Dogfighting in Space: The Future of Maneuver Warfare

June 17, 2025

On June 13, the space domain awareness software company COMSPOC observed two Chinese satellites move within 1 km of each other and possibly perform a docking maneuver. The two satellites, SJ-21 and SJ-25, later separated and have since drifted apart more than 120 km.

This move by two Chinese satellites confirms what experts have known for years: Near-peer competitors China and Russia have been developing and practicing techniques, tactics and procedures that are reshaping the operating environment in space and rapidly closing the capability gap in on-orbit maneuver warfare.

Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein recently described a series of maneuvers among five Chinese satellites as “dogfighting in space.” While the idea of dogfighting satellites may invoke images of high-speed maneuvers unfolding in minutes or seconds, a la Star Wars or Top Gun, the reality is different.

“Those engagements [in GEO] take place over two to three days in some cases,” said Clint Clark, VP of first impressions at Exoanalytic Solutions. “The techniques, the behaviors, are like a dogfight. You’re doing a move, a countermove, but it’s not unfolding like you see in the movie Top Gun: Maverick.”

There are various on-orbit tactics that may involve short or sustained movement across orbits, including SIGINT collection, characterization and inspection missions, docking and capture, counter-inspection and even co-orbital ASAT. However, rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) most closely resemble the dogfighting described by Gen. Guetlein.

In its 2025 Space Warfighting framework, the U.S. Space Force (USSF) describes RPO as an operation that “may include purposeful positioning of a spacecraft near or in contact with another spacecraft…for the purposes of defense, offense, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, collection, sustainment, training, research and development or to fulfill other missions.”

Tracking Orbital Encounters

China and Russia have demonstrated various and increasingly sophisticated on-orbit maneuvers in recent years.

“We’re watching as China and Russia are advancing the state of the art of their counterspace technology, and then their tactics, their techniques and procedures [TTPs] for employing that technology,” said Jim Cooper, SSA Solutions Lead at COMSPOC. “They’re getting to a point where what they’re trying to do is sort of test, experiment, wargame and validate all of these TTPs that they’re building and get them ready for operational use. And we’re seeing rapid advancements there.”

The Luch Olymp satellites typify this activity by Russia. The maneuverable spy satellites have been observed closely stalking western birds across the GEO belt, presumably collecting signals intelligence. More recently, Russia deployed a trio of satellites in near-polar orbit, Kosmos 2581, 2582 and 2583 that were said to be conducting RPO activities and space warfare drills. Another satellite, Kosmos 2588, is sparking concerns after arriving in close proximity to a U.S. military satellite, prompting concerns of regular flybys and possibilities of a co-orbital ASAT weapon.

China has demonstrated highly sophisticated counterspace tactics, including rendezvous and proximity operations, and appears to be accelerating the tempo of on-orbit exercises. Some of the more notable examples from recent years include Shijian-21 circling, grappling and towing a defunct weather satellite into graveyard orbit in 2022 and recent dogfighting maneuvers among multiple satellites.

China’s Top Gun Moment

Currently, the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP), originally launched in 2014, is the core of the known U.S. fleet of maneuverable satellites. In 2022, the GSSAP satellite, US-270, had an unusual encounter when approaching China’s Shiyan 12-01 and Shiyan 12-02 satellites in GEO. The approach was likely intended to scope out the Chinese satellites, but as US-270 closed in on Shiyan 12-02, it slowed down dramatically, causing US-270 to overshoot. As the U.S. satellite whizzed by, Shiyan 12-02’s new position, directly in front of the sun, likely prevented US-270 from capturing images but gave the Chinese satellite a favorable angle.

“This is the space equivalent of the first Top Gun movie, albeit over the course of one to two days, as opposed to minutes and seconds,” Cooper noted, referring to the character Maverick’s classic brake-and-shoot maneuver. “The end effect is the same. They are gaining an advantage. They are outmaneuvering. They are getting inside the U.S. observe, orient, decide and act—the OODA loop.”

After US-270 passed Shiyan 12-02, the second Chinese satellite also threw on the brakes and US-270 overshot again, forcing it to perform a new maneuver to lower its altitude and drift back to reengage the Chinese spacecraft again.

These countermeasures show a sophisticated chain of operations and decision-making that unfolded over time, at high speeds and vast distances. “Over the course of about one day, China was able to detect [the U.S.] maneuver, track the satellite, take the observational data and use processing and fusion software to generate the space domain awareness necessary to understand what the U.S. satellite was trying to do,” Cooper explained. From there, the Chinese selected a course of reaction as a countermeasure, uploaded that through command and control to ultimately counter the U.S. approach.