with thousands of spacecraft, unusable for a year or more.

One U.S. response championed by Space Force is to radically increase the number of U.S. military satellites in space and spread them across different orbits. Even if some are destroyed in a conflict, the idea goes, the overall network will remain.

But U.S. military leaders are also increasingly vocal about their desire for “fires"—a military term for weapons—to protect U.S. space assets and, if necessary, to attack an adversary. “We need space fires to enable us to establish space superiority," Gen. Stephen Whiting, the head of U.S. Space Command, the Pentagon’s combat command for space, said at a conference last month.

Saltzman, whose formal title is Chief of Space Operations, acknowledged that his service is working on ways to target enemy assets in space, but he suggested that the U.S. wouldn’t use a missile to take out another satellite, because of the resulting space debris that could also harm American or allied spacecraft. “I’m picking these words very carefully because I didn’t say ‘destroy,’" he said.

Saltzman and other military officials declined to be more specific about such technology, since details about U.S. space weaponry are highly classified.

‘There’s friction’

The creation of a new military branch eager to secure its role and mission hasn’t been without turf battles. A flashpoint in a rivalry between Space Force and elements of the intelligence community is a planned constellation of spacecraft that will allow the U.S. military to rapidly track, target and destroy an enemy’s ground forces, known by the unwieldy name Ground Moving Target Indicator.

Pentagon officials argue that this is a purely military mission long conducted by Air Force planes equipped with powerful radars. As that capability is now moving to space, the military should still be in charge, those officials say.

But tasking spy satellites—sifting and giving priority to competing requests for them to focus on specific targets—has long been the job of a spy agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Its director, Navy Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth, said he has established a joint center where intelligence and military personnel work together tasking satellites. But as to who has the final say, “That’s still being worked out," he said.

“There’s friction, but that’s what happens when there’s overlapping responsibilities," Saltzman said.

Space Force’s strongest backers also say its honeymoon with Congress is over. After years of quickly expanding budgets, as it absorbed programs previously run by other armed services, Space Force has seen its funding flatline. The White House requested $29.4 billion for Space Force for fiscal 2025, a small decrease from the previous year’s request.

In campaign speeches, Trump—the Republican presidential nominee—touts his creation of Space Force as a key accomplishment and has promised to create a Space National Guard, which he says would serve as a combat reserve for the service. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, who chairs the White House’s National Space Council, has called the works of its Guardians “critical to America’s national security."

Still, even after five years, public knowledge of America’s newest armed service is thin. Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, the top Space Force officer at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, says he still encounters quizzical civilians who see the words “U.S. Space Force" stitched in blue on his camouflage uniform.

“‘Is Space Force a real thing?’" he says people ask him. “I get that question all the time."

Write to Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com and Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com