Conflict on the Final Frontier: Deficien-cies in the Law of Space Conflict Below Armed Attack, and How to Remedy Them

ARTICLES

CONFLICT ON THE FINAL FRONTIER: DEFICIEN-

CIES IN THE LAW OF SPACE CONFLICT

BELOW ARMED ATTACK, AND HOW TO

REMEDY THEM

ROSS BROWN*

ABSTRACT

In 1945, as delegates signed the United Nations Charter, the world was still

more than ten years from Sputnik 1 and more than 20 years from the cold

war’s Outer Space Treaty. In the new millennium, nations have increasingly

placed their national security in the delicate hands of satellites subject to jam-

ming, cyber-attack, laser attack, and other forms of near-instantaneous techno-

logical conf‌lict scarcely imagined by the Charter’s drafters.

This Article examines the law of international conf‌lict applied to interna-

tionally wrongful interference with national security satellites. Specif‌ically, it

addresses the most likely category of wrongful interference—interference below

armed attack. This Article shows why countermeasures are currently the best-

suited response to internationally wrongful interference below armed attack; it

also argues weaknesses in the law of countermeasures, most prominently the

prohibition on the use of force and the requirement of injury-centric proportion-

ality, render countermeasures ill-equipped to address conf‌lict in outer space.

After examining the weaknesses of the traditional regime as applied to outer

space, this Article proposes a f‌ix: defensive counteractions. Defensive counterac-

tions recognize the risk that, if pressed, states will likely protect their vital

national security interests regardless of whether international law seems to

allow it. Defensive counteractions build upon the existing law of countermeas-

ures to create a framework for nations to operate within instead of having

nations disingenuously assert they have been victims of armed attack and are

* Ross Brown is a United States Air Force judge advocate, currently assigned to the United

States Space Force as the Chief of Space, International, and Operations law for the Space Force’s

Space Operations Command. In that capacity, he also serves as a legal advisor for United States

Space Command’s Combined Force Space Component Command. Mr. Brown holds an LL.M. in

Air and Space Law from McGill University’s Institute of Air and Space Law. The conclusions

expressed in this Article are solely those of the author writing in his personal capacity. They are

not intended and should not be thought to represent off‌icial ideas, attitudes, or policies of the

U.S. Space Force, the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. The

author has used only information available to the public in the researching and presentation of

this Article. V

C 2020, Ross Brown.

11

thus entitled to full self-defense. Defensive counteractions modernize old law for

new challenges.

I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

A. The Goal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

B. The Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1. The Legal Setting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2. The Technological Setting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

a. Satellite Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

i. Navigation Satellites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

ii. Communications Satellites . . . . . . . . 18

iii. Reconnaissance Satellites. . . . . . . . . . 19

b. Satellite Interference Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

i. Signals-Based Interference. . . . . . . . . 20

ii. Directed Energy-Based Interference . 21

iii. Cyber-Based Interference . . . . . . . . . 21

C. The Path Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

II. THE LAW AS IT IS: SELF-HELP IN INTERNATIONAL LAW . . . . . . . . . 22

A. Necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

B. Self-Defense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

C. Countermeasures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

1. Precipitating Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

2. Preconditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

3. Restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

a. Human Rights and Peremptory Norms . . . . . . . . . 31

b. Reversibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

c. Proportionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

d. Limited Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

e. Non-Use of Force. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

III. THE LAW’S LIMITS: SELF-HELP IN OUTER SPACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

A. Diff‌iculties in the Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

1. Necessity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

2. Countermeasures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

a. Constrained in Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

b. Reversible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

c. Proportional. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

d. Non-Forceful . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

B. Policy-Based Reasons for Updating the Regime. . . . . . . . . . . 50

1. Foundational Factors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

a. Technological Nature of Outer Space . . . . . . . . . . 51

b. Peaceful Nature of Outer Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

2. Pragmatic Inf‌luencing Factors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

12 [Vol. 51

a. State Pressure to Find Armed Attack . . . . . . . . . . . 56

b. Deterrent Effect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

c. Harmful Response Gap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

IV. THE PROPOSAL: DEFENSIVE COUNTERACTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

A. Analogous and Informative Concepts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

1. Minority Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

2. Sovereignty and National Security Satellites . . . . . 63

B. Defensive Counteractions: A Description. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

1. Required Conditions Precedent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

2. Primary Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

a. Permissible Use of Force . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

b. Objective-Centric Proportionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

c. Permissible Long-Term Disabling of Interfering

Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

3. Restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

a. Necessity and Proportionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

b. Immediacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

c. Sole Targeting of Interfering Instrument . . . . . . . . 75

d. No Space Debris or Signif‌icant Harmful Third-Party

Interference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

V. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

I. INTRODUCTION

A. The Goal

In 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik 1 and less than ten

years after the signing of the United Nations Charter, Phillip Jessup

examined the state of the law governing international conf‌lict and

found it wanting.

1

He believed the world had changed and, asking

whether the legal regime needed to be updated, said there was a basic

question of “whether our concepts, our terminology, our law, have kept

pace with the evolution of international relations.”

2

As Jessup saw it, the

problem was rooted in “the legal necessity of f‌itting every situation into

one of the two traditional categories of peace or war,” and he asked

“whether it would not be useful to break away from the old dichoto-

mous approach, acknowledging in law as in fact that there is a third sta-

tus intermediate between peace and war.”

3

1. Philip C. Jessup, Should International Law Recognize an Intermediate Status between Peace and

War?, 48 AM. J. INT’L L. 98 (1954).

2. Id. at 102.

3. Id. at 100.

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