Space Security: Issues for the New U.S. Administration (hosted by CSIS)

Space Security: Issues for the New U.S. Administration (hosted by CSIS)

By VADM Charles Richard | U.S. Strategic Command | March 22, 2017

Washington, D.C. (As delivered, edited for clarity) --

Vice Adm. Charles A. Richard,  Deputy Commander, U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM): Good morning, and Dr. Hamre, thank you so much for one, hosting this event and that very kind introduction; as well as to CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies] more broadly; as well as to Mr. Robinson and the Prague Security Studies Institute.

I think it’s great that we have all gotten together to collaborate and raise awareness about the critical issue of space security for the new administration.

Thank you also to all the panelists and participants here for your contribution to the discussion.

We know that in early meetings with senior military leadership our new President has shown a keen interest in space issues as we work towards a strategy of preparation without provocation in space.

So, a very relevant topic.  I’m privileged to be here. And as Dr. Hamre said, I’m here on behalf of my boss, General Hyten, who I think is one of the leading active duty military space experts certainly in our military and across the board.  I’d like to address some issues in space security from a U.S. Strategic Command perspective.

Recognizing our strategic forces

But before I start, I’d also like to recognize the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are manning our strategic weapons systems so we can be gathered here today.

There are over 184,000 people overall in the STRATCOM enterprise worldwide, and they stand watch 24/7/365 from underwater to outer space.  As we speak, they’re in Greenland, watching for incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles. They’re in North Dakota, sitting in missile silos. And they’re under the ocean, inside nuclear-capable submarines. And the point behind that is that we are all very secure today. I don’t think anybody in this room is particularly worried about a strategic attack occurring while we’re here — and that’s not an accident. That is the result of strategic deterrence over a long period of time, and I wouldn’t want us to take for granted the effort this nation makes to make sure it stays that way into the future.

I think you all know that STRATCOM is a global warfighting command that delivers nuclear deterrent effects every day by sending the message that the risk of an attack on the U.S. will always outweigh the reward. Strategic deterrence is our first priority. General Hyten has made that very clear to us. And this morning I want to discuss the role of space security within the context of deterrence.

Defining the Battle Space

Space is seamless, it is invisible, and it is fundamental to every military operation on the planet. General Hyten has gone so far as to say there’s been a revolution in warfare that is created and enabled by space. It has created an environment where information has become the key to the battle space.

Look, let’s not forget, since we’re going to talk about it today, war is a horrible thing, right?  But we no longer fight it by attrition. It is fought by information warfare, facilitated by information networks, enabled by space.  Space enables communications, navigation, a number of things for our warfighters from soldiers on foot patrol to airmen flying sorties.  So fundamentally, we’re in a world that in conflict it’s my network versus your network. But if space has become the key to the battle space, that means we have created a domain that must be secured.  

It’s our first job at STRATCOM to defend this nation against all strategic threats, and right behind that is to defend and protect the space environment so that every generation in the future, no matter which country that you come from, can dream about exploring it one day. 

We’re concerned about space being degraded such that we’re prevented from using it for military operations, commercial applications and scientific research and exploration.  

Now General Hyten has said there is no such thing as war in space.  There’s just war. I thought that was an incredibly insightful comment the first time I heard it.  

Let’s be very clear here. We never want to fight a war that extends into space.  It’s bad for the U.S., it’s bad for our allies, it’s bad for the world, and it would be bad for the space environment.  However, in just the same way we defend our assets in other domains, we must be prepared to defend our assets in the space domain.

Just as nuclear assets deter aggression by convincing potential adversaries there’s no benefit to the attack, we have to maintain a space posture that communicates the same strategic message.  I submit the best way to prevent war is to be prepared for war, and we’re going to make sure that everyone knows we’re going to be prepared to fight and win wars in all domains, to include space.

Look, while our goal is for space to remain a peaceful commons, we recognize that today, at least, it’s not a benign environment. Okay?  Chairman Dunford [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] has described the dynamic with our four primary competitors as an adversarial competition with a military dimension that is short of armed conflict.  So while we’re not at war in space, I don’t think we could say we’re exactly at peace either.

Competition and Threats in Space

The strategic environment in space is complicated by our potential competitors’ offensive space capabilities.  You don’t have to go very far into the press to read reports — for example, the Daily Mail here not too long ago, last week — reported that China is developing an arsenal of lasers, electromagnetic rail guns and high-power microwave weapons to neutralize America’s intelligence, communication and navigation satellites.  Russia has similar capabilities.

By the way, China also has a robust space exploration program and they’re very excited about their moon and Mars exploration programs.  I think we all should be. But at the same time, they’re building capabilities to destroy the dream of space exploration for the entire world.  

With the rapidly growing threats to our space systems as well as the threat of a degraded space environment, we must prepare for a conflict that extends into space.

In addition to deterring conflict in space, we must also deter bad behavior in space.  Right now, we’re tracking over 22,000 objects on orbit floating up in space. For example, in 2007 China’s ASAT [anti-satellite] test created over 3,400 of them, and over 80 percent of those are still on orbit today.

Now some people will come back and say look, what’s the big deal? Space is 73 trillion cubic miles. What’s the problem?

Well, as an example, the International Space Station had to maneuver three times last year to avoid on-orbit debris.  Every time you have to maneuver — and I know many people in this room already understand this — but any time you’re having to maneuver one of your on-orbit assets, it goes off-mission, and if it’s burning fuel, you may have impacted the lifetime of that asset.  I submit that’s a problem.

The other thing to remember is that all space is not created equal.  Just like there are shipping lanes in the ocean, right? Certain pieces of the ocean are far more valuable than other pieces.  Same in the air. We are limited by orbital dynamics in space.

The Magic Altitude

General Hyten likes to tell a story — you may have heard it before — when he interviewed Arthur C. Clarke, the man who recognized what a geosynchronous orbit was, and asked him what was his biggest regret. Clarke told him that when he did the math to calculate that at 22,300 miles a satellite would appear stationary from earth, he published a science fiction article about it and sold it to a magazine for $100. But hey, that goes to prove that there is a magic altitude in space.  Very valuable real estate. And it’s not at 22,000 miles, it’s not at 22,500 miles, it’s at 22,300 miles. And if there’s debris in that particular space that’s a much bigger deal than if it’s somewhere else and we wind up having to maneuver our assets.

So, that being the case, through the Joint Space Operations Center [JSpOC], which I think many of you know is at Vandenberg Air Force Base, we’re monitoring space debris and working to prevent potential collisions of valuable space assets.  So we’re essentially acting as space traffic managers for the entire world, and we want everyone to know that we’re watching.

Our adversaries’ progress in space technology not only threatens the space environment and our space assets, but they could potentially deny us asymmetric battlefield advantage if we ever lose superiority in the space domain.

The Space Integration Solution

Now it’s our job, STRATCOM’s job, to respond to an increasingly complex geopolitical situation while promoting a peaceful stance among all spacefaring nations, and it compels us to answer the question, how do we deter our adversaries in space while still keeping it safe, stable and secure?  I’m hoping actually that some of the work that goes on in this conference this week is going to help us answer some of those questions.

To start, I’ll tell you that we think part of the answer lies in space integration. There can be no more thinking about land, air, sea, cyber and space as separate domains, independent of each other. 

Whether you’re guiding ships, jets, drones or missiles, space is the domain that enables all the others, and if we’re going to wage war successfully, we have to respond in all domains, all the time.

General Hyten has acknowledged this kind of strategic, global, multi-domain integration is our greatest challenge.  The way we integrate is the way we fight, and the nations that figure out how to integrate global operations across all domains will have a significant advantage on the battlefield.  With wars in multiple theaters, we have to figure out how to integrate space effects in real time while maintaining timing and tempo across multiple domains if we are to maintain an asymmetric advantage. 

Command and control is the limiting factor when it comes to synchronizing operations in multiple domains.  As a part of the solution, the newly integrated Joint Interagency Combined Space Operation Center, sometimes referred to as JICSpOC — and I’m sorry, I hate to go sort of all Pentagon on everybody, but we will come up with a better name for that shortly — which is based in Colorado, facilitates integrated operations across joint forces by serving as a hub for collaboration and experimentation on new space system tactics, techniques and procedures. This ground-breaking effort increases the Department of Defense and intelligence community’s unity of effort and action to integrate capabilities and enhance space defense.

Additionally, the National Military Strategy directs us to integrate on a global scale, and one of the ways we do that is by leveraging the space assets and operating locations of our partners and allies.

Look, we share a number of common interests with our partners and allies. We are not the only people that have assets. And I think there is great opportunity for us to collaborate to mutual benefit in this area.

Strategic Partnerships Highlight

Let me give you some examples.  Last November the U.S. and Australia signed an agreement to cooperate on space situational awareness to include placing U.S. radars in Australia to track satellites and debris in low earth orbit.  We have similar collaboration with the United Kingdom by integrating the Royal Air Force’s Flyingdales radar for missile warning and space situational awareness. We have one with Norway where the Globus II radar tracks deep space objects.

Recognizing that a risk to one user and domain is a risk to all users and domains, and that our dependence on the network infrastructure that enables our operations makes us vulnerable to attack, we are working with our partners and allies in a variety of ways.  I would submit that that is one of the fastest ways that we can improve this situation to mutual benefit.

I mentioned space situational awareness a moment ago, and through the space situational awareness sharing program we now have information-sharing agreements with 12 nations, 58 international companies, and two inter-governmental organizations.  The intent here, the idea, is to promote exchange of information with like-minded spacefaring nations to maintain and improve space object databases and to promote the responsible, peaceful and safe use of space and to strengthen cooperation in the global space community, all free of charge.

Let me give you an example of that.  Last summer a small business loan bank in Indonesia became the world’s first bank to own its own satellite in order to deliver reliable communication services to its nearly 11,000 branches to include rural and remote regions throughout Indonesia, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia.  Because of the United States’ commitment to safe space operations, we reached out to the Indonesian operator to provide them their satellite’s first orbital element set. That, of course, gave them better accuracy for their command and control on the payload, and most importantly, it aided in spaceflight safety. It is but one example of the United States’ commitment to international cooperation in developing norms of responsible behavior in space to keep space services viable.

Another way we integrate operations in space is through exercising and synchronizing our space capabilities with our partners and allies.  Exercises such as Global Sentinel and the Schriever War Games, which I got to observe this past November. These exercises explore what a conflict in space would look like, how we might fight it, and how to guarantee that we would control the environment.  By bringing together multinational groups of like-minded spacefaring nations working to integrate military space activities, all while optimizing resources across participating nations, our militaries share information, data and resources to leverage and synchronize existing capabilities.  

One of the things these exercises have highlighted is we have difficulty determining the appropriate response at times due to a lack of rules of engagement in space.  We’re still sorting out answers to the questions like what constitutes an attack in space. What is the undisputable evidence required within the international community to assert violation of sovereign territory in space?  What constitutes provocation in space in our viewpoint?

If we’re going to act decisively in real time, we have to address these issues both legally and operationally.  And as the U.S. works to establish and maintain international norms of behavior in space, and as we demonstrate a rules-based order with our allies, what that’s going to accomplish is the free-flow of commerce, information and ideas in all domains.  By building coalitions in space, as in all other domains, with our space-capable allies, I believe we can improve our resiliency tremendously, starting by cultivating and exercising these relationships.

Space is still Special!

In closing, here’s what I want to reiterate.  As we work to deter conflict and bad behavior in space, our goal ultimately is to promote secure access to space so it can be explored for generations to come.  While we view space as just another domain like land, air, sea and cyber, it is still something special. It is still a domain that people look up to and dream. And it’s USSTRATCOM’s job to help keep it that way — to keep it safe, stable and secure for future generations.

And so to all of our academic and commercial partners in the room, thank you for your contributions to addressing these strategic challenges.  We need your expertise to help us solve the many issues involved in space security.

I look forward to the results of your successful dialogue and collaboration during this conference, and I also look forward to your questions.  Thank you very much.

Watch VADM Richard’s remarks here.