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Italy worries some of its satellites, such as Iride, could be lost in space attacks.
AMSTERDAM—Defense planners need to recognize that kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) threats can come in different forms, including in a hybrid guise that may be hard to pinpoint as a direct attack, a senior Italian military space official warns.
“We have to think also about kinetic fake incidents that can ruin an orbit,” says Brig. Gen. Daniele Donati, chief of the Space Policy Office at the Italian air force. “A fake explosion of a space asset of a satellite,” for instance, he noted.
The issue with such an event, he said, is that it is below the threshold of escalation because it is hard to ascribe fault to the action. “We need to be capable of preventing, constraining, or repairing the damages from such a threat, and we never think about it as a threat,” he told the SmallSat Europe conference here.
These types of hard-to-pinpoint attacks are a concern not just in Italy. Germany has been looking at deploying spacecraft to safeguard its system in case they come under attack.
“There’s a lot of, let’s say, subthreshold nudging going on that you cannot see that is very easily deniable, and that you cannot attribute very easily,” warns Regina Peldszus, Space Security Specialist at the European External Action Service, the European Union’s foreign policy branch.
Donati also echoed comments by German military officials saying the country needs to get serious about also going on the offensive when challenged in space. Such actions can’t cause debris, both agreed.
Donati added that among the priorities for the Italian military space effort are self-protection for systems and interoperability with others.
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