09 Feb 2023
Lise Grande, President and CEO, US Institute of Peace
Bruce MacDonald, Adjunct Professor, School of Advanced Institutional Studies, John Hopkins University, and Lead Author, “China and Strategic Instability in Space: Pathways to Peace in an Era of US-China Strategic Competition”
Nate Dailey, Principal Architect, Space Engineering, MITRE Corporation
Carla Freeman, Senior Expert, US Institute of Peace, and Report Author, “China and Strategic Instability in Space: Pathways to Peace in an Era of US-China Strategic Competition”
Bhavya Lal, Associate Administrator for Technology, Policy, and Strategy, NASA
Victoria Samson, Washington Office Director, Secure World Foundation
Moderator Scott Pace, Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University
Grande:
-There is an increasing growth of satellites. In 2010 there were about 1k satellites in orbit. This year, over 6k in orbit. The projection by the end of this decade is 58k satellites in orbit.
-Technology is growing ever faster, but there are potential downsides. The hope is that the USA and China work together to identify areas of overlapping interest to make progress.
-The goal is to come up with approaches that do not just involve technology, but regulatory policy and other kinds of innovations. The white house and NASA are doing a lot of work in this area.
-We need “all hands-on deck” including the Chinese because this is not a problem that America can solve alone.
Daily:
-Passage highlight from the report: “In an uncertain area in which domestic and international policy making is hard pressed to keep up with technological advances in the field.”
-He adds that technology + business + economics + strategy is the equation for Enterprise architecture.
-Nate believes that the disciplines of research development, technology, systems of engineering, and architecture can contribute to the dialogue and cooperation by underscoring its support with direct linkages between space situational awareness to policy and apparent behaviors.
-Both the USA and China both have incentives and opportunities to promote a positive and productive sort of communication & collaboration.
-Report also addresses, “It would be worthwhile for US policy makers to review whether US national security concerns about restricting the transfer of space related Technologies to China and that it might be better served by focusing on restrictions than by broad prohibition on a dialogue with China on important issues.”
-It is possible to cooperate in space with a sophisticated adversary without losing vital secrets to that rival.
Samson:
-Covers 2 main topics: Counterspace capabilities & the UN discussions on Space security.
-They look at 5 different categories: direct descent ASAT, co-orbital, directed energy (looking at lasers essentially), radio frequency interference, and cyber.
-When she was still working on this document in 2016, there were six countries that they were covering, and the 2022 version has 11 countries. Therefore this topic is growing and counter space capabilities are proliferating.
-Relevant to this discussion, the focus will be mostly on direct descent ASAT. There is strong evidence that China has done the same research development on a broad range of counter space capabilities and they’ve got one, possibly three programs to develop a direct descendant capability.
-Victoria adds that it is important to look at what targets they can hit, specifically how high up they can go. Low earth orbit is about 0 to 2000 kilometers and it has a mature capability to build a target to the satellites that are there. Medium earth orbit which is about 20,000 kilometers does not have that capability. It is important to make that distinction because it is not always likely that China could hit all of the satellites. Victoria does not want to downplay the threat but does not think one can make good policy decisions if one does not have a good sense of what the threat actually is.
-The USA has no official directors of anti-satellite programs but it has demonstrated a direct descendant has a light capability with its missile defense interceptors in 2008 when it shot down a deorbiting USA satellite. That operation is there and the USA has developed direct anti-satellite capabilities in the past - both kinetic and nuclear - and could probably develop them pretty quickly if they decide to do so in the near future.
-UN Discussions
- “The security side of the house in the UN has been stopped and this is not a space thing, they have just not been able to agree on an agenda to move ahead on discussions and having these discussions for over a decade. Plus, a part of the problem is that there is a disconnect in terms of how the major players have identified what the threat is for space.”
-“The US and its allies look at more of a congestion test known as an environmental issue where behavior aspects are concerned – you know, bad behavior on orbit. Whereas Russia and China and their allies tend to focus more on specifically designed weapons being placed into space and targeting from space-to-ground, especially space-based missile defense interceptors.”
- “The disconnect is - how do you handle this? Do you do a treaty, which frankly, there has not been a treaty on space in 4+ decades, so probably not, at least not right now. Or, do you do a non-binding norms approach? That’s kind of where the UN has gotten to this point.”
-UN is entering year 2 of an open-ended program that is open to any UN member that wants to participate in the conversation of space threats and it is meant to be inclusive to civil societies levels of participation in terms of being there to watch. Victoria was there the 3rd meeting out of 4 in Geneva to observe.
-Trying to define what the major threats are to space security and stability and how do you identify responsible behavior in space
[End]
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