Resilience Through Escalation: A Graph-Based PACE Architecture for Satellite Threat Response

Abstract: Satellite systems increasingly face operational risks from jamming, cyberattacks, and electromagnetic disruptions. Traditional redundancy strategies often fail against dynamic, multi-vector threats. This paper introduces a resilience-by-design framework grounded in the PACE (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency) methodology, originally developed for tactical communications in military operations, adapting it to satellite systems through a layered state-transition model informed by threat scoring frameworks such as CVSS, DREAD, and NASA's risk matrix. We define a dynamic resilience index to quantify system adaptability and implement three PACE variants: static, adaptive, and softmax-based decision models, to evaluate resilience under diverse disruption scenarios. The proposed approach highlights the effectiveness of lightweight, decision-aware fallback mechanisms in improving survivability and operational continuity for next-generation space assets.