Abstract

The United States has simultaneously pursued nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) modernization and doctrinal modernization through Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO). These two efforts proceed along largely separate institutional and intellectual tracks. This article examines whether JADO accounts for the nuclear escalation risks that PLA counterspace capabilities pose to dual-use space-based NC3 infrastructure. It bridges two bodies of scholarship that have developed in parallel: the nuclear-conventional entanglement framework and the emerging JADO doctrinal literature. The analysis introduces the "space-nuclear firewall" as an analytical concept, identifying not the structural condition of entanglement but the doctrinal assumption that entangled systems can be managed without differentiated treatment. The article argues that this assumed separation is operationally fictitious. PLA systems destruction warfare (体系破击战, tǐxì pòjī zhàn) treats the adversary's operational system as a unified target set, prioritizing disruption of its information flows and command linkages. This doctrinal logic exploits the very distinction that JADO fails to operationalize. JADO's emphasis on cross-domain convergence inadvertently deepens the entanglement problem. Optimizing for integration at the operational level obscures the strategic-level nuclear risks that convergence introduces in space. The article concludes that JADO does not position U.S. forces for success where the space and nuclear domains intersect. To address this structural vulnerability, it proposes a dedicated Space-Nuclear Integration Cell within the JADO planning architecture. ​

Keywords: nuclear-conventional entanglement; Joint All-Domain Operations (JADO); counter-space operations; nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3); PLA systems destruction warfare; space-nuclear firewall; inadvertent escalation; strategic stability

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https://orcid.org/0009-0008-5783-2437