US Space Command Wants Red Phones With China, Russia – By Audrey Decker (Defense One) / April 21 2023
Global norms and mil-to-mil hotlines are urgently needed as the prospects for war in space rise.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — The world’s military space forces need to talk more, U.S. officials say, and that means everything from establishing norms for space operations to setting up red phones with Chinese and Russian space operators.
“I think it is definitely in our interest to have norms of behavior and ways to communicate with other operators in the space domain as to what’s going on. And that can extend in the commercial level or it can extend between US and Russia and China, said Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command.
“Right now, we don’t have those avenues to communicate with them and that opens up the opportunity for misperception, miscommunication, and miscalculation,” Shaw told Defense One Wednesday at the Space Symposium.
Pentagon officials have stressed the need to prepare for conflict in space, but have been hesitant to define, mostly due to classification, what exactly conflict means in space and how it would retaliate if there was a kinetic or non-kinetic attack on U.S. satellites.
