 Good afternoon, we're just waiting for all the participants to join the meeting and we'll click on in about one minute or so. So good afternoon and welcome to the Freeman Air and Space Institute's launch of our latest paper, the Integrated Review and UK Space Power, The Search for Strategy, authored by Bledin Bowen, who is with us today to speak about his paper. We have two discussants who will be following Bledin's opening remarks, Peter Watkins, who's a visiting professor at King's College in London, a fellow at London School of Economics and was formerly director general strategy and international policy at MOD after a long career, including time as head of the Defence Academy, which King's contributes significant contribution, makes a considerable contribution. We're also joined by Catherine Courtney, a non-executive director and strategic advisor and former CEO of the UK Space Agency, what a fantastic post or CV to have this week of all things. She chairs the Global Network for Sustainability in Space, bringing together scientists and industry to help safeguard future space operations. We're going to run this on the record, the event is being recorded and will be live streamed to YouTube whilst we're doing it. There's a link to the paper posted in the chat function of this Zoom meeting, if you haven't yet received it, and we'd ask when we've had the opening remarks for you to post your questions, not using the chat function but using Q and A, please. Without further ado, since this is a short meeting, I'll step back as chair and invite Bledin to introduce his paper. Bledin. Thank you very much, John, just checking the time here on the side here. Right, so I'm going to talk for about 10 minutes or so, hopefully stick to that time limit. Thanks very much to John and thanks also to everyone at the Freeman Air and Space Institute for putting this event together and also for the support in writing this paper. So hopefully this paper will give everyone some food for thought on how to think about British space strategy and the links between the more military elements of UK space power and how they may fit with the wider space portfolio across the UK. So I'll just start off by outlining some context as spaces are very new fields to a lot of people, especially in the national security or defence or international relations communities. Then I will pose some key questions which I have in the paper and which guide my thinking really about space strategy in general but also applicable to the United Kingdom in space. And finally I'll just provide some of the key recommendations at the end with a few comments and remarks as well. So all of this can be found in more detail in the paper. So this is really just to give you a very brief overview and just a flavour of what's in the paper itself. So just a bit of context to start with. I think it's fair to say that in the last 10 years or so space has come of age within Whitehall. 2010 of course saw the foundation of the UK space agency which congealed a lot of the various space activities and sub-departments across Whitehall in the civilian and industrial aspects of outer space. And since then as well we have had a string of documents come through from Whitehall including from ministry defence on space doctrine, space primer as well, the military space primer. We also had the first national space security policy and national space policies halfway through the 2010s. And we're also due to have a defence space strategy and also a national space strategy promised to us that are forthcoming as well. We also have a new director of space role in the MOD now as well. So there's a lot more activity going on across Whitehall in space. And despite that however, I still think there's a lot of work to be done in terms of properly connecting various parts of space to some sort of overall strategic objectives as you'll see in the paper and also in my wider research and publications in this field. So despite sort of the more attention that the UK government has put on space, we're still very much feeling like we're in the early days and some sectors really have a lot of sort of basics to get right first before sort of moving on to very ambitious projects as we see in a lot of commentary, especially on the internet. So starting point as well I think is to recognise that Britain's position is very much in a binary context. It's dependent on allies for a lot of what it gets in space across the board for the most part. So the UK's integrated a lot with the United States in terms of military and intelligence space activities and platforms and assets and services. And the UK is highly integrated on the commercial, industrial and civilian side with the European Space Agency and of course the European Union which has been in the news a lot in the last few years. And that general situation isn't going to change anytime soon. The UK is in that sort of dependent and integrated situation in space. So anything Britain decides to do in space has to start from that position based on what do we already get from our allies that we can continue to rely on them to do and what do we actually want to do ourselves then that maybe for whatever reason we don't want to be reliant on others for. So those are sort of key fundamental questions and the answers to those aren't always obvious. So there has to be a lot of thinking about what the pros and cons of each and where we can actually rely on allies or even participate with allies in new joint ventures as well. Space is very expensive and the UK has limited resources as everybody knows and not least of all in some of the headlines that have come out this week resources is always always an issue and space is a particularly expensive thing to do especially in terms of space space presence. So the other starting point as well is that in terms of the military security element the UK has a very small presence in orbit in terms of space based assets the UK doesn't actually have that much of a big presence in space in terms of security and defence Skynet is sort of the flagship space program for the Ministry of Defence which is operated by Airbus at the moment and the initial contracts for the next generation of Skynet have now come online but that's about it really in terms of direct sort of sovereign assets that the British have in space. The UK does a lot of other stuff in terms of space situational awareness with the Filing Dales radar for example and participates a lot with the integration of space technology into terrestrial military forces partly because the UK is such a close and integrated partner of the United States in the military as well. So the UK does do a lot of stuff on space in terms maybe more on the ground based infrastructure rather than based in space so when we talk about putting more British sovereign assets in space we have to be clear that there's a lot of stuff that we need to start with maybe on the basics first because we do have a very minimal presence in orbit at the moment so and it's worth being in mind that a lot of other European states do have more sovereign assets in space in terms of military satellite communications intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance etc the UK has been able to rely on the United States for much of this for the past 60 years which is partly the reason why the UK has traditionally not invested in a lot of space based assets for security and defence purposes. So a bit on some of the key questions that sort of guide my thinking about British space strategy in particular is what does the MODE need to do today to respond to the proliferation of military space power around the world both to friendly militaries and also potentially hostile military forces and also what does the MODE need to do to respond to anti-satellite or counter space technology proliferation. So those two big trends are happening now in the wider world and the MODE needs to be responding to those and also the wider British state as well so if there's a shooting war in space tomorrow there could well be civilian infrastructure consequences and space is a critical infrastructure as defined by the UK government so there are clear issues there that need to be responded to and the answers to those aren't always in space either there can be a lot of responses to those various trends and following from that a key question of course is what essential space power assets or services that the UK could or should invest in on a sovereign basis and that also can't be provided by allies or we do not wish to be dependent on allies for and I think you'll see the detail am I thinking through on that but in the paper I try and outline perhaps low hanging fruit that might be desirable areas for investment if space is going to have any significant investment at all and that would be in secure military and government satellite communications so perhaps expanding sky net or building another kind of secure satcom capability might be attractive intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance satellites would be potentially useful system especially when in a crisis every state or all our allies are possibly going to also have a high demand on their ISR systems so could there be bandwidth issues where how confident are we that our needs will be a priority for our allies in a major crisis and the other element is space domain awareness formally called space situational awareness so building assets and capabilities just to know what actually is going on in space so building a better intelligence picture of space activities and having a better awareness of the space environment itself and I think those in some ways represent a way for Britain to learn to walk before running in terms of military space power and those seem to me like lower hanging fruit than some of the more ambitious and very very expensive investments in outer space that we've seen some suggestions for in the in the press over the last sort of few months and a couple of years and so just to finish off because I realize my 10 minutes is fast running out in a nutshell the first recommendation I have really is that in general the UK should really only aspire and can only really aspire to be more for more operational freedom in an acute crisis or in military operations on earth rather than strategic autonomy in space so in something a bit like the UK nuclear weapon system in the moment it's a British independent control system but strategically we are reliant on others for the construction and maintenance of that system but in an acute moment it is still something that is under the control of the United Kingdom so space is similar to that we are going to be strategically reliant on others for a lot of space activities you know the Americans and the Europeans and possibly other allies around the world like the Australians and the Japanese possibly as well but we can still have some assets that can make a difference for British operational freedom within particular crises and so that's sort of the general recommendation that sort of comes out in terms of how ambitious can and should Britain be in terms of military and security space activities. Second space power needs clear terrestrial priorities a lot of discussion about space happens in a vacuum excuse the pun in that what happens in space doesn't happen in a political vacuum space systems have to meet clear terrestrial political military and economic needs so those investments any big investments in space has to has to satisfy clearly defined needs and if the the UK doesn't really have a clear idea of what kind of wars it's preparing to fight then we'll have a much harder time figuring out what kind of space systems are the best ones to invest in because there's no point talking about investing in space in general space is big and so is the space sector so we need to be clear on what kind of space capabilities are best suited for what kind of terrestrial military capabilities and that has to follow from clear terrestrial priorities so and then and then that will also require clear and robust and enhanced relationships with all our allies so the United States NATO the European Union and the European Space Agency to name sort of the most important in that regard so we have to remember that Britain is not exceptional here we are a fairly sort of normal middling power in space there's a lot of other technologically advanced but also similarly financially restrained space powers that also that are having to learn to share and integrate to do the cutting-edge military space stuff so the UK can't do a lot of this stuff on its own and it will rely on allies for it finally also have some points on the national space council and how we have to be wary of a lot of documentation about space policy because we don't have a sea policy we don't have an air policy space policy as well doesn't really make that much intuitive sense when the military space world is very very different to civilian or industrial planning in space so one space policy document will be very hard pressed to have a coherent policy that speaks to all of that and we the national space council I think can play can play a very constructive role in coordinating the very diverse sectors of space activity in the UK but I would be very cautious as to what any single space policy can be expected to achieve when space sectors are very large and diverse and do very different things so it's very difficult for one document to cover all of that in any detail so I will end there I know I've run over a little bit thanks very much and I look forward to the questions. Thank you very much indeed and of course this event was scheduled before we knew that the announcements of yesterday were going to come out now I'll turn to Peter Watkins to act as our first discussant Peter. So well first of all I'd like to start by congratulating Levin on a I think a very clear comprehensive and if say so slightly excusing the pun rather down-to-earth account of the UK's approach to space power both military and civilian and of course as you've said John his timing was impeccable coinciding with yesterday's announcement on a multi-year settlement for defence in which space power was highlighted rather prominently so um as I mentioned when I spoke at the launch of the Institute in September as the MOD Director General responsible for strategy I argued that defence needed to become more aware of its reliance on space to invest more in space-based capabilities and strengthen our international collaboration in space power and I'm pleased that Levin's paper acknowledges that there was at least an uptick I think was his word in space-related activity in that period so I'll claim all the credit for that but the keyword of course in Levin's paper is strategy I have to confess that that was and remains a work in progress but before getting to his specific recommendations I know that the basic thrust of his argument is for a realistic incremental approach which builds upon our existing strengths and relationships and intuitively to me this seems absolutely right even if as he hinted it's not necessarily very fashionable and that point about the binary dilemma that he made between the military and intelligence linkage with the US but the industrial and commercial with with Europe is a very good one and one that we really have to take into account so the core of Levin's argument I think is his first two recommendations the first one being that the UK should not aim for strategic autonomy in space and I and I agree with him I mean from the defence perspective at least that is no more realistic than for any other domain of defence and he mentioned nuclear greater operational independence is both to my mind more attainable and frankly is a prudent objective in a rather uncertain world and similarly his second recommendation UK space power must meet terrestrial needs and priorities I mean like nuclear weapons or cyber space based capabilities are not the substitute for conventional terrestrial capabilities they can enhance them they can complement them and so on but they don't alter the reality that conflict is still ultimately about the control of people and ground on this planet and I do think um well first of all I think it's a little bit difficult and he might come back to this to expect the MOD to be very precise about what sorts of war it's going to fight because frankly we don't know and you know the past is littered with examples of us preparing for what's under the wrong war so to some extent we have to hedge our bets and I'm afraid that means that the investments in space capability will have to be similarly hedged but I think the MOD does get a point because I think that's actually indicated in a perhaps slightly back to front way by its current focus on what it calls multi-domain integration space isn't something that just or cyber for that matter that sort of exists independently from the domains I won't go through all the recommendations I've touched on the two core ones already I'll just dwell on two if I may recommendation five that UK military space operation be analyzed and a space power culture developed and recommendations that space power relations with the US EU NATO etc should be maintained and enhanced I mean frankly I'm a bit skeptical about recommendation five I mean the MOD hasn't yet managed to rationalize its helicopter and commando forces so space seems a bit of a tall order and does it really matter um and I'm you know I'm wary of taking sides in MOD turf wars I spent too many years avoiding that um but my sense is that actually a coordinating responsibility would sit more comfortably with the Royal Air Force than UK strategic command mainly for a reason which is highlighted elsewhere in the paper the importance of international collaboration aid for space in the five eyes and other key countries tends to be with their air forces I would put more weight actually on the second part of that recommendation which is developed space power literacy across defence and white hall space-based and related technologies are among a set of advanced technologies that are challenging our thinking on national security and even economic diplomacy and officials are not sufficiently versed in these technologies it's an art in my view for a new approach to learning and development across the nationality community which hopefully may yet emerge from the integrated review when it's published next year and finally I do see international collaboration as essential as Bledin does so while yesterday saw the announcement of the multi-year budget for the effects integrated review as I said will not appear until next year and the cabinet office paper published in the middle of august said that the government's vision for the UK in the world was as a and I quote burden sharing problem-solving nation unquote and I think that fits very well with the approach to space power which Bledin advocates and perhaps you might say more on that also the recently published integrated operating concept for the armed forces talked about forces being quote allied by design unquote a tweak on the concept of international by design in the 2015 review so building on the extra money announced yesterday I agree that the UK should now be actively seeking opportunities to collaborate on space power starting I would suggest with NATO so I agree with Bledin that the approach that the UK took on cyber in NATO is a good model here but that did involve investing quite heavily in a critical capability offensive cyber and then making it available to the alliance and that step and prompted other nations to make their cyber capabilities available to NATO but I suppose my point would be that this can't be done in isolation from our general approach a sort of reverse cherry picking you know here's some of our nicest assets would you like them um we have to take a you know a general approach around that those words allied by design and I'm afraid we'll we won't see a few more weeks and months exactly what that means so thanks very much Peter thank you very much lots to think about there and I'll give Bledin a chance to respond to some points after we've heard from Catherine if I could ask you Catherine to make your remarks now thanks John I I would also like to echo Peter's congratulations I think it's a you know very well articulated paper also making practical suggestions and setting up strawman arguments which is you know which is what we need is more dialogue around these things I do have to also say that I agree with the recommendation that A we need to have some strategic vision about what our priorities are I understand that doesn't mean that we can't we shouldn't be building general capabilities so that we are future proof to bit when we you know we don't have the crystal bowl to know exactly what the requirements are going to be I also agree with the recommendation to focus on our strengths and to leverage those in our bilateral relationships and I would of course say you know your your strength your your reinforcement of strengths and set calm space domain awareness and ISR I agree with those as areas where the UK you know certainly punches above its weight and has the opportunity to build on capabilities and skills that are already here within our industrial base um in particularly I am interested in the space domain awareness topic because I think that that spans across civil and defense I think it's you know we're all living in this pandemic environment and I think it's time that we start looking at those other risks on the on the government's top 10 list and having mitigation strategies in place and the impact of major events in space on that can undermine the capability of our space assets both civil and or sorry defense security and and commercial would have a critical impact on our national infrastructure and our economy and I think it's quite important actually that we focus efforts on a joined up view about what space domain awareness needs to be in the future also I personally feel that this is going to be a very growing large global commercial playing field and when we talk about building capability to meet defense needs uh you know the best way to build that capability unless the MOD is going to be the only customer in town is to build strengths in markets that are going to be growing markets globally in the future so that UK companies can export and so we can attract inward investment um there's sort of two areas that I'm interested in and I'm going to leave them with you and answer them if you want but I'm going to launch right into questioning so one is a bit around this question of sticking to the knitting and building on our strengths I agree that with budget constraints you know we can't boil the ocean and we should be quite clear about you know what we're leveraging terms of today's relationships and today's capabilities and how to maximize those with smallish budgets on the other hand the reason that the UK punches above its weights in for instance SECCOMs today is because strategic decisions were taken decades ago for research funding and to enhance the industrial base in that area and to become you know to allow UK companies to become major players in that space so I think there's a question in my mind about how you you know have a bit of a long term strategic vision about capabilities that will be required and how do you promote innovation in those areas and not just stick to today's knitting because I think otherwise you risk the UK finding itself on the sidelines when the major developments you know of 2030, 40 and 50 come out of the pipeline and we haven't brought our strong innovation base to bear on those and then I do want to pick up at some point in this conversation about your recommendations around reinforcing our relationships with the European Space Agency and I entirely agree in terms of the leveraging of the value of participation in those programs historically and going forward you know certainly the UK has been able to achieve a huge amount of growth through its participation in those programs and while I'm the first one to echo that it's a member organization you know we subscribe to it it is not and it's not the EU we can comfortably leave the EU and continue to be have a leading role in ESA the reality is is that the EU provides the biggest chunk of ESA's budget and leading EU member states are our biggest national competitors regionally and the European Space Agency's own direction of travel and its future priorities are very much shaped by their agendas and everybody isn't always playing nicely together so while the industry in this country is clamoring for a very much beefed up national space innovation program to I guess has a counterweight against our investments in ESA I think I'd like to hear your views Levin on you know you've kind of ignored that that point about well should we you know should we continue to boost our investment in ESA or should we put more money into a domestic program and with but constrained budgets I think some of those choices are going to have to be made so I'd like to hear you cheerlead a bit more for ESA but also address some of those more difficult issues around the continuing ESA relationship Catherine thank you very much indeed really really interesting from both both you and Peter I'm going to give I'm going to give Levin about two minutes to maybe come back because I'd like to turn to some of the questions as well but you'll have a chance to sum up with the end as well Levin but but just so we can get to some of the broader chat questions but if you want to respond to Peter and Catherine now take take the chance all right thanks very much yeah thanks for taking the time to to read this and thanks very much for the comments the kind comments and also the question so working my way backwards on ESA I thought this is really is beyond the scope of the paper so given that ESA is not sort of directly in terms of involved in terms of a lot of UK military space planning and thinking it's sort of beyond the scope of what was reasonable within the paper but in terms of the actual issue you're asking about Brexit has sort of upset the balance side that ESA and the European Union have developed in terms of how does ESA function as an independent entity whilst the EU becomes sort of one of its its biggest single contributor and it's it's not the case right now that I think that it's a matter of the EU getting its way in ESA the members of ESA and the EU they have different opinions as to where they want a potentially new EU space agency to go because some of them like the way ESA works right now and they're quite skeptical over you know what does this change in relationship mean for our success our ability to win certain contracts and because we know how to play the ESA game and the EU game changes it so there's no sort of I haven't seen consensus really on the continent in terms of what they think about where the EU is going with a potential new agency but Britain needs to be involved in that obviously from the ESA perspective and Britain I think Britain was right to increase its budgets to ESA recently in the last two three years and if Britain wants to have a better say in what the trajectory of European spaces both EU and ESA it has to be very influential in ESA both in terms of actual money but also diplomatically as well so it has to be more involved to keep that influence so it's through ESA that Britain really can help hope to directly influence EU space as well because they are so intertwined and on the other shoe promoting innovation I guess I mean that would have to come through well-costed feasibility programs and getting the right experts in to decide you know what's a reasonable amount of expenditure what are the benefits for military civilian industry so but I think we have to make sure that we don't think of innovation all the time when there's a lot of proven stuff out there that Britain can do or even improve on that have been done by other states that won't cost the earth either so there's always a balance between getting what works getting what's good enough and also doing the exotic stuff that might be good for a while but also if you develop something that's amazing and innovative it won't be long until other people copy you as well so I mean that's a massive topic I could spend a lot more time talking about but I'm fairly optimistic that with the right people and processes you can manage both well enough I would think but it's about the right people and that comes on to the point with Peter Watkins in terms of rationalising with UK space command I like to think that there should be somewhere in the MOD where the buck stops the space and that's what I like about the new director of space role in that there is a coherent sort of geographically orientated voice within the MOD in the same way that you cannot you know you have the land culture maritime culture air culture and I see sort of more congealing and rationalisation of space it doesn't have to be space command but some form of saying well what is the voice or who is the voice of space in the MOD and having that space-centric perspective is what's important I'm pretty ambivalent really as to what'll happen with space command because details are so scant right now so we'll see how it goes but I think regardless of your bureaucratic setup if you have the right people making the right decisions then they can also make the most of what bureaucratic structures are in place but that's maybe me being too optimistic perhaps putting agency over structure maybe I think there was one last point yeah I think the cyber issue in NATO I think that's a good example to think about what the UK can do I think the UK can be really useful for a lot of other NATO states in learning how to integrate space power into terrestrial forces especially when it comes to how do you plug into the American space military empire because you know the Americans in space are just so massive and are operating a completely different league to what most European militaries are doing so I think the UK can help a lot of the other NATO member states who may not be as integrated in terms of cutting-edge space military integration to learn from the British experience for example so off the top of my head that would be a clear way for the Britain to lead a lot in NATO in terms of space enabled force modernisation across the lines Bethan thanks very much I think we'll try and run to about 20 past one if the panellists can stay with us and I'll turn to some of the questions in the Q&A. Sean O'Connor was first asking if the UK is going to be operationally independent but still add something of value to a coalition where should we spend our first pounds to make a difference? I think the MOD has already spent some of its first pound on certain ISR technologies so synthetic aperture radar for one thing so I mean again that's something like that's a proven technology as well but it's about doing it cheaper on smaller platforms and sort of new ways of doing it and I think ISR is particularly attractive one because even though that we get a lot of that from allies already everybody gets hungry for that sort of data when a major incident happens so you know unless we are absolutely certain that this particular kind of ISR capability is one that we're not going to run out of bandwidth from our allies on it we're always going to get our tasking done as a matter of priority then okay we don't need to do it but my impression and understanding is that that as well as satellite communications bandwidth especially in terms of secure SATCOMs are areas that always just get consumed in terms of the capacity to handle them in a time crisis so in terms of resiliency redundancy as well that's another attractive area and those are areas that will carry purchase with other allies which will give Britain more influence at the table alongside countries like France and Germany that do have significant ISR assets in space where where the British don't and the Italians as well and they have existing buy and try lateral agreements on space intelligence sharing so if Britain did more on that we could do more and get more purchased there. Thank you. Alan Andrews notes you made some good recommendations but often political ambition appears to want more for less how does the UK or how do we educate political leaders to move in a coherent direction and as a realistic pace? I guess that's a question for defence policy in general really space is not immune from it I guess that I mean I don't have a clear answer and support that that is a really difficult and it's a societal question and about a state strategic culture too but I think that we have to be very careful in having generalists not getting distracted by the shiny stuff perhaps so space has a challenge in that space power is mundane every day pretty it's about logistics more than anything and you know that's not something that grabs headlines you know it's not like you know aircraft you know striking an enemy position or tanks running around soles be praying or you know ships doing stuff at sea nobody really sees satellites and the effects they have on warfare is through data so so I think but everybody knows that a rocket goes whoosh and most people's only visible interaction with space power has maybe been they might have seen a rocket launch somewhere at some point so I will caution again some of the more flashy stuff because I get asked about you know space investments and they always want to talk about say space launch like okay but that has sort of very specific uses in specific ways maybe not so much for defence for example whereas there's a lot of other stuff maybe we should be spending money on instead that aren't as spectacular but they're not as exciting as a rocket launch so I think you're you're carefully not mentioning that the Prime Minister mentioned a launch coming up in Scotland in his in his introduction yesterday to the yeah I was puzzled by that statement because UK space launch is not has never been sort of explicitly tied to defence needs and for a lot of the satellite systems that the MOD might be interested in building they can't really be launched by the kind of launch capabilities that the UK is investing in that's always been for more industrial and civilian purposes obviously we hope that Fassi will make a contribution to improving the the quality of debates and to reach the the parts that that space discussion hasn't always managed to do in the past moving on to Ben Sharp he refers to your low-hanging fruits section SATCOM ISR and SDA all undergoing significant commercial growth do you believe operational freedom can rely on commercial actors or is government owned the only way forward um I want to say it's the only way forward but um what the UK will be doing will be based on the successes of the British private space sector over the last 20 years and the reason why the UK space station was set up was because of the successes of various British space companies um over many years previously in in setting up those especially small satellite capabilities but also other space services and products across the board so um so I do foresee a significant private participation in a lot of any new space based capabilities for the UK the actual relationship is beyond my knowledge because I'm not an expert on public private finance or or the interface between private capabilities for MOD needs so that is beyond beyond my understanding but um but again it's about if you have the right people and the right skills um then that's what that's what matters I imagine you can get maybe the private sector to do something faster but then will it give you the kind of capability you need but there are also certain areas where you need people in uniform to be doing certain things you need people with the right clearance the right service culture or the right you know bureaucratic culture to integrate those systems into the military or the intelligent sectors so there are going to be areas where even though it might cost more money or it might take a bit more time there might be compelling reasons to do things in-house rather than outsource but um Catherine raised the important point about the civilian side you know space situational awareness is is an area that may not be done by the military and we're looking at moves in the United States now to get to move a lot of space situational awareness or SDA away from the Pentagon and into um there's a commerce I think um so civilianizing those capabilities because it's so ubiquitous so maybe the UK you know might not find that if the MOD they might do the new SSA or SDA stuff um and it's worth remembering as well that ARIA Filingdale's is first and foremost part of the ballistic missile defence and missile tracking system rather than a space situational awareness or a space radar um so so yeah so it depends on case by case basis but there's a lot of potential for both um public in-house stuff and um private sector provisions. I mean on a similar theme uh Julia Baum who was recently awarded the FASI space studentship uh and and is going to be the searchings area asks about space power extending beyond ISR and SDA and she refers to higher hanging fruits uh will they move into space developments exploration expansion and resource exploitation or do these missions not serve goals and priorities of long-term UK space power? Um I would stay away from uh offworld resources um that's very much um sort of very very long term I mean I'm not sure I live to see that sort of stuff on any large scale um so I mean the the problem is with with space is that there's a lot of dreamers in space and that doesn't necessarily help um sort of the concrete planning about the logistics and data systems that we need from space there's sort of more mundane stuff um and and also spaces somewhere where most people are ignorant as to the military intelligence history over the last 60 years in space they still see space as an area that's really about science um or about exploration you know the space station or various probes to the solar system whereas they don't know much about the actual orbital infrastructures in earth orbit which is what we rely on every day and also sci-fi is a very important part of people's thinking of space and they tend to get carried away with it and that's what's happening with a lot of the cis-luna commentary on space in lots of especially American national security blogs when they talk about space power they get way ahead of themselves they're talking about you know um stuff that belongs in the expanse novels and tv series not in concrete military planning today when we're just talking about machines in earth orbit because beyond earth orbit there's nothing strategically significant or economically valuable happening it's it's it's about science exploration stimulating certain parts of industry and of course techno nationalist propaganda thank you and Moira Andrews asks what can be done to improve the mutual understanding between mod space command and uk space agency on the development of a genuinely joint civil and military space strategy and perhaps i could ask kathryn to also pitch in on this on this question so i'll start with bethan and then kathryn that's a tough question um i don't have as a simple answer to this but um we'll have to see what the national space council does so that's sort of the big change here and we'll see whether it can um relate those ages together um and and figure out the processes for doing it and i i think that there has to be a recognition that the sectors in space are very different they do come from different worlds and that whilst coordination is important and that given the limited resources of the british state that um you know there is a coherent idea at the very top and of what's going on and you know the chancellor and p.m would have to sign off on any massive massive investments that would affect all sectors i would be worried that we tie the civilian and military stuff too much and contaminate each other because they do different different things they focus on different things um so i'd be afraid that if you get it wrong that uk space agency might unduly influence um military intelligence priorities in space but also vice versa that you might over militarize what uk space agency is doing so so any overarching policy document or control has to get that balance right um and what we're seeing in france for example now is splitting now between caness the civilian space agency and the mod the french mod is taking on more space now as they're becoming more sort of invested in direct military space capabilities so so it doesn't mean that coherent that congealing things at that level is always the right option but we'll see what the national space council does because we have to give it time to see how well it coordinates things thanks kathryn um want to say that there the fact that there is a national space council uh is a big step forward to have some you know strategic decision making body uh instead of just leaving the mod and the agency to sort of duke it out over what the priorities are and and where budgets go um i think there has been a very strict divide the uk space agency you know is at great pains always to say that they are the civil space agency and yet actually um it's not possible um if your remit is is the growth of the sector in part is to you know fund the science and and research that leads to future capabilities you can't draw this absolutely black and white line between civil and defense so i think the answer is i agree with you blevin um that they shouldn't be blurred you know it should not be that space command takes over uh and sets all the priorities and requirements for civil space and vice versa it should not be blurred you know on the space agency side um what what actually works in practice is relationships and and strong channels of communication you know and collaboration between the two it does raise the big question about dual use assets which we haven't touched on and you haven't touched on your paper and we and as you know out with the scope and we haven't got time to discuss but i think onto what ben had said it's very interesting question whether budgets can be spread further and faster uh if there is collaboration bringing requirements together across the defense and civil side um you know and that requires good partnerships between those two sides okay thank you um we should talk about quite a few questions i'll try and take a couple a couple more and then we then we'll have to allow the panelists the last word uh tom hickey asks on european cooperation what would be the most viable format large-scale multi-country partnerships or working bilaterally trilaterally with a few dedicated space partners would you perhaps envision a lancaster house style treaty with france focusing on space uh that's a big question difficult one as well um with with that i mean i i i struggle to think of a major space investment that would happen i would involve allies that would not be done through either isa which would not be military because it's isa not directly um or it would be done through the EU so i mean with france especially space is done with europe and isa the EU especially the EU is becoming more of a significant military space power provider for its member states notably through the Galileo navigation system um and um Copernicus which is not just about the sentinel satellites but about better coordinating the earth observation capabilities of its member states so um and of course with the increased space surveillance um interest from the EU as well as government satellite communications as well the the direction of travel is there for the EU the only negative thing that you could say about the EU is that it takes a long time to get there so if france is in a hurry to do something then maybe it might want to do something outside of isa EU structures but i i would think that anything requiring large procurement will be done through the existing EU isa space industrial channels um and as far as i can tell nato is not making any noises about any significant direct space assets of its own either nato is more about interoperability and coordinating its member states space dependencies and activities more thank you ben i'm sorry we haven't got time to go to every question and many of them are are really excellent i'm going to uh invite peter kathryn and then blevin to make make some final remarks and then we'll wrap up the session which is um overrun which is a good thing because there are lots of questions to answer and if you want to answer any of the questions in your final remarks please feel free to do so so peter first well um i just underlined the point that i think it's been made is i don't think it's realistic to think in terms of a very sharp sort of military uh civil divide here i mean i think that's increasingly the case you know there's a whole range of new technologies emerging which have both uh civil and military applications but that doesn't mean that you throw everything together and as as somebody was saying or suggesting you know have this new space command sort of setting civil policy as well but some degree of convergence i think is is inevitable um second point is on international collaboration i think there'll be very there'll be many different models and and i think that's what we're again we're seeing across the defense field at the moment with increasing um what some people call mini-lateral models small groups of like-minded countries getting together um doing various things under the NATO banner for example so i think we need to be very pragmatic um and very quite agile um but to make sure if the uk wants to have the influence that we're in as many of these groups as possible thank you very much and kathryn uh thanks i just i want to make one sort of final observation which is that uh i think some of the rhetoric over the last few years has mirrored developments in the u.s and the u.s defense-based posture was very much shaped by the trump administration and i think you know they're in terms of what the uk's bilateral relationships with both the eu and with the us should look like and how those will evolve over the next coming years uh we need to watch how the dust settles from the brexit negotiations because there's a lot of posturing around that at the moment and we need to see what the priorities of the biden administration are uh for us defense-based capabilities and so you know we are living in interesting times i guess is my summary on that one thanks very much and the last word goes to uh bledin uh thanks yeah just building on the point um about the civil military divide yeah it's never absolute um but it is important to separate duties and responsibilities according to sectors because their focus and attitudes will be different and their priorities will be very different and the cultures they develop as well um but we have to be aware that um what we do uh in terms of tying the civil military space together um or the dual use of space technologies it is being washed by other states but also um there's a lot of commentary especially in the english-speaking space expert world about say the military nature of china's space program when china has a lot of civilian and you know arguably benign space activities which are not military orientated but of course as we all know the pla does have a large role um to put it mildly in the chinese space sector as a whole but it doesn't mean that everything that china does is a threat in space um in the same way that in with the americans not everything that nasa does um uh is purely civilian there's some stuff that nasa does that does have military implications or military potential and also a lot of stuff that happens from the intelligence agencies and the military elements of the us base do have civilian applications or benign applications as well so so you know the civil military dual use aspect is a bit of a um mobius strip that is important in how we talk about it and separate responsibilities within you know practically speaking within any any state um and it's still very problematic when people think that space is as you know it's still being militarized now well it's always been militarized it has been since the dawn of the space age um so militarizing space people complaining about certain countries militarizing space is like saying well um you're making the sea wet so like well space was always less and i think on the last point um that when we talk about british ambitions in space they are very much part of the larger defense problems in terms of the rhetoric tends to go beyond our actual resources and willingness to do it so there has to be a lot of caution and seriousness in what we choose to do in space um because there will always be the lofty rhetoric but if you look at the patterns of rhetoric in terms of security and defense policy the rhetoric you have to get used to you have to pay attention to where money is being spent and where it should be spent and it'll be quite modest as it is across the entire defense portfolio. Levin thanks very much i mean the one thing that is clear from from the last 24 hours is that i think contrary to some people's expectations there are going to be a number of integrated review uh rollouts in the new year now that the the financial piece has been announced and i think the policy area is still very much in play and i'm very grateful to you for this this important and and significant contribution to the debate. I hope as many people who are attending this can can dip into the paper it's really very accessible readable and makes some some very interesting and challenging points and i'd also like to thank Peter Watkins and Katherine Courtney for giving up their time and engaging with the paper and to the questioners who we're going to sweep up the questions and we'll try and make an attempt to maybe even answer some of the areas that haven't been answered but thank you very much for joining us today but especially thanks to Levin for an outstanding paper thank you very much indeed good afternoon