The U.S. military depends heavily on its space-based assets, and perhaps the most important component of those capabilities are the military communications satellites that allow global command and control of combat forces.

MILSATCOM “is the vital backbone of how the U.S. provides military superiority,” Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., told a Capitol Hill briefing July 24. But, “if we lose communications, we’re in big trouble. We can’t fight as well,” added Lamborn, whose district includes the headquarters of the Air Force and Army Space Commands and the Air Force facility that controls most of the military communications satellites.

In his opening remarks, Lamborn praised the presented by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), which analyzed the value of MILSATCOM and the threats to that asset from potential adversaries and from the growing budget constraints.

The CSBA report, “The Future of MILSATCOM,” warned that the Cold War-era confidence that the United States and the Soviet Union would not attack each other’s space assets — except in an all-out nuclear war — no longer holds.

The result is that “U.S. space systems, and military satellite communications systems in particular, have critical vulnerabilities in conventional warfare. … From the perspective of other nations, U.S. military space systems are weapon systems and space is a domain of warfare that can and will be contested,” the report said.

The threats include kinetic attacks, such as the anti-satellite rocket China demonstrated in destroying one of its own weather satellites in 2007, and electronic jamming and cyber disruptions, which are within the capabilities of many nations and even non-state actors such as international terrorists.

Todd Harrison, senior fellow for defense budget studies at CSBA and author of the report, described the range of defenses that the military could employ to protect its space assets, but noted that adopting those expensive measures for future satellites could be difficult with the reduced defense budgets under sequestration.

“As the threat increases, the resources to address them are declining,” Harrison said during his presentation on Capitol Hill.