By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Nov. 21, 2012 – The new Defense Department space
policy, updated to reflect the fast-growing use and sometimes misuse of
the space domain, addresses issues of safety, sustainability and
security in space for the 21st century and beyond.
Orbital
debris, or space junk, is any man-made object in orbit around the Earth
that no longer serves a useful purpose. This image was made from a
model used to track debris in low-Earth orbit. NASA image
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. |
|
The policy, signed Oct. 18, 2012, by Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton
B. Carter, follows the release in 2010 of President Barack Obama’s
National Space Policy, and in 2011 of the National Security Space
Strategy, the first such strategy to be cosigned by the defense
secretary and the director of national intelligence.
DOD’s space
policy also reflects the 2012 DOD Strategic Guidance, which acknowledged
growth in the number of spacefaring nations and threats.
According to the guidance, the United States will continue to lead
global efforts with allies and partners to assure access to and use of
the global commons of space by strengthening international norms of
responsible behavior and maintaining interoperable military
capabilities.
“Space capabilities have long provided strategic
national security advantages for the United States,” Carter said in a
statement.
“This updated space policy,” he added,
“institutionalizes the changes the department has made in an
increasingly constrained budget environment to address the complex set
of space-related opportunities and challenges.”
For DOD, space
systems are critical to ground navigation, smart bomb precision, and to
relay unmanned aerial vehicle feeds to troops. Space also is necessary
for early warnings of missile launches and for keeping the president
connected to U.S. nuclear forces.
In an interview with the
Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service, Dr. John F. Plumb,
acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, described
the policy’s main points.
“One is that the Department of Defense
will deter attacks on our space systems and the systems of our allies,
and [the policy] lays out some ways we’re going to do that,” Plumb said.
Methods to deter disruptions or attacks against space-based systems,
according to the policy, include supporting the development of
international norms of responsible behavior related to the space domain,
building coalitions to enhance collective security, enhancing the
resilience of the U.S. space enterprise, and being able to respond to an
attack on U.S. or allied space systems using all elements of national
power.
The policy also “makes a declaration of how the United
States will view interference with our space systems,” the acting deputy
assistant secretary said, adding that such interference would be seen
as an infringement of U.S. rights and would be “irresponsible in
peacetime and during a crisis could be escalatory.”
Plumb noted, “The policy states this very clearly and it’s a message we want to make sure people understand.”
One of the international norms of responsible behavior will target a growing problem for spacefaring nations -- space debris.
“Today there are 60 countries operating in space [and] there are
thousands of pieces of debris, pieces of [derelict] rockets or old
satellites … flying around in space,” he said.
According to the
NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, more than 21,000 pieces of orbital
debris larger than 10 centimeters exist in orbit, along with 500,000
smaller pieces and more than 1 million pieces smaller than 1 centimeter.
“We need to have an international system of norms of responsible
behavior for operating in space to mitigate debris,” Plumb said. “That’s
something we’re working on and it’s something the strategy points
toward.”
Generally, the policy identifies how DOD will promote
international cooperation and commercial partnerships, drive changes
within DOD space architectures and acquisition processes, and work to
shape the space environment.
Saving money on expensive space
assets is another goal of the department, Plumb said, and working with
allies and commercial partners can help accomplish this.
The
Defense Department has begun to work with commercial space companies to
reduce department costs and to help energize the industrial base.
“We [also] need to make sure that U.S. companies are able to compete
fairly for international contracts,” Plumb added, referring to
satellites and many systems, subsystems, parts and components that are
controlled by the U.S. government for security reasons but that already
are being sold commercially by companies around the world.
In
April, for example, officials from the Defense and State departments
released a report that urged Congress to move communications and some
remote-sensing satellites off the tightly controlled U.S. Munitions List
and into the commercial enterprise.
The policy also directs DOD
to expand international cooperation in space matters, Plumb said, which
“allows you to leverage capabilities together so instead of having to
build your own system you can use somebody else’s system.”
He
added, “It also buys you a sense of collective security. If you’re
operating as a coalition in space, you have more partners relying on the
same assets. An attack on those space assets by an adversary would no
longer necessarily be against you but against a coalition.”
As an
example, during a trip to Perth, Australia, last week, Defense
Secretary Leon E. Panetta announced that the United States would place
two key space systems in Australia.
One system, an Air Force
C-band space-surveillance radar, will track space assets and debris,
increase the security of space-based systems and increase coverage of
space objects in the Southern Hemisphere.
The other system is an
advanced U.S. space surveillance telescope designed and built by the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In Australia, the system will
help to leverage space surveillance capabilities for both nations,
officials said.
DOD also must be ready to mitigate the effects of
attacks on its space systems, Plumb said. One way to do that, spelled
out in the policy, is to plan for resilience in space systems, he added.
“Resilience means being able to survive an attack,” the acting deputy
assistant secretary said, and it means strategically distributing space
capabilities among different satellites rather than putting many on one
satellite.
“If that [one] satellite goes down,” he said, “whether
it’s due to a solar flare or an attack or bad wiring, we don’t want to
lose all these mission capabilities. These things are very expensive, so
resilient architecture would be more distributed.”
The second
part “of mitigating the ability of an adversary to attack us would be to
make sure that we can operate effectively on the battlefield even if
our space capabilities are being degraded,” Plumb added.
The growing threat to U.S. and allied space systems, he said, is real.
“Other nations and nonstate actors are developing direct ascent
anti-satellite weapons, jammers and ground-based lasers, all designed to
interfere with or destroy satellites,” Plumb said.
“We need to
be prepared and enhance our resilience so these types of capabilities
don’t prevent us from operating in space,” he added. “So we need to move
forward with the way we operate in space, for future conflicts in
particular. This space policy gives us a good pathway forward.”
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