 Hello, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Secure World's webinar, Russia's ASAT test. What does it mean? I'd like to thank everyone for coming and day whatever of quarantine. We're really glad that there's interest in the issue that we think is extremely important and thought-provoking. And we look forward to having a fascinating discussion. We've got a fantastic series of panelists up and looking forward to hearing what they have to say. And then, of course, we'll be opening it up to questions from the audience. I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Victoria Samson. I'm the Washington Office Director of the Secure World Foundation. Next slide, please. Just a little bit about Secure World since we have a fairly large contingent here. You may be unfamiliar with our organization. We're a private operating foundation that promotes cooperative solutions for space sustainability and peaceful uses of outer space. Our foundation acts as a research body, convener, and facilitator to promote key space security and other space-related topics and to examine their influence on governance and international development. Our mission is to work with governments, industry, international organizations, and civil society to develop and promote ideas and actions that achieve the secure, sustainable, and peaceful uses of outer space benefiting Earth and all its peoples. We translate this mission into actions aimed at raising the salience of space sustainability, building common understandings of complex issues, facilitating dialogue, and promoting cooperative governance of space activities at the national and international level. And just a little bit about organization. We're still working on our 2019 report, but just to get a sense, in 2018, Secure World Foundation completed 120 projects and activities in over 20 countries on six continents on a programmatic budget of about $1.5 million. We're smaller, pretty agile. Next slide, please. We'll be going into this more later on, particularly my colleague, Brian, will be talking about this. We wanted to make sure everyone was aware of an annual report Secure World puts out on our global counter space capabilities and open source assessment. So what we do in this threat assessment is we look and see what you can find in terms of unclassified open source information about five different types of counter space capabilities. We try to get a sense of what we know and what we just are conjecturing and really getting the idea of increasingly transparency in the discussion about these different counter space capabilities. We look at the United States, Russia, China, France, India, Iran, Japan, and North Korea. And it's available on our website for free. There's an exact summary, if you'd rather not read all 140 plus pages. But, you know, the long story short is that currently only non-connected capabilities are actively being used in current military operations. That doesn't mean that the aren't counter space capabilities being developed and tested and thought about. And that's what we're going into more with our panel today. So with that, actually, let's go into our panelist. Next slide, please. So you've already met me. Our first panelist is Dr. Brian Whedon. Brian Whedon is the director of program planning for Secure World Foundation, has nearly two decades of professional experience in space operations and policy. He is a member and former chair of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Space Technologies, a member of the advisory committee on commercial remote sensing to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and executive director of the consortium for execution of rendezvous and servicing operations. Hello, Brian. Thank you for joining us. Good morning, Victoria. Glad to be here. Great. Our next speaker is Michael Thompson. Michael Thompson is a satellite analyst and open source researcher who tracks military space programs. He is currently finishing his graduate degree in astrodynamics. And Michael, I think it's the first time we've had you at one of our events. Thank you so much for being willing to share your expertise. Absolutely. Thank you for the introduction, Victoria. Our next speaker will be, sorry, Pavel Podvig. Pavel is an independent analyst based in Geneva, where he runs his research project, Russian Nuclear Forces. He is also a senior research fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and a researcher with a program in science and global security at Princeton University. Thank you for being here, Pavel, and good afternoon to you. Okay. Yep, thank you. And then finally, thanks for coming. Thanks. And then our last speaker is Chris Newman. Professor Chris Newman, B.A. Honors, PhD, is a professor of space law and policy at Northumbria University in Newcastle. He has been active in teaching and research of space law for over two decades. Chris has published extensively on the legal and ethical underpinnings of space governance and works closely with the space industry in the UK. Hi, Chris. Thank you for coming. Hello, Victoria. Thanks so much for having me. Okay. So how it's going to work is we've done our intro. The panelists each can speak for about 10 minutes each, sticking to the timeframe, guys. The one thing about not being in person is that I can't hand you guys notes when it's getting close to time being up, but I trust you. And then we'll open it to Q&A. I will have some questions to kick off, and then we'll try and get some questions from the audience. Next slide, please. Great. So how this works, if you're unfamiliar with Zoom, in order to ask Q&A, find the Q&A button, click on it first step, and then you can look and see what questions have already been asked. You can up but ones you think are interesting and you want to have answered. And then if your question has not already been answered, please feel free to type it in as succinctly as possible, and we'll try and see if we can get answered for you. So I will point out as well. This is pretty obvious since we're on an internet recording. This event is on the record. It is being recorded. Media are present, and we will be doing a transcript as well. So the recording will be up on our website at some point in your future as will the transcript, but just kind of to let everyone know that this is happening. And with that, I think let's go to our next slide. All right, Brian, you're up. Thanks, Victoria. So I'm going to start off just by giving a background overview of the Newdoll program and Russian countries programs in general. So next slide, please. First, to remind everybody that this is not really a new thing. The thing that Russia tested just recently was a missile for a direct-acent ASAP weapon. This is not a new capability. These capabilities have been around since the early days of the Cold War. During the Cold War, the Soviets built a missile defense system called the A-135 that was in place around Moscow. And it was like, at such the time, that it likely had a DASAT capability. The Soviet A-135 system had two interceptors. One that NATO called the Gorgon, and then a one that was called the Gazelle. The Gazelle was a short range, what they called basically internal to the atmosphere. But the Gorgon was an interceptor that would go exo-atmospheric and was assessed to probably have been able to hit satellites. And of course, it had a nuclear warhead on it, so you didn't want to have to hit it. You just kind of had to get close. On the right here, you can see a drawing of the 5-1-T6 missile, which was the Gorgon. And at the time, it was a silo-based. So this system was first deployed in 1992, and this particular missile, the 5-1-T6, was retired in 2007. Next slide, please. What's going on today is Russia is developing a new capability that is known as the PL-19 or Newdoll. And this program began in, as far as we can tell, in 2009. There was contract signed with the primary entity, which is al-Mas'atni, and then several subcontractors that are also working on the program. These are all sort of the Russian equivalent of Northup Grumman and Raytheon defense contractors that have a long history of building space and ballistic missile programs within Russia. On the right, you can see an artist depiction of the Newdoll system. And this actually comes from an al-Mas'atni company calendar. And this, as compared to the previous Gorgon, which was a silo-based missile, what's being developed now is a mobile system built around a transport-rector launcher. Far as we can tell, as we said, the contract started in 2009. The first testing of the kind of a ground testing of the rockets was in 2013. And then there have been several flight tests since then, which Michael's going to talk about in a little more detail. It is a tail-based system. It's got a solid rocket with a kinetic kill vehicle payload. There seems to be three major components. There's a rocket. There's a separate command and control system, and then a separate radar system. Next slide, please. Just a brief comparison of the Newdoll to some other systems that are out there. Russia is not the only country that has tested or is developing direct-as-an-asat capability. So you have the Russians working on the PL-19 Newdoll. Second from the left there is the Chinese DF-1C, which is likely the basis for their SC-19 direct-as-an-asat weapon. The third slot, you see an American Standard Missile 3. This was used in 2008 to destroy a U.S. satellite. And then on the right you have the Indian Prithee Defense Vehicle, Mark II. This was used last April, like last March to destroy an Indian satellite. So these are the four programs we know of at the moment that are either under active development or have recently been used to destroy a satellite. And so they're, you know, considered to be potential direct-as-an-asat capabilities. Next slide. So, finalized, I want to talk briefly about where this fits into Russia's overall counterspace portfolio. And this is an assessment that came directly out of our counterspace report. You know, looking across the breadth of counterspace capabilities, direct ascent, co-orbital, direct energy, electronic warfare, space situation awareness, Newdoll fits into that first line, which is Leo direct ascent. And it's clear that Russia is currently doing active research and development and is flight testing this capability. We do not, it is not, as far as we can tell, it's not operational. That is probably at least a few years away. And, you know, it appears to be only going against low earth orbiting satellites. At this point, we don't have any evidence to suggest Russia is conducting flight testing or development of a direct ascent against higher altitude orbits. At the same time, Russia is developing rendezvous and proximity capabilities that could be used for co-orbital anti-satellite technologies, including some recent tests in low earth orbit that did produce debris. And that could be an indication that it actually was some sort of a co-op relaysap test. Absolutely developing research and development for direct energy weapons. And the big capability that Russia has been working on and actually using operationally is electronic warfare. We've seen some very sophisticated systems deployed, Ukraine, Syria, elsewhere that Russia has active. And finally, Russia has a pretty advanced space situation awareness capability, which is what women need to be able to target other satellites. And with that, I'll go ahead and stop and turn it over to Michael. All right. Thanks, Brian. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about kind of what we can get from this test in terms of in the open source world and then also, you know, how these have compared to previous tests and things like that. So next slide, please. All right. So one thing that I wanted to point out is that so all of these tests come with navigation warnings. These are pretty standard airspace or maritime closures for any number of different reasons. It could be scientific operations, it could be military activities, gunnery operations, things like that. And then particularly relevant to this case, rocket launches. So rocket launches, you know, warnings that we get from that, they allow us to identify these tests before they happen. In this case, we actually knew or at least suspected based on navigation warnings that this test was coming around six days beforehand. And that allowed us to do some essentially preparation analysis for if there was, for example, a kinetic impact and things like that. So next slide, please. So I wanted to point out here, and this is something that I actually went back and double checked this week because I wanted to be sure. Every known noodle test, this is the tenth one, has put out navigation warnings multiple days in advance. Most of them have essentially two portions. There's a first stage splashdown that you can see there in the lower left on this map. And then in the upper right, there's an eventual splashdown for the kill vehicle or upper stage or whatever you really want to call it here. And so this kind of constrains the direction of launch, the launch site, things like that. So next slide, please. So something that I wanted to point out is that there are likely little to no difference in navigation warnings for what I'm calling here, just a flight test, which is what we saw. It's not impacting anything and a potential kinetic test. It's kind of assumed that if there was going to be a kinetic test, an actual hit to kill test, navigation warnings would look very similar. And so something that I had looked into was essentially analyzing the objects in orbit at the given time frames to attempt and spot, well, are there any targets that look particularly promising for a kinetic intercept? And I'm going to talk a little bit more about that specifically for this test. Next slide, please. So now I'm talking specifically here about the April 15th test. So the navigation warnings, it constrains the timing and the location of the test. It was somewhere between 1500 and 2100 UTC in presets, which is where the Newdoll program is based or at least has performed test launches in the past. Based on this timing, we can, and I have in parentheses here kind of with a laugh to myself, we get relatively quickly constrained a list of possible targets. I say relatively quickly because, well, there's a lot up there as you're going to see in a minute. But an isolation of essentially every restaurant satellite that passed through that area that kind of combines the first stage and the splashdown warnings. It yields this big corridor, and we can go through and try and pick out specific things that look promising in terms of potential targets. And I will say here that the navigation warning this time, it's a six-hour window. Past tests have been more constrained. I think I've seen as low as like two hours and hour and a half for some of these navigation warnings. So it's not all six hours, which makes it hard to narrow down exactly. Well, are they trying a near miss of something or things like that? But that's the kind of thing that we can definitely get if we had kind of a better constraining of the actual timing of the test. So if you can go to the next slide, please. So here, a lot of potential targets. So this is for the full six hours. This is essentially every Russian satellite that passed through that kind of blue window that you see down there between the first stage splashdown and the eventual kill vehicle splashdown for that six-hour period. Next slide, please. Right. But I wanted to say we can still narrow it down a lot further than that. We can talk about what type of objects are likely to be ASAT test targets. And the answer is, well, first off and foremost, low altitude targets. I think we are past the point of the 2007 Chinese test of blowing something out of space at 800 kilometers and essentially leaving debris there permanently. I think I would hope that we are past tests like that. So really what we're looking for is we're looking for low altitude objects and specifically dead or recently launched satellites with unknown functions. And I put a few examples here. MicroSet R, that was the target for the Indian test in early 2019. It was most likely a dedicated target. We didn't necessarily know much about it. When it launched, we had some images, but it was very murky as to what its actual purpose was. We think at this point, it was most likely essentially a dummy satellite that was just put up there to be shot down. USA 193, the US test. It was a malfunctioning and very quickly decaying satellite. It was set to re-orbit or re-enter within a matter of days or weeks. And it was shot down. And then the Chinese test back in 2007, that satellite had died years before. And so essentially using common sense to as to what might actually be a target, you can really vastly narrow the potential targets. And if you go to the next slide, please. And this is a much more manageable scenario. And so then all of these objects can kind of be examined one by one just based on what we know about them, things like that. So I'm not going to go through every single object here that I had kind of picked out as, well, this is potentially interesting. But I will talk about a couple and kind of like the implications of that. So next slide, please. So this is a couple of highlights from the target search. A couple of things that I found were really interesting. One of them was Cosmos 2535 through 2538. And this was a quartet of satellites from late 2019 of relative unknown function in terms of the Russian satellites. A lot of times we can get at least some information out. We know that they're part of a larger program. In this case, it was pretty unknown. So the first two 35 and 36, they performed RPO with each other relative proximity operations. And there's some speculation that 37 and 38 are radar calibration targets for error and defense or error in space defense forces. And so depending, you could say that a large radar calibration target, it could be used for calibrating ground-based radar, things like that. Another interpretation, if you will, is that it could be put up there to make sure that they can track something with the accuracy that they could hit it with an ASAT. I will say that they were quite high for a potential ASAT test. So I don't think that they were trying to be hit or anything like that. These are up at 600 kilometers. One thing that really, really stuck out to be was this SO4 rocket body. It was at very low altitude. It was at 230 kilometers on April 15th. It decayed five days later. It decayed on the 20th. And also, if you go to the next slide, the geometry of this, it went directly down the firing line. If you've looked at the navigation warnings in the geometry for the Indian test in 2019, it was in a slightly different orbit, but this looks very, very similar to that. It travels directly down that firing line. It's very, very easy to hit that essentially head on with the ASAT capability that we know that Russia and other nations possess. So next slide, please. And so this is essentially, if you want to do this, or if what we can get from the open source, there are commercial SSA organizations, Leal Labs, other that allow really near real-time monitoring of these potential targets as they're traveling through this, what I'm calling the firing line. And so with Leal Labs specifically, you need to have an account to actually get their predicted state vectors and things like that. But even without an account, you can monitor when new state vectors are generated, just based on their own ground networks. And so essentially, as new state vectors are generated, you know that, okay, well, that object is still in one piece. So essentially throughout the day, sometimes you might get multiple updates as compared to waiting for a space track where you get an update every day, every two days, depending on the object. But essentially as new state vectors are generated within hours of overflying that test area, you can essentially cross them off as, okay, that's still alive. That's still alive. And you can really understand almost in real time what has actually happened in this kind of test. So next slide, please. And so these are some kind of just high-level takeaways on what we, you know, can understand from the orbital analysis, navigation warnings, things like that. There were potential low-altitude targets that could have been used in this test, but they weren't, which is ultimately a good thing. And so at the end of the day, speaking for myself at least, I don't want to make a huge deal about this test compared to past tests, because ultimately nothing was hit. They've done these type of tests before. You know, it's not like there was nothing up there for them to hit. There clearly was, and they chose not to. And I think that that's ultimately a good thing. A further narrowing of that time window could likely constrain the parameters of the test even further. So, you know, it was kind of nice. It was a surprise that the U.S. military had announced this test when previous ones were unacknowledged. If they want to throw a time of, you know, a launch time in there, that'd be great. But maybe that's wishful thinking on my part. But this type of framework using essentially navigation warnings and really just basic orbital analysis, they allow us to monitor these tests in near real time at the, you know, unclassified if you're government or open source, if you're, you know, NGO, think tank level. And I wanted to point out here, U.S. military acknowledged this test, previous ones were left unacknowledged. And so kind of to understand these tests, we can't always rely on a statement from the U.S. military that says we're in the process of tracking a direct base set. Some open source work is definitely needed. And so that is all that I have, I believe, on my end. And if you have any questions specifically about the analysis, you can either reach out to me or you can throw them in the chat and we can maybe get to those during the Q&A portion. So, oh, thanks. All right, great. Thank you, Michael. Okay, next we'll have Pablo Hubbard talking about the geopolitical and Russian domestic context and his take on this test. Pablo? Okay, well, thank you. And thanks, everyone, for joining. I'll try to be brief and leave more questions, I guess. So, I guess I was a little bit puzzled when I saw that people are asking questions about what does it mean, this test, because as Michael just mentioned, Brian also mentioned that it's not the first test. By my count, it's about the tenth test, but none of them were successful, though. And so, when I saw that NOTAM noticed a few days before, I just saw the case, another day in the office for the Russian space forces. And, of course, the fact that the US strategic amount is almost like in real time that, oh, we are tracking it, that certainly drew people's attention, but they think it's not something particularly surprising. In fact, the United States acknowledged at least one earlier test in December of 2018, there was a deal of information about that, but that was a few months after the fact. So, this is that will be kind of the first real-time announcement. So, the question, of course, is what does it mean in the sense that is there any kind of a juice political plan and grand design behind this kind of development? It's possible, I would say, but I would say it's fairly unlikely, though, or at least not necessarily. What we, if you look at the kind of things that the Russian defense industry is doing, there are quite a few of kind of holdover programs from the Soviet days. And Assad, of course, has a very long history in the Soviet Union. And it was a very big thing in the 80s when they thought that they have a mission, which was to shoot down the American Star Wars satellites. And there were quite a few programs there. One of them was, in fact, the program to put to convert the interceptors of the Moscow missile defense system A-135 into a conventional Assad. I think that program was called Amulet. There were other projects there. There was this contact of the airborne of Assad, also directed, and it's never been tested, unlike its American Star Wars in 85. Then there were all these mines, which also kind of were appearing recently in the world and kind of satellite tracking other satellites. There was a project that actually looked at direct ascent of Assad all the way up to the geostationary orbit. This is the DMs, which now enjoying the crucible program and one of the booster stage debris is the actual So again, this is not necessarily some major geopolitical strategic development, and in my take is that it's not necessarily a mission-driven development either, in a sense that it is impossible or I would say it's fairly unlikely that there is a kind of request from the military or there is any particular strategy that would imply that, oh, we need an Assad capability. It is the way things work in the Soviet Union. There will be a larger way to work. Russia, the industry, has quite a bit of freedom in pursuing its projects, and it's a very interesting dynamic, but basically if they show that they could do something, they get resources about how it works. So apparently, since Russia had quite a bit of money back 10 years ago or so, and it was investing in all kind of military modernization, it's not surprising that this project actually was revived. So, but I should say that I'm firmly in the Assad kind of skeptics camp, because I do think that this is not a particularly useful military capability. We could talk about that. And in fact, the history of the Soviet and the US Assad program actually show that, yes, there was quite a bit of excitement early on, but then the Soviet Union actually deployed an Assad system that was operational, quote unquote, for almost two decades, the IS system. But in the end, it was clear that you cannot really do much in terms of military conditions with the Assad capability. And as I said, I mean, there was quite a bit of excitement around the ISDI, but that's because sort of the ISDI hadn't been built was a very target rich environment. But once the ISDI went away, there is nothing there. So, and again, if we look at this particular program, again, as Michael mentioned, there were early tests. As far as I can tell, the test actually began in 2014. And the first successful test was in 2015. And then there were a number of others. We don't know the exact number, because not all of them are actually registered. But my guess is that there were probably two tests in 2019. So, and early tests, I know that early tests involved just the rocket, just the interceptor, no attempt to do anything with the target. And in fact, I also was surprised that people sort of were expecting that this test would involve an actual intercept. I would say that the last time the Soviet Union did the actual intercept was like 40 years ago. And I would say that the Russian designers, they have quite a bit of experience with missiles, rockets, and space and operations in space and things like that. So, I saw there was a question there that they've got quite a few what's up, sort of does Russia feel they need to keep up with others? I would say that not really, because that's not what they don't have anything to prove here. And they could perfectly work on various aspects of the system if they are working on that system by just conducting these kind of commercial attempts, if you will. The only, as actually they do with the Moscow Missile Defense, you know that Russia does conduct the test, so we have missile defense interceptor in Sirusha Gan, and they never involve, well not for a long time, involve an actual target, but still they feel confident that they get the results they need. The only kind of a caveat here I would say that the, if we'll look at the possible connection with the missile defense, as Brian suggested, although I'm a bit skeptical, there is a connection. The, my understanding is that Russia has never really demonstrated that it has a heat to kill technology in space, and that's certainly, you would expect this to be kind of a worked on. But on that hand, my take on that is that heat to kill for the purposes of missile defense, of course, that's what others in the United States in particular have been doing. But my take is that if it's a missile defense test, then you, the most important part of missile defense is not the interceptor, the most important part is the radar and all the all the supporting stuff. And that is not, you don't do these kind of tests since Sirusha Gan there, which has a very massive radar infrastructure. So if there is an attempt to do the kind of heat to kill experiments, I would expect them to be conducted in from Sirusha Gan, and they're all there in the capability there. So that's, let me stop here. And again, I just kind of go back and say that if the question is what does it mean, these ASAP tests, I would say, oh, not really much. I mean, it's not something I would necessarily cheer in a sense that it's definitely there is some work there going on. And there are implications of that. But it's not in any way a turn to some kind of dangers. I mean, at least this is not the point where they're turning anywhere one way or another. Okay, let me stop here. Thank you, Pavel. Okay, next slide. And we'll move on to our last speaker, Chris Newman. Chris, it's all yours. Okay, well, thank you very much. I'm going to be relatively brief and I'm going to take us through the basics of the law and how the law relates to ASAP tests, because actually, I don't think the law is the interesting thing here at this point. I'm going to come on to it. My thesis actually is that in an area, space governance generally is crying out for norms of behavior and normative standards that we can look at. I think we've got normative behavior, but I don't necessarily think it's the normative behavior that we're after. So what I'm going to do is look at the way in which ASAP tests highlight the intersection between arms control and space governance. There's been a lot of discussion in the United Nations, a copy was then at the Committee for Disarmament, but there's seen fairly fruitless discussions on anti-satellite controls. What I'm going to is look at predominantly the lex specialis of space law and by that I'm going to predominantly concentrate on the outer space treaty and look to see what that can tell us, what that has in specifics about arms control and then also think about the central principles of the outer space treaty because it's those principles that I think the international community needs to reconnect with because ultimately in the last 13 years there's been ASAP weapons testing and demonstrations from four major space powers. We're seeing a normative behavior all right, but it's a norm of ASAP testing occurring. Michael in his discussion talked about we're not going to see the high level tests, so we're already seeing behavior accommodating and attenuating to ASAP tests. We're now seeing good ASAP tests. So this is something I think that we need to think about and we need to address, but before I do that I'm going to go and look at the law and show why international law is not going to perhaps provide us with any assistance at this point. Next slide please. Yeah, if you could move on to the next slide. Thank you, that's great. So as we say the outer space treaty is predominantly a security treaty. It was at the time of the Cold War. I won't go into too much detail about it. There are numerous texts and numerous academics who can provide a lot better exposition than I can, but we note in the preamble to the treaties that the use of outer space should be for peaceful purposes. International law scholars recognize however the breadth of activity that this can encompass where peaceful is is read as non-aggressive and of course every ASAP test and every nation that is conducting ASAP tests will be at pains to stress the defensive nature of their ASAP capability. The operative articles that we're really going to look at is article four, which is the undertaking not to station nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in orbit. Article four has those restrictions but it also has permissive areas in there as well. It doesn't prohibit the station of conventional weapons and not as explicitly prohibit the testing of weapons in Earth orbit. Interestingly enough it does prohibit the testing of weapons on celestial bodies, so we have to assume that that is a deliberate attempt by the drafters to delineate between testing on celestial bodies and testing in Earth orbit. Moving to article nine because this is another area that scholars have tried to look at and examine to see if there's any way in which that can limit ASAP testing in Earth orbit and the discussion that states shall conduct their activities in space with due regards for the interest of other parties. Again we've seen through the number of ASAP tests that have happened that the due regard principle isn't strong enough to provide an absolute prohibition on ASAP tests and indeed with an interpretive view on it one might say due regard for other state parties might be ensuring that we have defensive capabilities in respect of anti-satellite weapons. So again that doesn't appear to be a lot within the outer space treaty that is going to help those who wish to limit ASAP tests. Next slide please. So with there being nothing in the treaties to prohibit ASAP weapons tests we look at other arms control treaties. Now discussion moved to the Committee for Disarmament but other treaties have kind of stalled and been consistently unsuccessful. China, Russia have offered treaty solutions but these have been treated with mistrust by the United States with perhaps some justification given that China and Russia have engaged in ASAP tests themselves. Customary international law has been explored as a possibility to restrict the weaponization of space but opinion juris requires a general inconsistent state practice and as I've already said we've seen general inconsistent state practice alright but that consistent practice has been to conducting anti-satellite weapons testing. Next slide please. So legality aside states are conducting these tests and what we're now seeing is instead of a discussion on the prohibition of these perhaps a move towards an outcome based discussion you know do we instead of prohibiting the ASAP test do we instead want to prohibit the damage that this can possibly cause to the earth's orbital environment. With the normative behavior we're seeing what we're actually seeing is ASAP tests evolving so we're seeing lower tests we're seeing tests using these you know software targets we're seeing debris mitigation and notification requirements. What I think we can see emerging is the states themselves are attenuating these tests. Next slide please. So what options exist well from a legal point of view the international lawyer in me thinks what I'd really like is a treaty an international treaty a nice solid treaty that we can all latch on to and and it'll be just like the outer space treaty. However treat the negotiations seem unlikely the timeliness of them we know how long international treaties take to actually construct is there a will to do this and are we actually at risk of unpicking the existing treaty regimes so I think for a number of reasons whilst the new gold plated treaty might seem attractive actually I think at the present time probably we're best off looking to other methods so naturally the next area we look to is the software agreements but you'll notice on my slide there I've got the EU code of conduct software agreements don't necessarily guarantee any more consensus than the more formal treaties so where does hope lie well as I say we've identified that states themselves are limiting their behavior I think possibly the time has come for a state to unilaterally promulgate guidelines as to what ASAP tests should look like or state what their ASAP tests will comprise of and at least start the discussion because at the minute the you know the the the Paros and other treaty negotiations are in diplomatic limbo and should also have been resurrected I think if we're looking for an international law solution we'll look in vain to paraphrase Carl Sagan there's no indication that help will come to save us from ourselves so with that I shall pass you back to Victoria. Thank you Chris okay great so much wonderful information really thought-provoking presentations by all our panelists thank you we have a lot of questions from the audience but I think the first question I'm going to ask is one that I share with our top voting one. Pavel sort of answered it already but I'd like to hear the rest of the panel has to say understood that Russia has a history in the Cold War of having tested global ASAPs but as Pavel said it's been four decades since they've done an intercept do does the panel think that Russia will need to demonstrate a direct ascent ASAP test just to show as a perhaps a political gesture if nothing else that it can given that the United States China and India have all done so relatively recently panelists I see Brian you want to want to take this one go from there yeah I'll start I think I agree with Pavel that they probably from a technical perspective they probably don't you know Russia some very good engineers they've they've studied this problem for a very long time so I from a technical perspective I think I agree probably don't I guess I'm a little bit worried that maybe from a geopolitical perspective they might feel they have to unfortunately you know this is what we saw with India was they they couched it very much in terms that this test proves we're now a global space power and and I again I guess that's what concerns me is maybe there might be that sort of a current that that says they might have to or that leads them to more of a political calculation than a technological one again I hope it doesn't but that's sort of what concerns me anyone else if I may do I take this one again no I my my take is that even the political calculation is also I just don't see why would Russia try to do something again it has nothing to prove really here and then as there was another question there how this kind of works with the with the attempt to to get the the PPWT the treaty to prohibit use of space I think it's just politically it's not as it's not a very it's a questionable it's a questionable measure so I think that cooler cooler heads would prevail and they would just say that okay because like everybody knows that Russia has this capability sort of and it may not be as I said it may not be on par with the kind of a hit to kill American one they could they could probably if if they want to prove something they would would move into the missile defense hit to kill rather than to ASAD and then they they would get much more out of that okay other panelists thoughts no okay um one of the questions that I had is that what do what does the panel think just broadly speaking about the development of defensive counter space programs the emergence of space forces around the world does that mean that we are leading towards a norm perhaps as Chris would say that that sort of capability is useful if only in a political sense if not a military sense what do you guys think about that Chris I think what we're seeing is almost a a splash of cold water here that you know these things were existing we knew that these capacities were existing anyway space forces in you know in many cases I don't want to make too many generalizations are more administrative exercises than anything else the classification of you know a real realignment of responsibilities so I think what we're seeing here is much more of a of a reversion to type and actually when I was talking about about treaty solutions I was talking very much I was being as guilty as as anybody as talking as much of this in an arms control context but actually this is a broader space management problem we're thinking about and you know need to think about the space environment and that's why I think outcomes related solutions are the way forwards rather than looking at the actual test themselves what are we looking to really prohibit here and we're looking to prohibit damage to the space environment we're looking to prohibit or we're looking to to dampen down security fears so I think it needs to be looked at across the piece and I think that's what we're seeing we're seeing norms and behavior being interpreted where guidance and software agreements are not being you know not being taken up Brian did you want to add to that yeah I think I generally agree and I would add you know what we see in our in our counterfeit report of last three years is you know yes a growing number of countries and you know we're up to almost 10 that are kind of exploring this space uh no pun intended uh you know but in terms of you know there's a difference between the breadth of things we're seeing explored from a technological standpoint and then the things we're actually seeing that are moving to operational use and I think what that indicates is that there's probably at least interest in seeing what is this you know how hard it would be to do maybe let's sort of you know do some of the technological development but there's a gap between that and the stuff that countries are saying you know we actually should put the time and effort into making this operational because those are those are two very different things where there's a lot more money and a lot more resources to make something operationally useful uh from a military standpoint and so we're not quite seeing a full-fledged run towards that we're seeing a lot of experimentation some technological r&d development and not quite full-fledged I think that at least I interpret that as a bit of a good sign hey we'll take the good news where we can take these days um some question about the technological aspects of this test um given that this was either the ninth or tenth version of this test was this from a technical standpoint a complicated sophisticated test um or was it just kind of one in a line of series of tests that perhaps is trying to definitively um improve capability in this matter um and along those lines if it was not a sophisticated test or something like that why does the panel think that perhaps the United States was so quick this time to speak up and identify that it actually happened to acknowledge it and then a third part of that just to make this complicated um let's say Russia was trying to actually intercept a satellite or an object is there and this is an interesting question for the audience is there a sweet spot where you can do an intercept for an ASAT where it'll have the debris come down pretty quickly like what should they or should one aim for if you're trying to do that kind of low impact counter space at the time so lots of questions there who wants to take the first one maybe michael do you want to talk about whether or not this was a sophisticated test or go from there yeah sure i mean i don't see at least compared to the last test i don't see anything of more or or less sophistication here i believe that pavel said with some of the early tests they were just testing out the essentially the the booster you know there wasn't actually a kill vehicle on top of it certainly from the from the open source side it's it's hard to know whether it was more or or less sophisticated if if for example when the u.s announced the test they had said hey it performed a very close to a hit to kill capability or something along those lines um you know you might make the argument well okay this is maybe a little bit more sophisticated than we've seen in the past but i think based on essentially based on what we know it's on to say and there's not necessarily any reason to believe that it is more or or less sophisticated than the previous tests okay thank you what about messaging why does the panel think that perhaps the u.s military was so quick to acknowledge at this time if it was as michael said not that much different from previous tests well so uh you know my sense is that it's it's sort of a function of a couple different things um one is you know the u.s government and the pretty the dod has been working the last several years to try and talk more publicly about these sorts of things we've had a lot of discussions from senior leadership about how they're concerned that there's too much classification and that's preventing them from you know more discussing the threats they're seeing and the things they're concerned about so i think that's part of it you know this could be the first uh of what we will see it's a more open discussion of these sorts of tests and going forward um i think that would actually be a good thing that the u.s government is you know acknowledging these and talking about them and as michael said in his briefing hopefully providing more information about that you know we'd love to know the exact launch time that this took place that would really help the osin analysis um but there's also you know here in the u.s we have this big domestic discussion going on about the space force that's been happening for a couple of years and i think there is also a desire to you know use these sorts of threat discussions to reinforce the need for that right this look this is a perfect example that you can see the you know the leadership saying this is why we need a space force is to be able to deal with these sort of threats which is i think is partly true uh it was the the rise of the growing contested nature of space over the last decade was certainly part of the discussion leading up to space force and then you know finally if you're you know really sort of being a domestic watcher you're thinking of the budget right and you know the discussions going on about the preparations for the fiscal year 21 budget the space force certainly would like to see an increase as with lots of parts of the military uh and so i would suspect that's probably part of it as well um you know that's highlighting for congress and others that you know yes there are real threats out there and you know we could certainly use a little more money to go deal with thanks and just in terms of a technical standpoint um if anyone wants to take a guess on this is there a so-called safe spot to have for ASAT tests where you can do it and create debris that's going to be relatively short-lived or is it just generally speaking you create debris you're going to have to live with the consequences and you never really know what the consequences are what do you guys think about that from a technical perspective hey that's chris chris you want to let me you know let me let me uh try to take a stab at the uh there there is i guess the you victoria you just answered the question if there are there if there is a sweet spot like that done uh in uh i guess today it would be a test that would not create a lot of debris or create debris that would quickly re-enter so that's uh that that's that's probably the only uh real uh real requirement there again uh as as i said uh if if russia would really want to to to test the heat to kill capability uh i i'm not sure it would choose uh the uh trajectories or the launch from plisetsk uh outside of the field of view of missile defense raiders so that's uh that that would be my take so that so just to add under that um we've we've seen as you know as chris mentioned we've seen some evolution of this over time uh you know 2007 the tine asia test was up at 800 plus kilometers that was bad because that debris is going to be up there for centuries uh the the us intercept of us at 193 in 2008 that was down around 220 or several kilometers i recall uh much lower altitude the satellite itself was within days a week of re-entering um and that was around the same altitude 225 250 we saw for the indian asia test um much less debris and it was much lower live but i will point out that in both of those tests there were some pieces that were thrown as high as a thousand kilometers into leo right so so just because you're conducting the test down low does not mean all the debris is going to stay down there it's certainly better than 800 i think look if you want to say what is the responsible is you don't intercept an orbital object you intercept the suborbital object and we saw that you know from china in 2010 13 14 15 uh they conducted some tests of their sc 19 system against suborbital targets and in that case none of the debris went into orbit and so that was more of a responsible test uh from an orbital debris standpoint chris yeah i was just gonna sort of echo both brian and pavel's comments and say that actually going higher would be counterproductive for the diplomatic efforts that we've seen over the you know over the past 20 years from russia and china if they'd have gone to the to the higher orbits if they'd have gone to the areas where we think a bad assat test then it would have completely undermined the paros and and the other diplomatic efforts that they put forward as well so i i think we're going to see when we do see continued tests like this we're going to see them try and be portrayed as as the safer option the good option for that very reason so i think actually that they almost guard themselves in that sense i wouldn't put too much thought by that but i do think it's it's a cause for another glimmer of optimism well that's somewhat encouraging um we have a couple questions from technical for michael specifically talking about the navigation warning time frame um the two hour notice you want to know how common that is um and maybe can you give any thoughts about why it might have been such a large window yeah i'm not really sure so i i i actually because i saw the question over in the chat i over here on my other window and pulled up a couple of the of the past notices i'm i've actually seen as low as about an hour and a half um which is which is nice uh or yes which is which is which is lower than than than expected um so i'm not i'm not sure necessarily what to make of a of a of a six hour window versus like a one and a half hour window um if you were going to do a you know an actual hit to kill test you essentially have an instantaneous window um now it's you know it's certainly up for debate whether they would say hey we are launching at this time or they might just say hey we're launching this afternoon um so yeah i'm not i'm not necessarily sure what to make of six hours i will say that six hours looking at previous tests especially the more recent tests um in 2019 and 2018 is a little large um i'm not necessarily sure what to what to make of that though and was there i'm trying to remember was there a second question with that i think that was pretty much it just thought of why that might have been the way it was yeah okay um another question that i had and it's been echoed a couple times is discussions about the multilateral responses to space security threats um chris you kind of touched on this a little bit maybe um you where the panel could expand on it we've had discussions about you know the russian and chinese proposal with ppwt um what does the us responded to that sort of um treaty proposal does the us have its own versions of that um and then maybe we could talk a little bit about the recent group of governmental experts discussion on peros and what actually happened there if someone in the panel wants to talk about that if not i'm happy to jump in um but just really explain you know where we are because um you know these these sort of shared space governance issues are really difficult to solve if we can't even bring them up in multilateral context so um can we go and talk about where we are for space security discussions at the international level thank you who wants to take that um i'll start off if i may uh because i think what we see what we see is that each of the major space powers are opposed to asa tests except their own they're not happy with they're not happy with with others but they they're happy with their own because they are for peaceful purposes obviously the defensive as we've already covered off and they're at a safe altitude they're not you know we've we've already got china having established what the bad asa tests look like so i think in in a in a multilateral world we're seeing an amazing amount of geopolitics and sort of realism reasserting itself in that there's as bad and ours is good and i think we we kind of need to move past that this is an area where i think the international community and individual states can actually move past that by making declarations of okay either this is what we view as safe if we're going to do this this is what we view as safe and these are the outcomes that we will regard as being prohibited these are the outcomes that we think are bad if you do this you will be acting contrary to the international will and countries can do that you know it doesn't take a space power to do that it take and i think we can all guess what they are they're the protection of the orbital environment you know this the problem is there is this balance between if we do stabilize asa tests and have normative behaviors emerging in asa tests we lose the balance on space security so it's it's kind of like a really delicate balance to to manage this there's acceptance of asa tests and my sort of realistic approach to that but that has that's not you know it's not a zero something there will be a knock on effect and it will be in the in the field of space security so i think nations have to kind of decide do they want guidelines on this do they want to start promulgating unilateral guidelines which will say this is what we think and if you do this you will be you will be regarded as bad or do they want to keep up the polite pretence of everybody else's asa test is bad thank you other thoughts brian yeah so i i think that's right and i would expand that to say you know we we almost so we saw some of this in the in the nuclear testing world where you know which you started to see unilateral moratoriums on testing in the u.s. and so the union that you know yeah there was a couple of breaks where they you know one would break a moratorium that would test a couple but then go back to a moratorium and and eventually that led to a broader agreement that let's say nuclear testing is bad and and again general acceptance and then that was enshrined in law so i could see something like that evolving for this where you know it's going to it may start with a few countries that are that are willing to make a unilateral moratorium on testing or even call for a broader one and then that might as chris pointed out sort of establishing norm that you see then evolving from there i again look i think if i put my hopeful hat on that that's what i think i hope to see because i saw from chris you know trying to go straight for the the multilateral treaty prohibiting this stuff is probably going to be tricky and i think that the wild card here is missile defense these these capabilities we've talked about a couple of times for this show that this ground launch missile hit to kill is very similar for an satellite capabilities and for midcourse missile defense really hard to to to you know prohibit one and allow the other and we've seen over the last 10 years or so you know a growing number of countries that are interested in missile defense to protect themselves now that doesn't have to midcourse i think there's a case to be made that you know terminal terminal level missile defense is probably a easier to do option than midcourse missile defense but that i think is probably going to be the the what what the difficult part of this is is you know if there is a pushback saying we know we need to do hit to kill for missile defense midcourse missile defense i think that might be the thing that pushes back against a moratorium on these sorts of attack tests great thank you yeah it's almost a mentality of is that test for me not for the and i think when the real issue that i've seen a secure world co-sponsors a space security conference every year in janeva with the with unidire is that there's a real disconnect between what the major space power see as the biggest threat to space security and stability russia and china and the bricks focus on space based weapons whereas us and its allies tend to look at almost more as an environmental discussion point you know spaces cluttered spaces congested spaces competitive and so it's really hard to come up with a common response we can't even identify what your biggest threat is is it destabilization is it weaponization and that's been a real problem for the multilateral fora we've mentioned the pp wt several times it was first proposed in 2008 and then revamped in 2014 by russia and china and it's just been kind of sitting there i think that there's been no forward movement same with proposals by russia and china for no first placement weapons in outer space but having said that the united states and particularly has not shown a tremendous amount of leadership in terms of providing counter offers you know okay if you don't like the bbt or no first placement and those are i would argue those are very problematic options what what can we do in return um so it's difficult and um you know recently well i took a recently 2018 through 2019 there's a group of governmental experts talking about heros for wrenching arms through standard space and um could even come to agreement as to what sort of recommendations they wanted to make and again these are tricky issues and not to say that international diplomacy should be able to solve these problems easily but there are i guess um sticking points that there definitely can be for this um with that i want to have a broader discussion about you know kinetic counter space capabilities does the panel think the sort of thing is predetermined like will the sort of capability be used um if someone has it eventually is someone going to actually try and use it any thoughts i mean i can see my thought but model is going to take a crack at it i think there is a as i mentioned i'm in a i'm in a skeptic uh skeptics camp uh regarding the actual use of that uh that capability uh because uh you you don't basically with this kind of a asat or whether even with the more kind of advanced asat the the mines or higher altitude asat it's hard to imagine a military mission in which this this capability would be useful and and and it works in a way that if if if a state that you want to target it really relies on its space capability to the to the extent that by taking out satellites you could actually kind of undermine the the the military capability then the that state would probably would probably take steps to reduce that that vulnerability and there are ways clear ways of doing that you go uh to uh distribute the capability you go to smaller satellites you go to redundancy and in the end you just yeah you can shoot down a satellite but so what and this is this is what i'm saying when i when i when i said that they are the back in the day uh the both the soviet union the united states uh back in the late 60s or 80s they just looked at it and they just realized that it's not clear what the mission of this thing is so i think i'm i'm i'm in that in that sense i'm an optimist uh because i i i do believe that these these capabilities will not be used just because i i do believe that they are they don't then don't give you much in terms of military capability you're muted but i'm assuming that was me uh no i i i think i generally agree with pavel and i just want to use an example here there was a great article in the space review uh this week about a recap of a decision that was made at the uh 1975 1976 at the end of the fort administration beginning of the car demonstration about exactly this problem uh you had a u.s national security uh a process that started with essentially going oh my gosh our satellites are vulnerable to all these russian aset weapons and what do we do about it sounds very similar to a discussion we've been having here the last 10 years and so they convene a bunch of meetings they had several studies and at the end of the day uh their decision was we will harden our satellites we will make them more resilient uh and that's how we're gonna increase the protection of our capabilities uh but at the same time they said you know we need to have a limited offensive capability of our own to go after soviet satellites particularly uh rorsat neo satellites that are being used to uh detect and target carrier battle groups uh for anti ship missiles and so that began development program of this f-15 launched aset weapon uh that was actually tested in the 1980s uh destroyed a u.s satellite called solwind 85 um and had a couple of tests uh and it was a big development program uh there was plans for wide deployment but then the reg administration said no and they canceled it and it never became fully operational uh because when it came down to it and they had to make some tough budget decisions uh the choice decision was made that that capability uh just didn't rise the same level of priority as other things so again this is not a new debate about whether or not you have aset weapons is space contested or not it's it's been that way for a while these things have happened in the past and so far countries as said have explored it they've done rnd but but we have the decision has always been you know this does not really rise to the level of something that's really truly important like we've seen other military abilities um i do want to add just one caveat to that um your pavo is absolutely correct there are ways to make systems more resilient so that you are essentially you know deterring these sorts of kinetic aset tests by denying benefits and at the same time if somebody does choose to try and destroy satellite well then you just push through it right because your system's resilient the caveat is the u.s has been trying to do that for a decade and so far has not really made any progress in making their systems more resilient so that's sort of the the caveat is you know there there can be institutional and bureaucratic barriers to actually dealing or actually you know coming up with a way to counter these counter space capabilities uh that can you know actually make it so they might might be of some use but again i generally agree with pavo that so far we've seen they have not really been that useful chris did you want to add to it yeah i think um again um sort of consensus here on the fact that asats themselves i i very much sit in the in the in the skeptical camp because i think while the law regarding testing is you know broadly supportive of testing i think once we start getting into the actual use of asats and i know brine's been working on the womb manual the use of asats and the actual disruption of satellites in key orbits and the creation of large debris fields may start intruding into areas where international law not the law of outer space but actually the law of arm conflict starts getting involved and so actually what we might have is a situation where use of these these anti-satellite weapons may well contravene the law of arm conflict and so actually the electronic means which don't much more efficient much more sort of predictable and so i think in in the sense in the sense of worrying about asats i think actually the legality becomes more more apparent when they're actually used so kind of it's almost they would almost be self defeating to use them because the testing of them isn't illegal but if you if you use them in the in the wrong orbit in the wrong circumstances and you have this indiscriminate debris field created then it might well start offending against the law of arm conflict michael yeah and i'll also say that another kind of deterrence to the possible actually usefulness of asats is you know in 2020 it certainly depends on what type of orbital platforms you're talking about but if you're talking about for example optical imagery in terms of imagery analysis you know getting something at you know 20 centimeters per pixel that's nice that's eye watering we saw that with trump's tweet from last year it's nice to look at but i mean operationally you know what is the difference between something at 20 centimeters per pixel and all the commercial platforms at 30 at 50 um things things like that so you know if you're talking about against you know us optical systems um you know you you could you know you could take out you know the platforms that can do this very very very high resolution imagery but you know what is the nga gonna do they're just gonna call up planet and get things that you know closer to a meter per pixel um and you know you can certainly do a lot with with that um when you're talking about um electronic intelligence and things like that it's it's a little different there's not really a commercial market there um but for optical systems certainly there's a lot of near um you know near comparable uh replacements available in the commercial sector um and at some point if you're really trying to deny the ability to view um or to gather optical intelligence from space uh you're gonna you're gonna start blowing up a lot of stuff you're gonna you're gonna run out of asats before you can really deny that kind of optical capability at least okay um interesting points um so in terms of looking to the future um where do we go from here are we just gonna do we just continue on smartly with each country developing their own counter space capabilities and hoping that we can have some sort of international discussion on this do we try and stop countries from developing these capabilities um do we get some sort of like npt type situation where there's nuclear have and nuclear have nots are we gonna have space power have and have nots or asats have and have nots um where do you guys where does the panel think that we're gonna be going in the future with this yeah let me try i think there is no there there's a simple answer because uh again the dynamic is there uh there will be uh people in the military in the militaries of all states that have this capability pushing uh to get this done and uh however uh there there is a there in my view there is a kind of lesson we can we can learn from the from the abm treaty back in the 1772 uh which uh basically the way i i i read what happened and yeah i looked at to into the record and you you could you could too what happened was that there was a clear understanding on both sides uh in the united states and in the soik union that missile defense will not work in any anywhere close to what was advertised and they yeah based on that it it became easier for them to get uh an agreement the abm treaty so that's uh that's that's how it came about so i i think something like that would probably happen eventually uh with with space capabilities uh there there is uh i think as long as when people will start kind of a working uh on these things and trying to operationalize them and trying to think of scenarios where these would be useful they will come to the conclusion that these things don't work and they don't give you any capability but that should would would have to be kind of internally understood by all the players uh and and then it would be possible to have an agreement to limit that and reach a kind of understanding on the uh legal ban on this kind of system so that's uh we hopefully that understanding of the kind of a utility of this enterprise would come uh earlier rather than later uh but but it will come it's just a matter of and i and i think it just met our time and and i think that one uh one uh what we could do i think is to try to kind of a push that and sort of to try to uh go and uh look closely into why these systems are may not necessarily be as useful as people who have interest in deploying them and developing them uh uh lead us to believe so that's uh i think that's that's an important part of the work but that's yeah but that's eventually uh it would have to come through this kind of a through through the internal bureaucracies if you will that would be my thank you pavel anyone else in the panel want to um opine on what we future looks from here brian just uh you know i'll pick up on the thread we had earlier i i would hope that there's going to be a country or a group of countries out there that'll be willing to take some sort of a stand on this issue uh at least at the level of no more deliberate intercepts that create orbital debris uh you know we've seen some indications after last year's uh indian asat test that germany made a statement that suggested they were thinking along those lines um i think canada made a some sort of a a statement in front of the first committee last fall so i there may be some of that rumblings out there this i would like to see that and i think that would that's sort of our hopeful position would be that you know a country or group of countries would take a stand on this before we do see an actual kinetic intercept next time and then that might lead to well chris and i talked about earlier is some you know a couple of countries declaring moratoriums and then we would have a norm building from there chris yeah again just to just to sort of agree and back up with what both brian and pavel have said that i think the way that this is the way that this could emerge and this is actually a really easy diplomatic win for a nation to to state their own sort of unilateral criteria for what an asap test is i'd go a stage further than brian and i would say no sort of intercepts that cause orbital debris period you know deliberate or otherwise so that that then imposes a duty on the asap tester to make sure that they don't contraven these international international norms so i think that i think you know we need to see leadership from countries leadership from countries that don't necessarily have a horse in the game at the minute leadership from countries who can say we don't want to see tests that damage the orbital environment because this does go beyond simple arms control simple arms control arms control this does go beyond that it stretches into the environmental issue and i think you are absolutely right victoria when you said that it stretches across into environmental law into space situational awareness into the whole range of space activity and so i think this is a good opportunity for a country to take leadership in this and say we're going to this is this is our red line thank you chris and actually that leaves me by the last question i have for the group um obviously nation states need to be involved in this conversation and clearly for security issues but i think one of the things that that we tend not to recognize or forget for the as a space domain is changing that the commercial sector plays a huge role in how we use space and how we feel comfortable about others using space should the commercial sector be worried about this should they be involved in the conversation um do they have a role to play in terms of establishing norms for space space security and stability in this issue thoughts uh short answer is yes uh you know if if you're planning a business model that's going to involve satellites operating in low earth orbit uh you should probably be wondering whether or not a country or a bunch of countries may be testing stuff that creates a bunch of debris if you are a part of your business model is selling data and services to a country's militaries or intelligence agencies you need to be thinking am i going to be a target should there be a conflict do i need to worry about that um i definitely think uh commercial companies should be at least involved in the discussion and talking with their governments about these issues uh and and and you know because i think if this continues and we see more widespread testing and deployment that could be uh you know have a negative repercussions for future investment and commercial development in low earth orbit uh chris i think we've got this strange sort of paradox um logic and international politics are uneasy companions but actually all of the the the major space powers who are engaged in these asap tests have a vested interest in a more ordered environment it's in their interests it's in their collective interests to ensure that space is as brian said a predictable environment so that this commercial activity can absolutely flourish so i think if that message can get through and if that message by means of how by however it happens by broad international support for limitations on asap tests because that's where we could start a limitation on asap tests if that could be could be generated by both you know military diplomatic and commercial actors then i think the message will get through that actually it's in everybody's interests but especially it's in the major space powers interest to in space security and to retain that stability um any last michael you want to add something yeah yeah i'll say that um kind of building off of what brian said um really any company that their business model involves selling data to the government um you know developed or not developed um captured from orbital platforms uh they should be wondering you know is is it safe essentially is it safe for me to do this um and i and i think building off of that um one of the things that the us has looked into in in recent years is to kind of try and have a more distributed like mil sat com um architecture by using hosted payloads and things like that um and i know that there have been you know certain companies that have been kind of uneasy with that because they're saying if i'm hosting a mil sat com payload um am i going to be one of the first targets if you know if an asap war kicks off um and so i think that there's um there's you know there's there's this there's these interacting factors that play where i think that um if companies uh you know if companies want to further their their business model and if you know if countries want to have more distributed systems um i think that companies really should be interested in uh in this this type of discussion thank you um probably last thoughts you're good okay well that puts us right at time um i'd really like to thank the panel for some really fascinating insights and honest discussion and also i'd like to thank um the audience as well for um sitting such interesting questions and it was really interesting for me to hear from everyone literally all over the world um that shows that this um i think this issue is relevant and of interest and important to have a global discussion so we get to some sort of solution that we're all comfortable with allows us to continue to use space and a sustainable manner of the long term so with that i'd like to emphasize again we will be putting the powerpoint up on our website soon we'll be putting um the recording up on the website soon um transcripts in a bit um but um if you have any questions feel free to reach out to us and um we look forward to seeing you whether in person or most likely virtually at a later secure world event thank you all have a great weekend