 Good morning, everyone. They say space is the final frontier, and we have in fact arrived at the final panel for the future war fighting symposium. But I hope I can assure you that we may be coming up last, but this will still be an interesting and lively panel, I think, as we discuss some of the new challenges that we face in space and how we might be able to respond to them. I'm Professor David Burbach from the National Security Affairs Department here at the War College. I will look forward to seeing some of you in class later in the year, and we have three distinguished guests with us today to help us understand what's going on in space. We often think of space as a very new domain, but in a way it's a very old one. If Sputnik were still in orbit, it would be old enough to retire and collect Social Security next month. Most people in this room were born after Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. We've been working in space for decades, but there are some very big changes happening. If you are like us and follow our sort of space nuts, you will know there are, I believe, four, three satellites being launched into orbit today. News of the Chinese may be launching their space plane this afternoon, and yet another group of tourists flying on Jeff Bezos rockets. At the same time, we see dramatic growth in the number of satellites, China catching up with the U.S. in its military and civil space capabilities. If I can steal a line from one of my panelists, the first shot fired in the Russia-Ukraine war this spring was a cyber attack on a space system and specifically on an American commercial space system, a very successful cyber attack that actually permanently damaged equipment. There's a lot going on in space, and we have three distinguished guests here to help us understand. You've got full biographies in your program, so let me just very briefly tell you a little bit about our guests. We'll first hear from Mr. Todd Harrison, who has long experience analyzing space threats and space systems. He recently led the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and has now moved on into the private sector as a senior VP and head of research at Meta Aerospace. He served in the Air Force Reserves and has degrees, Master's and Bachelor's degrees from MIT. We'll then hear from Dr. Nomrada Goswami, who is a scholar who specializes in understanding the role of space in great power strategies. She's recently the author, co-author of Scramble for the Skies, Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space. She's been a Minerva fellow for DOD and a fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace. She also teaches at Arizona State's Thunderbird School of Management and earned her doctorate at Johar Haral Narrow University in Delhi. And finally, Mr. Doug Laverro has held many leadership roles in the U.S. space sector. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy after a long career in uniform and civilian roles in space, and then moved to NASA, where he was Associate Administrator for Human Exploration. Currently, he does private consulting for the space industry. He's a graduate of the Air Force Academy of the Air Command and Staff College. He chose poorly back then, but we're glad he's coming to Newport now, and has Master's degrees from, let me, I think this is all of them, University of New Mexico, Auburn and West Florida. Great. Well, I've asked each of our panelists to speak for 15 minutes, and we will begin with Mr. Harrison. Great. Thank you so much for the kind introduction. It's a real pleasure to be here in person again, and with such a great, you know, esteemed panel today. I guess we've got slides up here. I should note, first of all, I'm at a company, a private company called Meta Aerospace. We're not connected to Facebook. We had the name first. But nevertheless, my role there is actually pretty similar to my role in the think tank world, looking at what are the big challenges facing us in the future. What I'm going to talk about today, threats to space systems, much of what I'll be talking about is derived from work I did with my colleagues at CSIS. So I want to acknowledge them, and in particular, my great team, former team there, Caitlyn Johnson, McKenna Young, some really rising stars in space policy co-authored these works with us, and Doug has participated as well on at least one of these reports shown up here. So a lot of what I'm going to be talking about today is derived from that work. So where to begin? When we talk about space as a contested warfighting environment, I get a little upset sometimes when I hear senior policymakers in DOD. I'm not going to name any names in particular, but we're talking at the highest levels in military and civilian leadership in the Pentagon. A lot of times they come out and they talk about space as a contested warfighting domain as if it's new, as if it's something that just happened within the past 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. And oh my gosh, space is now a contested warfighting domain. What are we going to do? And then they completely forget the Cold War. The first satellite launched into space, Sputnik 1957, first ASET test, 1959. And that was our ASET test. And you look throughout the 1960s and 70s at the ASET test conducted by the Soviet Union, what is open source now. It's pretty remarkable what they were developing and testing. We're talking satellites that could attack other satellites in space, space to anti-satellite weapons, kinetic mainly at that time. So, you know, the idea is, you know, space is contested is not new. What is actually different now? And so that's where I get into what I like to call the 4Ds. Spaces become more diverse, disruptive, disordered and dangerous, right? And so I'm going to talk about the first and the last D in a bit more detail on the next slide, the next coming slides. So first of all, when I say space has become more diversified, what I really mean there and you can look at the numbers here is we've got many more actors in space. You look back at the Cold War era from Sputnik to, you know, whenever you want to say the Cold War ended 1990, 1991 around around the time of the first Gulf War. If you look at, you know, the number of space launches, the number of satellites in space, payloads being orbited at that time, overwhelmingly dominated by the two superpowers, US and the Soviet Union. And so really, you know, we were dominating space. If you look at the types of satellites we were launching, the missions they supported primarily related to our nuclear forces. Since the end of the Cold War, things have changed and the numbers show it. You know, the Soviet launch rate has come way down. You see a lot more launches coming from other countries, particularly China. In more recent years, you see US launch rates, US satellites coming back up that is primarily driven by SpaceX, one particular private US company. And so space has become much more diversified. Now many more countries are in space, more countries are becoming dependent on space and much more commercial activity is going on in space. So the vast majority of satellites being launched today are commercial in nature, not military and certainly not supporting nuclear forces. So there's a lot more going on in space today. And we are dependent on space in many other ways than we used to be very economically dependent on space. I love to point this out to folks if you know, folks in the space community already know this, but more than a third of all the satellites in space today operating satellites belong to SpaceX. These are not trivial satellites. These are not, you know, small little nano sats, cube sats or anything like that. These are significant satellites. You know, we're talking, you know, each satellite with many gigabytes of data throughput capacity for communications, they're Starlink satellites. And so and that's just the beginning of their constellation that's going to grow massively. And you've got many other commercial companies. One web, you know, others are going to be launching mega constellations as well. Now, we'll see how far they get. We'll see if they're all commercially viable. That remains to be seen. But we already know they've got the money. They're building the satellites are already launching them. It's going to happen to some degree. So interesting things going on there. Now, you know, because of this, we see a lot of disruptive change going on in space. We see private companies that are now taking on missions that used to be the exclusive domain of governments. We see commercial companies having capabilities that rival those of nation states. And our laws and our policies and regulations have not really adapted to take account of this. So we're slow catching up on how we're going to regulate it, how we're going to govern it, especially since it is inherently international, right? We can control what US companies and US persons do with our laws and regulations can't control what foreign countries do. And so we can regulate like, you know, US commercial remote sensing companies, we can put regulations on them and say, you can't image this or you can't image at this time of day or this angle or this resolution, it doesn't stop it from happening. And it doesn't stop that imagery from getting out there publicly, because a foreign company, you better believe it, they're going to do it and they're going to sell it. So if we're trying to protect national security, it's not that easy, right? Especially when these commercial capabilities are becoming so good and so ubiquitous. All right. And so it's also important to look at how a space become more dangerous. Now, again, anti-satellite weapons are not new. I think what is different is that we see countries advancing in their capabilities and proliferating those capabilities. A lot of people when they think about anti-satellite weapons, you know, their mind first goes to physical kinetic forms of attack, right in the upper left hand quadrant that you see up there. Absolutely a threat. We absolutely see, you know, development and testing of these capabilities. Importantly, only four countries have actually tested kinetic ASAP weapons in space, United States, Russia, Soviets, China and India more recently. Only four countries have done it. It's very similar to missile defense capabilities. In fact, it's a little easier in some ways to shoot down a satellite with a missile. But, you know, that technology is out there, but, you know, countries like Iran, North Korea, they don't have access to that yet. You know, kinetic attack also includes co-orbital ASAP weapons. So a satellite you could put in space that later physically attack some other satellite. Again, you know, Soviets have done that going back to the 1960s. But, you know, those forms of attack very important, you know, definitely something we need to be concerned about. But it's all the other forms of attack that I'm more concerned about, quite frankly. Because a kinetic ASAP attack is going to be visible. It will probably be attributable pretty easily. You know, and that will be a clear sign of escalation, unambiguous. Everyone in the world will see it when it happens. You'll see the debris field. What I'm more worried about are these non-kinetic forms of attack. So you have physical non-kinetic forms of attack. So that's something you can do physical damage to the satellite, but without actually touching it. High power microwave weapon could fry circuits on a satellite, for example. High powered laser could permanently damage sensors on a satellite, things like that. We see, you know, other countries and in some of our work at CSIS, we've documented the open source intelligence on this of countries, Russia, China, developing and testing these types of capabilities. They're out there. And if you think about it, these are much easier to use. They're much less escalatory. Attribution in some cases can be much more difficult. The effects may not be publicly visible. If someone blinds your imagery satellite with a laser or temporarily dazzles it, who else is going to know that that happened other than you? Right? How are you going to respond to that if no one else knows it happened? And do you really want to reveal that it happened and that it was effective? Or would it be better to just pretend it didn't happen and ignore it, but then that country gets away with it? Right? So interesting dilemmas that come up with the use of some of these weapons. Electronic forms of attack. We see this in other domains as well. I'm talking here about jamming, spoofing things of that nature. That happens all the time with their space systems. And, you know, satcom jamming, things like that spoofing even. That technology has proliferated, you know, to middle tier, lower tier powers. We see North Korea using it all the time, GPS jamming, things like that. We see Iran using it all the time. We've even seen non-state actors use satcom jamming in Iraq and Afghanistan. Open source intelligence, you know, we've detected satcom jamming coming from insurgent groups. So, you know, that is a persistent everyday threat form of attack that we see being used against space systems. You can only imagine in conflict how that would ramp up. And importantly, that's a completely reversible form of attack. You can turn it on and turn it off as you need to. And then, of course, cyber, you know, and cyber threats are, you know, ubiquitous across all of our different weapons systems. Anything with software at all is going to have a risk of cyber attack. That is a risk to space systems as well. You know, military space systems, yeah, there are a lot of extra protections. They don't, you know, connect to the public internet, most of them. But, you know, there are still threat vectors where cyber attacks can get through. And it can have really serious consequences. You know, it's been publicly revealed that NASA and NOAA have had cyber attacks that have been pretty effective against their space systems. In some cases, they've gotten all the way into the command and control link of satellites and have had the ability to issue commands. Although the attacks in those instances, they did not issue commands, but they had the ability to. And in one case with NOAA, it took several days that they had to shut down a system to make sure they got the intruder out. So you can only imagine how that could be used in a military context. All right. So, you know, we see these threats developing, proliferating around the world. And I think the key difference now is it's, you know, since our space systems are not primarily used to support nuclear forces, the idea that nuclear deterrence is going to deter attacks on space systems is almost laughable, right? You know, if someone that, you know, dazzles a sensor on one of our satellites, are we really going to respond with a nuclear attack when that satellite is being used, you know, in a conventional conflict? It's not likely, right? And that's not a credible response. So I think the real difference now is we're starting to be really concerned about our deterrence posture in space and can we deter these types of attacks if necessary? And if we can't deter them, how do we respond? Now, a related problem that we have, and I've stolen some videos from online here, is that some things may look like a threat in space. They may look like someone's developing an ASAT weapon, but they may have dual purposes. It may have other uses as well. So these two little video clips running on loop here, the one on the left, they're firing a harpoon at an object in space to spear it, and then you can reel that back in. So it's just a test plate they put out there on a pole. The other one, they've deployed a net in space, and it goes out and wraps around a tumbling satellite, or some object in space, and then you can reel that in. In both cases, this was conducted by a private company, a UK company, that was looking at ways to clean up orbital debris. That's a perfectly good legitimate use, right? But if you were China looking at the same video, wouldn't you think that, hey, that could be used as an ASAT weapon? What do you think we believe if we see China doing the exact same thing in space? Are we going to say, oh, they're just thinking about ways to clean up space debris? Or are we going to think, hmm, they're developing and testing an ASAT weapon, right? So it's hard to know sometimes what kind of capability you're seeing an adversary develop and how they intend to use it. We often tend to assume the worst. So, you know, we got to keep that in mind when we're thinking about what are the threats we're seeing, what do we need to be prepared for, and then the other thing we have to be concerned about now is how do we develop better defenses? In case deterrence fails, or to bolster deterrence in the first place to convince an adversary that it's not worth their time to attack us in space, what kind of defenses do we need to build? And so that was the subject of one of our reports at CSIS, Defense Against the Dark Arts in Space, where we went and looked at, you know, all the full range of defenses, theoretical, what could you possibly do to defend your space systems against attack? It's not impossible. There are a lot of things you can do, but not all defenses are created equal, and not all defenses are going to protect against all forms of attack. So you need a multi-layered system of defenses, and you've got to think through it carefully, and one of the first things you have to think through is, okay, what are the objectives of both the attacker and the defender, right? What are you each trying to achieve, and that depends that, you know, affects what types of defenses you want to build, right? So your, you know, attacker may have a lot of different objectives, and it depends on the, you know, specific circumstances of the crisis or the conflict that you're in, or the competitive phase that you're in as well, because some of this might be used pre-conflict, but you know, at a minimum an attacker could just be, you know, looking to just signal resolve, or to deter conflict on the ground, right? And so they may actually attack your space systems as a way of signaling. Now, what kind of attack would they use in that circumstances? Probably not a kinetic ASAP weapon, right? But they might jam something, they might, you know, lays sensors on a satellite to temporarily blind them, right? As a way of signaling, hey, I'm serious here. If you go forward and you intervene in this conflict on the ground, your space systems are at risk. All right, if that's their objective, okay, then the way we need to think about that and plan for it, you know, it, you know, has a lot of implications. An adversary also could just be attacking space systems simply to inflict economic harm, to raise the economic price to the United States from intervening in something. They may be trying to disrupt the sensor to shooter kill chain. So I think that, you know, in the example, you know, was talked about earlier, with Russia in the early phases of the Ukraine conflict, you know, when they fired the cyber bullet, if you will, and infected an upgrade to Viasat modems, and basically bricked those modems, locked them up, and affected all users in Europe, just about all users in Europe who had that type of modem, including the Ukrainian military. I think what they were actually trying to do is disrupt the sensor to shooter kill chain for Ukraine. They were disrupting their command and control of their forces. And so, okay, if that's your objective, fine. You know what the workaround ended up being. Elon Musk parachutes in and says, hey, I got Starlink terminals. You guys want them. And so he gives them satcom, right? And so they can overcome that. And then apparently Russia starts using electronic forms of attack to disrupt the Starlink signals and they push a software upgrade that overcomes that, right? So, you know, that's all happening in the commercial sector, right? Do you think the military could respond that quickly? Do you think we could push a software upgrade or could push a completely new set of terminals, satcom terminals out to our forces that quickly? Probably not. So that ought to be something to think about. Yeah. Now, another use of anti-satellite weapons is as a penetration aid for other terrestrial weapons, right? So you think about, you know, a big conflict, Russia or China, one of the things they're concerned about is our missile defense systems. I think that they may give us too much credit. But how do you defeat U.S. missile defense systems? One of the best ways is to blind our early warning. And, you know, that queuing comes from our space systems, right? Our early warning missile warning systems in space, things like Sibbers. And so that could be used. You could blind those satellites or disable them, however, as a way to make it more likely your missiles are able to penetrate and reach their targets. Now, at an extreme example, an adversary may want to permanently shift the balance of power in space. They may want to take out large numbers of your satellites permanently destroy them so that we can't use the advantage of space in the future, right? That's a pretty extreme example. But if that's what you're dealing with, you need to prepare defenses appropriately. Now, on the flip side, what is our objective as a defender? Excuse me. It may be, and this is a little controversial, but maybe we're willing to absorb an attack in space and we just want to buy time. We just want to hang on long enough, provide a minimum level of space support services to allow our forces on the ground to retake the advantage, right? And then we can negate whatever anti-satellite capabilities they're using against us. And the more extreme case, if we're at a major conflict, we may look at what's happening and the objective may shift and the objective may become, you know what, we can't allow this country to continue to use space against us, to enable their own forces against us, or to be able to threaten our or allied space systems in the future, we may need to permanently degrade, permanently roll back their space and counter space capabilities. So there's a whole range of options we've got to consider, and then you've got to think through, okay, what are the defensive and offensive capabilities you may need to achieve that. And so, you know, I'm going to stop there, make sure we have plenty of times for questions, but I'd love to go into some of this in more detail. Great. Thank you very much. And we will switch to Dr. Goswami's slides and they are up great. And Namrata, go ahead. Thank you, David. And thank you for that. That was a great segue into my presentation. Thank you to the Naval War College for having me back again. I do have a disadvantage here. You have an advantage over me. Your screen is very big and mine is very small. So there it is, asymmetric advantage. So I think China's space program is philosophically about that. So when you look at their military documents that came out after the Gulf War, they recognize the critical importance of space for military capability and recognize that the more the U.S. military depended on space, the more it is vulnerable. So it is about asymmetric advantage as well. So today when I talk about China's space program, what I'm going to do is talk a little bit about the key drivers and what is it that their white paper actually tells you. So the white paper that came out this year, 2022, which is a 2021 white paper, recognize space as a critical component of their national security and strategic advantage. And some of the drivers that China has recognized for its space program is regime legitimacy, internal national development, economic entrepreneurship, which is a very interesting perspective they give you. And finally, it's of course about national security. So some of the changes that has actually happened in China since 2013 is that space has now been recognized as a critical part of comprehensive national power. And this change happened when President Xi Jinping became president and when China published their military strategy in 2015. And for the first time, they actually officially put out that space also forms a part of their joint operational domain. And then the interesting thing for me when I was looking at their doctrines across the different years is that they argued that China is no more going to be all about defensive capability but also how you can use this multi-domain perspective to basically forward China's capability for power and influence across the world. And so they also recognize the concept of a strategic adversary. They did not mention the U.S. officially, but you can draw from conclusions from their statement as well. Now if you look at some of China's why is China in space at all and why should it matter to you? So if you look at some of China's grand strategic thinking which I draw from their strategic culture it's a lot about access. So they are very much interested in maintaining their access to space. For the reasons I pointed out national security, economic development, regime legitimacy, they are very much interested not to repeat what they feel they suffer in the ocean which is your domain of expertise a concept like the Malacca Dilemma that the U.S. is so powerful in space that one day in the future when you have the prospect of economic benefits the U.S. might control the space lines of communication and the president who actually identified this particular concept of strategic dilemma was Hu Xintao for the first time when he was president. And then of course space is now a critical part of the Chinese constitution and I think what President Xi has done for China which is interesting from a societal perspective is that he has equated space to the spirit of the Long March it's not the rocket it's the Long March that Mao did when China was established so it's a very interesting upgrading of the concept of space in China as well. Now if you look at some of the speeches that President Xi has given and I draw my research looking at their speeches as well so President Xi repeatedly has stated the critical importance of space has directed the PLA and the PLA strategic support force to improve their doctrinal concept and their operational capability. He has argued that space is critical for China's national rejuvenation and for China to be able to become a leader in technology under his concept of the hundred year celebration of the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Now I always argue to my students and wherever I speak that without understanding China's strategic culture it is impossible to understand China's investment or why they are investing in space at all. The one thing I noticed especially in the western academia and western media is that there is a tendency to equate China to Russia or the Soviet Union there is a tendency to use Cold War concepts of power balancing but if you look at China's strategic culture one of the texts that President Xi Jinping is inspired by is called Han Feizi's text of legalism where Han Feizi points out that for a country to remain strong you have to have rule by law not rule of law and so a strong leader a strong leader creating the narrative the importance of control party control over key future technologies including quantum that was mentioned today is a very critical component. China also very much points out the importance of first presence so if you look at how they rationalize their invasion of Tibet in 1950 how they rationalize their claim on the South China Sea Islands where they went about building artificial islands how they are improving their capability and Antarctica for which I wrote an article with one of my colleagues from the New Zealand Air Force they're actually pointing out that it's really important for you to be somewhere there first because that gives you entitlement and capability to then create that strategic advantage for your own people so keep that in mind when you think about China's space program and its strategic culture now there are certain long-term goals that China has identified which I in my field work in China this was what came across to me in my conversations one is that China's rationalization of space is not just about national security it's about what it can do to economically benefit its society so one of the concept that China is investing in and actually starting to become very proficient in space-based solar power the ability to collect solar energy in space the person who pushed for this is Wang Shishi so you might not know him but he is the father of China's Long March program and very respected and she argued that investment in concepts like space-based solar power is a strategic investment because of the potential it has for offering renewable energy the second concept that they're looking at is of course lunar exploration and development of the moon and I'll point out what they have achieved till date and what they hope to do and then finally they actually have a common collaboration with Russia for an asteroid exploration mission with the hope that one day you might be able to mine an asteroid for resources and this program is supported by the China Academy of Sciences and I had interesting conversations with them about the feasibility and they have put out a position paper on that as to how that's going to be done now finally before I move on another concept that comes out and why is it important to understand the civilian part of China's space program is that under President Xi there is a great focus on civil military fusion and the critical importance of developing both your civilian capacity and your military capacity because in the perspective of the leadership of the Politburo that adds to your comprehensive national power now importantly if you look at this particular slide so space-based solar power they have put out certain programs that they want to achieve Long Liuhao who is the designer for this particular program and the Long March rockets argues that this is the timeline for China's space-based solar power capability and this was put out by the China National Space Administration which is their policy-making body under the state administration for science, industry, technology for national defense and so by 2030 they want to achieve solar power beaming from space and by 2050 increase their capability and so that's one of the key technologies that they're actually looking at now if you look at China's focus on the moon it's also critical so China wants to become the nation that has a base on the moon by 2036 in collaboration with Russia and not for the purposes you think they want to do it it's not really for prestige they're arguing that the moon is an important part of an economic zone that they want to establish by 2050 and this has been supported by statements by the head of China's lunar program who is Wu Wering and they give several interviews to Chinese media including in CCTV and then projecting it in their five-year plan China became the first nation in the 21st century to plant a flag on the moon and if you listen to some of the conversations they are very nationalistic about it they say that the 21st century is the age of Chang'e which is China's moon mission the Polo program was that of the 20th century so you can see how nationalistic they are about their program as well now these are some of the timelines that you need to keep in mind when you think of China's base program China has succeeded in becoming the one of the nations in the 21st century to be able to bring back samples from the lunar near side they hope to go to the lunar south pole by 2024 and then by 2030 to be able to use 3D printing to manufacture some kind of base on the moon and here they collaborate with Russia and as you know Russia also has a lunar program and by 2036 to establish a research station in 2021 the CNSA and Roscosmos signed a memorandum of understanding where they put out the design for how their lunar research station will be now China's Mars program also keep in mind when you think of China's space ambitions and goal China became the first country to succeed in going to Mars independently and achieve all three missions orbiting landing and sending out a rover and so and I say that because their collaboration with Russia had failed but then they are proud now that they are the country that has achieved a deep interplanetary mission as well now here is again very interesting if you look at the statement given out by their ahead of their Mars program he argues that they are actually thinking about a human Mars program now by 2046 so they have very far far-sighted ambitions and then lunar Mars sample returned by 2030 and these are again a part of their official space policy and so keep that in mind when you think of China's space program as well as I said asteroid exploration so Zheng He is the name of their mission why Zheng He Zheng He was the 15th century you know naval person who actually built the treasure ships and then the treasure ships were basically burnt and so the argument is that we need to have a particular mission towards asteroids that draws on that pride in civilizational capability and also to collaborate with Russia of course in this particular mission now if you look at China's Leo satellite constellation look at how ambitious they are it's not just the moon it's not just Mars they also have a national constellation program in which they hope to compete with Starlink and SpaceX and so this they put out a few years ago and the hope is that they are able to put up about 30,000 satellites by 2035 as an alternative to Starlink that they will put out to the world the Tiangong and the Tianghe mission is also important as we are speaking China is building their own permanent space station and hope to succeed it by the end of this year and one of the important I had a thought when Russia said that they are going to exit the International Space Station it is possible that Russia might join up with China as has happened with the moon program and with asteroid exploration program as well now in an update in 2021 so China recently funded a national natural science foundation capability of thinking about building a kilometer wide space station in low earth orbit again competing with the US commercial space sector that is also starting to invest in space stations I think that's their basic motive when I look at this particular statements so the white paper on space is really important when you think about China space program so some of the important departures from earlier white paper is that now China has included space industry as a critical part of their space program which means the private space sector which is actually pretty good in China as we speak another concept that they have included is reusable launch which is going to be their target by 2025 and then they are also focusing on CIS lunar operations if you look at the white paper now this is interesting because the 2016 white paper adding my interviews with Chinese space policy makers they are very much against a concept like CIS lunar but today it has made it into their official white paper given the fact that they recognize the criticality of that narrative as well and then planetary defense which means ability to deflect a near-earth asteroid China believes that if you can take leadership in that particular capability other countries would look at China as a leader in that particular discourse now there was a question that I always got especially given the Ukrainian conflict as to how is China viewing SpaceX and Starlink they see that as a threat so if you look at some of the military writings that have come out which I have put here there is a paper that is available at least I downloaded it before it disappeared from the internet that the PLA Strategic Support Force actually funded that talked about how China's military needs to work towards disabling or countering a SpaceX kind of Starlink kind of support in case of the Taiwan scenario so they have argued that US commercial space sector is a force multiplier for the US military and they actually give you a very good detail presenting data sets of why they make that argument as well so very interesting in terms of the development and their willingness to put it out because their audience is not just the US it's the countries along the Belt and Road Initiative and countries that they want to influence because it is about influence at the structural and great power level the China-Russia relationship is critical so there are those I'm actually very surprised by some of the articles that came out when Russia invaded Ukraine that China is not in support of it or somehow China was not aware of it I completely disagree with that analysis because if I look at some of the statements that has happened in the last 10 years or last 20 years China has actually made the Russia relationship a strategic partnership and has upgraded it to the level that builds institutional sharing of knowledge President Putin visited China just before he invaded Ukraine and signed a 6,000 word joint statement in which China supported the Russian perspective that NATO's operation in Ukraine is a problem and challenges international peace and order and then for someone to argue that China was not aware is absolutely not backed by data and we have been talking about data a lot in this particular symposium the other important thing and departure is that I argue that without China's implicit support Russia would have not invaded in Ukraine because of what China is doing now helping them in terms of offering them a line of economic credit and so this is actually the and I wanted to bring you back a little bit to the kind of collaboration they have so this is the press release from Roscosmos and China National Space Administration that was put out and this is the map of their research station they also have nuclear power which is very interesting as a concept design and both Russia and China as you know are major nuclear power states with capability and talent to build such prospects now before I finish I know I have about two minutes so if you look at China's influence mechanism please keep in mind the Belt and Road Initiative because in 2018 China included the Belt and Road Spatial Information Corridor which is collaboration in space with 140 member nations of the Belt and Road Initiative as part of their influence mechanism what is interesting is that countries like New Zealand, Luxembourg, Austria, Italy are part of the Belt and Road Initiative and they also some of them have signed the Artemis Accord so you can see how Middle Powers we talked about Middle Powers yesterday are making decisions based on who is going to give them the best economic benefit and so you can see that the Belt and Road Initiative does have that impact and of course Russia supports the Belt and Road Initiative and has actually put out support statements in arguing that the China-led Belt and Road Initiative is a great alternative to any US-led diplomatic effort including to the G7 nations so finally I have one minute and so if you look at civilian space capacity some of the capacities that you need to keep in mind is the Long March 9 which is coming in 2030 which China hopes to make reusable which will compete with Starship which will be able to lift about 140 metric tons to low Earth orbit and beyond and that's the rocket they want to use for their space-based solar power capability and their missions to March and then if you look at this slide this is what I think is relevant to you so military space capacity as I said civil military fusion is very critical their ability to blind satellites their ability for rendezvous and proximity operations quantum mechanism China is a leader in quantum satellite technology the first country to test it in 2016 and then last year they also tested for example their nuclear capable allegedly nuclear capable hypersonic glide vehicle that traverse Leo that renders US missile defense tracking difficult by the way it traverses Leo it comes it comes from an area that you're not looking at which is the South Pole and so it's a very interesting development of capability that we need to think of when we think about China's prospects China of course argued that this is not what the US Congress or testimonies have said they argue that this is their reusable vehicle which is even interestingly civilian capability that they have I think I'll end there and I'll look for questions so thank you so much great thank you very much and we move on to our last speaker Mr. Doug Laverro and Doug if it'd be easier to have a paper I actually do have a I've got it thank you we're going to see if I can coordinate both my computer screen and this screen and you'll know if I got it screwed up so first of all I'm conscious of the fact that I'm the last speaker of the last panel on the last day which means I am planned to go for about an hour today the other thing I'm conscious of is that when Dave says a lot of people in this room weren't alive for Apollo I remember sitting on the roof of my house watching Sputnik go over back in 1957 when I was four and a half years old so I think maybe my perception of space might be a little bit different than everybody else's because I've been watching it and loving it since the moment my father brought me up on that roof so I also want to go ahead and try to knit together both the great preparation that my two colleagues made up here and also some of the other themes that we've talked about during the conference here today specifically on deterrence but I want to go ahead and begin by harkening back to what Peter Singer said Peter Singer took an hour to tell us that it's really hard for us to go ahead and predict the future but we should still think about it I think Scott Adams has that encapsulated into a little bit better cartoon here please do not tell Peter that I said that about him but it is tough and so what we're going to talk about today is something that is unusual in military doctrine and strategy is we're going to talk about doctrine and strategy in a domain where we have never fought a war if you look at all of the strategic concepts you've ever read from Klausowitz to Mahan to to Sun Tzu it's based upon history of doctrine that we've developed in fighting a war and yet we have never fought a war in space and still we are trying to develop doctrine and strategy so we know what kind of systems to develop and that's an area that I find is the most interesting and goes towards the heart of the things we've been talking about to put it in perspective from a foreign adversary is thinking about the future this is what a Chinese strategist Wang Hu Chang said in 2000 he said for countries that could never win a war by using the methods of tanks and planes attacking U.S. space systems is an irresistible and most tempting choice into it's no it is no just happenstance that in 2000 the Chinese began their anti-satellite missile program and by 2007 they shot down their first missile and the U.S. actually began to take notice by the way we knew they were they were developing this for years before but when they actually were successful it came as somewhat of a strategic shock if not an intellectual shock for us in the U.S. Now I want to go back as I talk about this I want to talk a little bit about what was space strategy in the beginning of the space age Todd alluded to this a little bit to at the beginning of his talk and then in order to really understand the doctrine and strategy of space you have to understand a little bit about space space is a different kind of domain and you've heard people say that before I'm going to actually show you some reasons why we should think space is a different kind of domain and then we also need to think about what are the roles that space forces play in our military and finally we'll try to sum that all up into at least a working man's definition of deterrence for space so here's where it began back in 1946 the gentleman on the right side of this chart Curtis LeMay who was a two star general at the time commissioned a study by what was going to become the Rand Corporation it was the Douglas Aircraft Company at the time and he said hey these missiles that Germany is developing what could we do with those things and Rand said in 1946 before the first Sputnik satellite had ever been launched before anything they said you know you could create a world circling satellite and in that paper they say in the first country that does is going to shock the world and they were right and of course the Soviet Union was the first country that did it but LeMay was thinking about the uses of space back in 1946 when he was a two star general in charge of research and development for the Air Force now it turns out that LeMay later became the head of strategic air command and eventually the chief of staff of the Air Force and one of the first things that he built that he asked the Air Force to build in their space systems was this program that you see in front of here called the the Midis which is the mid infrared defense alerting system it is the first version of a missile defense a missile alerting system a missile launch detection system that the United States had back in 1960 it's hard for us to remember just how quickly we accelerated from the first U.S. launch in 1958 to the actual military uses of space in 1960s and these systems were tied to nuclear response this is these systems were tied to observing a launch of a missile and being able to have early warning so we could then go ahead and respond to a nuclear attack and a lot of people know that during the time of LeMay when he was both the head of SAC and when he was the chief of staff of the Air Force and even beyond we always viewed this nuclear strategic deterrence question in the form of a triad the bombers the missiles and the submarines those were our nuclear triad but we were actually missing there was actually one part of this that people never talked about space was a critical part of any nuclear response we could not alert ourselves of a nuclear attack we couldn't control our response to a nuclear attack without space so we never really had a triad I don't know if there's a word like a quadad but that's maybe it's a quadad I'm not sure but there space was always a critical element of this it was the invisible element it at this point in our history of space almost all space systems were classified we didn't even admit to the existence of many of these space systems and yet space was always key to this entire nuclear execution chain and so this goes back to what Todd said one of the reasons why although space was threatened at the time we had anti-satellite weapons back in the 60s one of the reasons we did not go ahead and see that is because space was protected by a nuclear shield the strategy of space was quite simple it's an instrument of geopolitical power that's what Kennedy used it as in our landing on the moon but it's also an instrument of nuclear war for execution operationally space forces were organized solely solely to go ahead and be able to respond to the nuclear mission and in fact for those of us who think we can't protect satellites we figured out how to protect satellites against nuclear bombs back in the in the cold war so we can certainly figure out how to protect satellites from other threats that exist today although a lot of folks in the space force today don't know that we did that because we did it so long ago and the deterrence concept was simple if you attack a space system you must be ready to launch a nuclear attack and so space systems were part of the nuclear deterrence equation and space systems benefited from nuclear deterrence as part of their nuclear umbrella and so the entire strategy of space was really quite simple because of that linkage to nuclear weapons but that all changed and so I want to talk about how that changed and to do that I first want to talk about how do we understand space forces and some of the differences that space forces have from other forces so number one one of the things that people don't realize a lot of times is unlike other domain focused forces air forces naval forces undersea forces land forces space forces have almost all of their warfighting impact outside of their domain very little space force power is concentrated on the space domain it's concentrated on the other domains it is an outward facing force now some people like to call it a support force and in fact when the secretary of the air force called it a support force at the national space symposium this past April a lot of people in the space force got worried that like oh my god we don't want to be a support force when indeed it's the most valuable capability we bring to the joint fight the space folks bring this capability to the joint fight that magnifies magnifies the absolute abilities of all of the other forces and at a very minimal investment in space less than five percent of the dod budget goes to space and yet it multiplies the effectiveness of the joint force by factors that people estimate somewhere between five and 10 so you're basically getting five to 10 times more out of your investment of the other 700 billion dollars because of the five percent you put in on space the second the second thing that we need to understand about space systems is for better or for worse space systems are incredibly vulnerable to attack if you can find a satellite or or even a ground station but mostly we talk about satellites you can kill it and I don't care what you do to defend that satellite it's dead that satellite is going to be dead and yet collectively it's very hard to go ahead and take away space power so we have to understand that space platforms do not operate on an individual basis they operate on a collective basis even though each one individually may have capability it's more like a carrier battle group it doesn't work the same way but it's more like a combined capability than a single individual capability the space force by the way has spent a ton of money trying to protect individual satellites that will never work they finally realize that maybe they need to head towards other strategic concepts it is it is one of those things that if you can find a satellite you can kill it well and that of course leads to the next strategic concept is space is dark it's inherently difficult to maintain situation awareness it's like the undersea of in the navy lexicon it's hard to find things in space if you try to hide them now if you put them all in geosynchronous orbit and you keep them there for 20 years it's pretty easy to find them but if you put them in different orbits orbits between the earth and the moon and other unexpected orbits if you maneuver them routinely to go ahead and hide them it's very hard to keep track of satellites how do we know this because we have the most capable space surveillance system in the entire world and we can't track keep track of satellites that aren't even trying to do those things that are just happened to be launched we can't do it it's very hard space is a huge expanse of open of open space and it's things that we need to exploit militarily in how do we go ahead and hide in space and the last thing that we need to understand about space forces is not only do space forces continue to underwrite our nuclear capability they are also the linchpin in our conventional capability as general John Highton the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff used to say if we get rid of space we are back into industrial age warfare we are back into going ahead and having to drop thousands of bombs in order to kill targets instead of one bomb one target which is what we can do today for space and so space underwrites both that nuclear capability but more importantly and the reason why Wang Chang said back in 2000 you got to attack U.S. space systems is because it underwrites that conventional capability as well all right that's sort of the and there's more to understand about space I didn't just make you all space experts but those are those are some strategic concepts to understand so now let's talk about what are the roles of space forces how do space forces work number one and this is something that's pretty obvious from what I've said the primary role of space forces is not about space the primary role of space forces is about the person the guy the gal the soldier sailor marine the coast guard on the ground that's the primary purpose of space forces is to make those other forces more effective space folks sometimes forget this when we created a space force they want to go ahead and concentrate on the space domain an important domain but remember if you did nothing else your job is to support the warfighter on the ground because nobody cares about you unless you're doing that that's the reason many of us argued for a space force because we wanted them focused on the folks on the ground not on what's going on in space number two because our advantage is to go ahead and provide space capability to our warfighters the next most important job we have is to make sure the other guy doesn't provide space capabilities to their warfighters so that's that's number two now that sounds pretty pretty war-like and you know like somebody saying let's have a space war well the fact of the matter is is if we need to we'll have a space war I often used to ask people in seminars that we were doing who said well we can't attack things in space I said look if the president has brought in a decision that says well Mr. President this DF-21 is guided by a Chinese space system and then it's going to take out our aircraft carrier and kill thousands of our of our naval sailors and marines unless we go ahead and kill that satellite the president would say why are you asking me kill the damn satellite all right that is the that is what's going to happen and by the way the Chinese commanders are saying the same thing to to their to their leadership they are going to kill the satellites this is going to happen I used to argue in fact even in my international audiences it is the sovereign responsibility of nations to plan to kill the other guy's satellites because to do anything less would be to go ahead and yield that advantage to the adversary and we can't allow that to happen now that doesn't want to mean that I want to be blowing up satellites in space in fact I was the one of the biggest advocates for the recent ban on destructive anti-satellite tests I worked directly with the White House on making sure that happened because there are good ways to kill space systems without blowing them up and blowing them up is a very bad way to do it especially for the U.S. which wants to get a lot of the economic benefit that we already talked about in space the third thing that we understand is that because of these maxims that I've just told you the roles of space the first role of the space force the first job the space force has to worry about is to make sure that you never have to live a day without space that is their first job when the 2007 shootdown of the Chinese of the Chinese satellite occurred many of the both Air Force and other services started to go ahead and have practices with these exorcists called the day without space which by the way would be a terrible day for any U.S. for any U.S. conventional forces our job in the space forces to make sure that never happens that has got to be our job and that has to be for you who will interface with your space force comrades you have to demand that to them to make sure they understand that we never want to have a place where the U.S. ever has to fight without the advantage that space brings to the battlefield and of course the second of those things dictates that we must have an offensive counter space capability in fact a lot of people talk about defensive counter space what I argued for earlier was the fact you really can't defend things in space so stop trying go ahead and be offensive kill things that are trying to kill you don't just try to defend it it's sort of like and I want to talk to my Air Force audiences like you don't wait on the runway for the other guy to come try to bomb you and then try to shoot him out of the air on his way to the runway you go attack him on his runway to make sure he can't get there that's how space needs to happen as well it needs to go ahead and be focused on maintaining our space capability and then making sure that the other guy never has it and that means we have to have a strong counter space program but one that actually respects the rules of law such as the kinetic energy assets did not okay so now we get to the deterrence question we had a great discussion on deterrence to begin with and this is this is a question that as we began as we began the debate about space within the Pentagon back in 2014 when I arrived there people always asked this question how do I deter attacks against space systems now in many ways that's an important question because if your job is to go ahead and make sure you can maintain space capabilities you would like to deter attacks against it and US policy for decades has been well if you attack our space systems we will attack you in other domains that was not a credible threat one of the things that that the panelists said this morning your deterrence can't be based upon a non-credible threat shooting I don't care how many pieces of debris you cause in space we will never be able to use that as justification for bombing China or bombing Russia it's never going to be it's never going to be that way so we were we never had a strategic concept of deterrence by retaliation in space it never was going to work what you instead have to do for spaces you have to deny benefit what we have to do is make sure that the adversary knows that no matter how hard they try they're not going to be able to eliminate our US space capability by the way that's made a lot easier because we now have space-faring allies and we have space commercial companies and in fact we just saw the Chinese writings that were presented to us that said look Starlink is a force multiplier absolutely yes it is a force multiplier as is all the commercial entrepreneurial work going on in the US today and we can use that to make sure we never run out of space capabilities for our war fighters so asking how we deter attacks against space systems if we're going to ask that question the answer has to be by denying the benefit and making it not worth their while the Chinese have spent billions of dollars making operational an anti-satellite a direct ascent anti-satellite missiles which have basically been negated by what the space development agency is doing which is saying fine we'll put up a thousand satellites see if you have a thousand missiles and by the way our satellites are cheaper than your missiles and so by doing that we have we have undercut their investment that they've been making for 20 years and basically said it's not worth shooting at these things because it's just it doesn't make sense in any kind of military calculus but the real question that we have to ask on deterrence is how do we go ahead and make sure that space helps deter war and the way we make sure that space helps deter war is we make sure that space is there for our war fighters if the adversary is doubtful of his ability to go ahead and eliminate our space capability if he's doubtful of his ability to maintain his own space capability because we can count we can kill his space capability and he's confident that because of those two things the U.S. will never not the U.S. will never go to war without space well then we have provided strength to our conventional forces and we helped ensure war so this is the multi-domain deterrence that we talked about that we talked about earlier and the cross-domain deterrence that we talked about earlier and that's really what what we have to think about as we start to think about space doctrine so finally this is the this is sort of what you sum up from all of all of those thinkings what we would sum up now versus what we had back in 1960s for space strategy deterrence space forces exist to create advantage in other domains space mission assurance must predominate our notions of space superiority operationally space forces must be organized with a focus on that insurance we must be able to deny the adversary space capability and we need to learn how to operationally exploit the darkness and the deepness of space and lastly from a deterrence perspective we need to understand that this is a symbiotic relationship we deter attacks on space by making space more assured by making space more assured we provide capability to the joint force and therefore deter war in the first place and I'll end with what David has already told you that stealing my thunder thank you that you know the first shot there's many people have used the term a war that extends to space for those of us who have been watching this for the last decade it's far more likely that war is going to start in cyber and space and extend to the ground and we have to be prepared for that and that was in fact verified or at least validated by what we saw in Ukraine where the first shots were a cyber attack on a space system thank you very much great well thank you very much to all three panelists we have about 25 minutes for questions you I think have gotten the drill down by now so please raise your hand and I will recognize people for questions yes hi good afternoon Lieutenant Colonel Tina Sallings Lily thank you for your comments United States Air Force Reserve space operations officer most recently fourth space warning squadron where we flew consolation responsible for global missile defense this question is aimed at Mr. Harris and thank you so much for your comments for years we as a space community have fought through the definition of what a contested degraded operation the limited environment looks like in and through space you highlighted deterrence and the wide range of threats against our space assets whether space or ground based can you elaborate more on what you think we as a community need to do better to more specifically improve our capabilities our operators capabilities to work through CDO environments versus reactivity and risk aversion is it training joint operational exercises IT infrastructure or security upgrades what is the missing link well that so that's a big question I imagine my fellow panelists here will want to weigh in on that one as well I you know I can think of several things right off the bat so number one we need to downgrade classification too many things are classified at too high of a level and when you can't discuss it when you can't share it it limits our ability to be ready and so there are things that are at the SAP level that can be downgraded there are things that are at you know top secret SCI that could be downgraded there are things that at the secret level that can be downgraded because you know you can't classify the fact that the sky is blue anyone can walk out and see it we're doing that with some of our space intelligence especially stuff about what our adversaries are doing and so I think that is stifling discussion and communication and debate and planning quite frankly you know we are we are you know hurting ourselves by over-classifying especially things that are already out there in the public so that'd be one thing we could do right away another thing I think you know that our space community especially you know on the space force side less so on the Intel side that have been slow to do is to effectively embrace commercial and what U.S. and allied commercial space companies are already doing the technology they've already put in space and what they're about to do in the coming years you want to improve the resilience of our space capabilities almost instantly just be able to access commercial because you know we've discussed the example of satcom right and the military to be clear has highly leveraged commercial satcom for many decades the vast majority of our wideband satcom links are already going commercial through commercial leases but look at the incredible new capabilities coming on right now constellations that are proliferated that are in low earth orbit which means they have much lower latency we see you know lots of companies putting up space systems with much higher data rates much higher data throughput capacity on their satellites that dwarf what the U.S. military is continuing to buy organically to you know design and build their own acquisition system so you know that's just one example of many where if we could get our hands around what's going on in the commercial sector and embrace it we could have you know an almost instant increase in the resilience the capability and the capacity of our space forces I think we've been very slow to do that and so that's holding us back but I don't know others want to respond I think one of the ways you can build resilience is to understand that there is this country out there that actually is innovating so I think one of the biggest strategic if I may we're talking a lot about great power competition that's the overarching frame and I think the U.S. gets it wrong because most of the arguments I hear at the grand strategic level is that China is incapable of innovation can never change its intellectual property threat capabilities or invested in stolen technology actually China is a changed country today and so if you look at the work work skill base it's basically educated all across the world and then they build their capacity I think before you even get to the resilience of your tactical capabilities or operational capabilities I think this complete misunderstanding of China China can never get to the far side of the moon I was told in 2016 at NASA and then it happened in 2019 so I think that is a great strategic disadvantage that the U.S. suffers from even today underestimating the capability of another country Yeah I'd like to both agree with and expand a little bit on the remarks that both my panelists co-colleagues said so first of all on the question of how how do we get better what are the things we need to do the leveraging of commercial space and allied space is so critical to our capability it not only raises the stakes for an adversary who no longer has to shoot just at U.S. military systems but now has to go ahead and shoot at other countries systems and I say shoot but I mean somehow interfere with I don't mean to suggest that everything's kinetic but they have to go ahead and interfere with other nation systems they have to go ahead and interfere with commercial systems it raises the level of violence that they have to take in order to go ahead and try to deny space and I'll give you a perfect example I don't have my phone up here on the stage with me but pretend this is my phone if you had if you hold your phone right now you have in your hand a device which can receive a GPS signal a Galileo signal a GLONASS signal which is the Russian Soviet GPS capability and in not too long y'all it'll also receive a beta signal from China it could receive a NAVIC symbol signal from India and it can receive a QCSS signal from Japan those are the four either global or five either global or regional navigation systems that exist in the world not to mention the overlays that are called the wide band augmentation systems systems that all the countries have put up and yet if this was a piece of military user equipment the only thing you could receive from would be GPS so if you're a Russia and you want to really hurt the US a cyber attack against the most important space target Bar-Ni the most important space target is to go ahead and take out the GPS ground station because without it the GPS system doesn't work ignore the satellites cyber attack on the GPS ground station you have eliminated the US ability to use GPS which is arguably the most important tactical capability that we have and yet if we simply gave soldiers, sailors, and airmen receivers that could receive all of those other signals it wouldn't even be worth attacking the GPS control segment because especially if we gave them if we gave them receivers that could receive both Beidao and GLONASS because if we're fighting Russia they're not going to attack the Beidao system and if we're fighting China they're not going to attack the GLONASS system and every one of them is different they all have different cyber vulnerabilities on different baselines to try to take all of those down would not only be incredibly difficult but would turn the rest of the world against that whoever that attacking country was and that's almost free it's not like that costs a lot of money that is practically free I even had Congress write a law that said this and the DOD still is not doing it it's in a law and they're still not doing it because it's so obvious but it's our culture prevents us from going ahead and acknowledging the leverage we get from these and other commercial systems as well and the second thing is that we can't underestimate China China is allowing us to see in space what it wants us to see in space and I guarantee you that they have other plans and other mechanisms to go ahead and interfere with our space systems and we keep on going ahead and designing point solutions to what they allow us to see instead of designing general solutions that would operate in the face of many many different kinds of threats instead of specific threats they allow us to see Can I have one more thing to what Doug said I do this as an example for my students in class you can download apps on your phone I have an android phone there's an app in the play store called GPS test download it lets you see what your GPS receiver is seeing specific satellites right that you're getting a signal from and you'll be amazed at how many other satellites other than GPS your phone is using so in that example of you know Russia or China you know launches a disabling cyber attack against GPS I'm fine as a private citizen I can still call my Uber and get picked up you know I'm fine U.S. military not a good day not a good day at all and that's that's sad right that I've got better technology in my phone than the U.S. military has in its most advanced weapon systems there have been some photos of Russian pilots with like commercial handheld GPS units taped up in their cockpit might not actually be a crazy idea I mean if we if we take out GLONASS or they tell you know if it's a dual capable whichever side you know it'll keep working no matter what so thank you very much additional questions yes on the edge greetings Lieutenant Commander during the middle of Bulgaria Navy I apologize for the broad question but how do you see will Russia withdraw from the International Space Station affected its operation do you think this could be the end of space cooperation you know I was asked by a reporter the other day what do I think about the Russians leaving the space station program and I said what took them so long please get off the the we began the collaboration with Russia in the space station program during the days of GLONASS during GLONASS and and we believed it was a path to better relations in peace it's it has never been it has never worked that way despite protestations to the contrary it has never worked that way and and when I was running the human exploration program which included the International Space Station just trying to negotiate with the Russians on who was going to bring what supplies to the station and how much how much we had to pay for a seat on there on their launch vehicles was was a painful endeavor even before you had the Ukraine war the when when Crimea occurred back in 2014 I was in the White House during those discussions and everybody who was in those meetings was clear we wanted to go ahead and stop buying Russian rockets except for NASA NASA said no no we we still have to do that well how do you go ahead and show national resolve when you when the second most important capabilities of space agency in your nation or some would say the first can't go ahead and follow what is in the national interest which was to boycott Russian space Russian capability technical capability does maintain the space station orbit we know how to change that we can figure out how to do that without that it is a it is a collaboration that has outlived its usefulness and personally I think it needs to go away yeah I I actually do think that the so if you look at the space cooperation that led to that particular Russian US collaboration in space it's Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton and so there was a particular philosophy and purpose behind it I think Russia has used it as a bargaining chip again and again and again and I think it shouldn't be allowed to do that for example when Russia invaded Georgia they used that as a leverage arguing that if US gets to belligerent on their invasion they might use their Soyuz capsule which American astronauts were dependent on at that time for some kind of caution cautionary tale they might not supply the ISS right I think SpaceX here is where commercial space and national security is connected I get us again and again why is the US having this public private partnership it's a waste of money how does it even add to US capability accept reusability I would argue that SpaceX took away Russia's ability to you know blackmail during the Ukrainian conflict if SpaceX had not been able to reach the ISS in 2020 we would have still been dependent on Russia and that capability has gone away look at that amazing contribution to national capability and so I think I agree with Doug that the usefulness of that particular cooperation seems to be creating so much anxiety all across the world that doesn't serve any useful purpose for which it was set up yeah you know I first of all I'll start out and say Russia wants to leave the space station at this point good riddance right there are technical challenges you know that we have to work out it's not an easy divorce you know separating their module is not a practical consideration so are they going to give it to us are they going to sell it to us you know are we going to have to launch a replacement module you know that there's stuff that's got to be got to be worked out there but you know good riddance we don't need them anymore we did need them for a while and there were good reasons that we partnered in and it wasn't just for the technical capabilities or that they could help finance the space station all of that was true at the beginning it wasn't essential but you know there are a lot of geopolitical factors as well of let's keep these you know Soviet Russian aerospace engineers gainfully employed on something that's not threatening you know that those reasons have gone away so so good red ends if they want to leave I will say that I'm going to jump into an area that's more controversial should we partner with China on civil space missions like we partnered with the Soviets during the Cold War and that's where I think yeah we ought to be open to it quite frankly you know China building their own space station that's not a military threat to us you know and if we could negotiate some sort of an astronaut exchange they could send one to the you know international space station we send one to their space station hey that benefits us in many ways that we can better understand their technology their capabilities what they're actually doing up there to help reduce you know suspicion and it probably helps them in some other ways as well to go to the ISS you know that's something that I would consider I'd be open to to considering that in terms of you know China's longer-term plans of going back to the moon it's really about you know economics you know as you said earlier and could it be a long-term economic threat sure that's why I think it's important that we go and that we get there and we figure out what is going to be economically viable to do in Cislunar space we want to be there also to establish kind of the rules of the road of how does commerce work in space how do property rights work in deep space and of course there's the science and exploration that I think that we you know all want to do to help discover what's out there and be able to access more within our own solar system so there are a lot of reasons and you know what if there was a way to partner with China in a way that obviously you know protects you know intellectual property technology transfer that serves our own geopolitical interest where we have shared missions shared goals and we can mutually benefit by partnering we ought to be open to that right if those criteria aren't met fine no need to partner you know and I think we're at the point with Russia now that it's hey this criteria aren't met anymore there's no need to partner okay now the question this side of the room yes please so BGLM Lieutenant Colonel U.S. Air Force thank you all for being here the question I have is the Kessler syndrome you know the self-sustaining cascade of collisions is that a real threat or is that just some science fiction stuff that that goes into the movies thank you we get I got that question a lot let me let me explain how big space is in terms that we humans can understand because we can't understand it so how many birds do you think there are in the world I'll answer that for you there's something there's somewhere between 20 billion and 500 billion birds in the world okay and let's say only 10 percent or five percent of them are flying at any one time and they all fly within a hundred feet of the surface because there's nothing to eat above a hundred feet of the surface so they all fly within a hundred feet of the surface I dare you to go outside and look at how crowded the sky is with birds right now okay it's pretty empty so now reduce the number of birds satellites by about a factor of 10,000 and increase the volume by a factor of 100,000 and that's how crowded spaces now that doesn't mean collisions aren't going to happen they can happen and as space gets more crowded locally like for a SpaceX shell they can't happen it is something we should be concerned about but it's not it's not a dire threat what we should be doing though is getting rid of the things that are most notorious that we don't need anymore so for example the biggest polluters in space are the United States and Russia so you need to know Russia and we have old defunct satellites still in orbit and it turns out for the Kessler syndrome the real theory of the Kessler syndrome isn't that small things hit small things it's that medium size things hit big things and that's what causes the Kessler syndrome to take off and so the most important thing to do is to clean up the big things which basically is about several hundred items which we can go ahead and do I heard a senior space force official at a conference one time and that person said you know it's not our responsibility to clean up space and I went up to them later they used to work for me so I had at least a way to go ahead and do it and I said if the navy had a derelict ship in a shipping lane would the navy say it's not our responsibility to get that back it's somebody else's responsibility of course not I said so what makes you think that your old satellites that are in active active areas in space isn't your responsibility to do now I'm not saying you have to go invent the technology but you certainly need to hire a salvage company to get it out of the way and to that that general officer's credit they said you know what you're right I never thought about it that way so we should be doing it it's an important investment to make we should make sure that space is free of debris to the extent we can more importantly we need to go ahead and figure out how to manage this traffic in space so that things don't hit each other and there are rules that we have yet to develop that are absolutely necessary and we the U.S. for years resisted the development of those rules I'm happy to say that now both the space force and the Congress are recognizing that those kind of rules are actually in our benefit and that we should go ahead and do that so it's very it's a very important thing for us to do but it's not a worry that we should sit around and worry about today I would add to that so you know to your directly to your question the Kessler syndrome the physics is real the timeline is highly uncertain I mean the movie gravity not that great of a movie I thought but the timeline is completely unrealistic that this stuff is happening within minutes right but you need to do that for the dramatic effect the truth is you know could you set off some sort of you know self-sustaining chain reaction you could you know how long would that take to manifest itself and what timeline would it happen over we don't really know the modeling is too uncertain it could take decades you know who knows and a lot of it depends on you know when a medium-sized object hits a large object how many pieces does it break into you know who knows right that's a difficult thing to model I will extend Doug's analogy though with the birds imagine every time a bird died it stayed in the air right over time dead birds would accumulate how long would it take though and I will further extend it even more every time a bird how do I say this politely admitted excrement if that also stayed in the air instead of dropping on me you know you imagine that does start to build up and then birds might actually start flying into bird poop and other dead birds it would take a while it's you know and you apply the factors that Doug did and what that means is there's a very long timeline involved but you know we're at the early you know stages of human you know ability to use space and access space so now's the time to start thinking about this responsibly and if there are some really big dead birds that we can bring down so they don't hang in the air indefinitely then you know now's the time to be doing that well I will have time for one last question I will I can't possibly top the metaphor that Todd just gave you but you know in terms of pollution and a way to impact you I will say as someone who enjoys amateur astronomy the number of visible satellites has gone up incredibly just in the last two or three years if you have kids take them out to look at the night sky in dark places now because another five or ten years from now and it's going to look like you're sitting at the approach to LAX everywhere in the world every single night and every single morning I'm serious about this it's really going to be a fundamental change in how the sky above us looks last question yes right there in the green much in US Navy space cadre what other than maybe demand from business is going to get our competitors to accept norms in space that we want I'll take that on because I just played a war game on that so I think when they will suffer too so for example if there is inadvertent or deliberate nuclear detonation by North Korea right let's take a scenario and so that would not only harm US satellite capability but China which is getting more and more dependent on space capability today so that would force them and we think only about military or the Baido navigation system but wow China is so dependent on space for their commercial capabilities including ATM transactions weather forecasting e-commerce so and they're one of the biggest in that sector so that would force them to accept some kind of rules regarding nuclear detonation and how the OST does not allow that I think I think what I have seen if you look at China's response to the United Nations Security Council resolution 7536 that was brought about by the United Kingdom I looked at their response and they seem to be very much supportive of establishing some kind of rules of the road for space traffic management and space domain awareness because they recognize that debris could be a problem that will limit their access to space so those are the areas and I agree with you that there could be collaboration with China on those regards in terms of how do you establish rules for example the one contention is that we have all these debt satellites but then under international law the United States cannot remove another country's satellite or debris correct me if I'm wrong without them consenting to it is it possible to actually have an international consensus I think China would be willing to have that conversation so yeah because it affects them they're very strategic and they're thinking if it affects them they would be interested in it you know when you talk about norms in space there's really three kinds of norms to talk about there are norms of war or laws of armed conflict and how those apply to space and actually we kind of understand those fairly well although they're not written down but there's filks who have written about that there's norms for security activities in space that short of war such as close approaches and rendezvous and proximity operations and then there are norms that apply to all civilian traffic in space commercial traffic and military traffic all traffic in space and so you have to kind of think about those if we were having this conversation a decade ago neither the U.S. nor just about any other country would be interested in talking about norms in space today almost all countries are interested in talking about norms in space and at least one if not all three of those distinct areas and so it's a it has become a thing and the reason why countries do it is because they do it when they find it's in their interest to do so we did not recognize although we should have recognized back in the early 2000s that it was in our interest to do so we now recognize that and to the point of the U.N. resolution 7536 that was brought by the U.K. the U.S. response just a year and a half ago was well we don't want to constrain ourselves and now this year it's we want to go ahead and unilaterally ban kinetic energy assets which is just in it that's a sea change in how the U.S. thinks about it by the way one of the big reasons why myself and many others believed we needed to have a space force more so that people could start thinking strategically about what norms make sense for our military operations and where do we support I'll say one more thing many of you are familiar with IKO the international civil aviation organization most people don't realize that IKO occurred because of U.S. leadership in 1944 while World War II was still going on we invited 55 countries of 55 nations to go ahead and come to Chicago to decide on the rules of international air transport because we knew of the economic impact that those rules would have in the future and we signed those even while World War II was still going on interestingly enough for those of us for those people in the world who say well you can't have this conversation without Russia and China well we had that conversation without the Soviet Union in China and it seems to work out just well they all joined 20 to 30 years later because they found that it was in their interest to go ahead and buy into the same kind of strategy the key ingredient of that just of that story is U.S. leadership people want to follow somebody into this and U.S. leadership is what's needed I'm happy to say that the U.S. is now starting to lead in that area and I would I would say that you know there's some promising you know first signs that we may get towards at least low-hanging fruit when it comes to norms of responsible behavior in space you know the the unilateral action by the United States my opinion is long overdue and so that's a great step but it is very tightly focused right the most basic thing we can agree to is let's don't conduct you know debris producing anti-satellite test all right there's you know many reasons we don't want to do it because it adversely will affect us and our ability to operate in space but also we don't need to do it we've already tested these types of weapons and those aren't the most useful weapons to us anyway in a space conflict you look back at the Russian ASAT test back in November of last year you know needlessly produced thousands of pieces of debris in orbit they already knew how to do this I don't know who they were trying to prove this to but you know now China they've got a human human space presence in their space station they've got something at stake they've got something that Russia put at risk right they've got skin in the game in a way that they didn't before that's a good thing right so a lot of what we see you know China doing on their civil space side it actually I think is going to help you know move them more towards these discussions about norms of responsible behavior in space because they've got more skin in the game they've got more to protect themselves they will start to see it's in their interest as well so I'm hopeful we're moving in a good direction now there are a lot of things we're never going to reach agreement on you know the use of non-kinetic forms of attack in space forget it there's going to be jamming there's going to be lazing that you know it's going to happen so you know it's not going to be a peaceful benign domain by any means but I think in terms of the stuff that you know affects lots of people it has indiscriminate effects like debris I think we'll start to make gradual slow progress well thank you I appreciate actually ending on a somewhat optimistic note that's easy to it's easy to not have that happen with these topics so please join me in thanking our panelists