APOGEE STAFF

For more than a decade, as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) ramped up its military capabilities, nations around the world have entered space security relationships with the United States. More than 30 countries have taken this step, from entry-level space situational agreements (SSA) to the deepest levels of cooperation.

The decision to partner beyond the Earth’s atmosphere opens the door to the next challenge — aligning operational systems and security requirements so nations can actually work together in space. It’s a challenge that has confronted militaries before across terrestrial domains. In the U.S., the number of special access programs (SAP) restricting who can know what at the federal level “has kind of spiraled out of control,” said John F. Plumb, then assistant secretary of defense for space policy, in a February 2023 discussion with the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. But it’s made worse in space by “stovepipes” built in during the dawn of the space race in the 1950s, said Dennis Blair, a former director of national intelligence, and Robert Work, a former deputy defense secretary, in a July 2020 commentary for Defense News. “Whatever the validity of the reasons at the time, by now the partitioned nature of space program classification still remains and far exceeds that of other equally sensitive domains — air, land, sea, undersea and cyber.”

The Pentagon took a step toward streamlining its information classification with a memo announced in early 2024 from Kathleen Hicks, U.S. deputy defense secretary.

The U.S. took a step toward removing these legacy barriers with the signing of a space security memo by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, Plumb told reporters during a January 2024 briefing. He declined to describe the changes in detail because of their sensitive nature but said policy considerations alone cannot be “the only reason to hide something in an SAP program. There have to be technical aspects to it.” He described the memo as a part of a broader SAP reform effort led by Hicks — one that may take time for officials throughout the Pentagon to absorb. “Anything we can bring from an SAP level to a top-secret level [would help], for example — massive value to the warfighter, massive value to the department. And frankly, my hope is over time it will also allow us to share more information with allies and partners that they might not currently have.” Opening more space-related information to allies, as well as to innovative commercial partners and even across the nation’s own defense and intelligence components, would leverage assets that adversaries such as the PRC and Russia cannot hope to match, Plumb told the Mitchell Institute: “They have allies by force, we have allies by common approach to the world.” He called U.S. partners in space security “a massive, massive asymmetrical advantage,” a reference to how unconventional approaches to potential conflict can eclipse sheer military power. “But they’re only an asymmetric advantage if we work together to operationalize that asymmetric advantage.” 

Aligning information classification, in part to enable the sharing of operational systems, arose as a top priority at the December 2022 gathering in New Zealand of the closest U.S. allies in space defense — the nations of the Combined Space Operations (CSpO) initiative. It remains a priority as the number of CSpO partners has grown to 10, the nations of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States — plus France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Norway. “We were trying to figure out how to do information sharing at operationally relevant levels to be able to use that asymmetric advantage,” Plumb told the Mitchell Institute. “It was a really good conversation. Folks were really leaning into it. But it’s really hard, and the thing that limits us is overclassification of information.”

Three months after his confirmation as the first assistant secretary of defense for space policy, John F. Plumb, left, visits Joint Task Force-Space Defense (JTF-SD) at Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado in June 2022. Plumb got a tour of the task force headquarters from then-Army Maj. Gen. Tom James, JTF-SD commander, who is now a lieutenant general and deputy commander of U.S. Space Command. TIANA WILLIAMS/U.S. SPACE FORCE

A similar conclusion arose from a summit Plumb conducted for internal Department of Defense and intelligence community stakeholders, he said in a December 2022 interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The focus was on things that limit deeper operational cooperation with U.S. spacefaring allies. “And it turned out that most of the problems there are related to overclassification, because some … some things are classified in a way that I cannot share them with allies even if they’re highly capable.”

One particular roadblock, Plumb said, is “rampant use” of the U.S. classification category, “secret, no foreign,” even with programs involving close allies. Other roadblocks, he said, hamper the innovation in space defense that comes through cooperation with the commercial space sector — a key requirement of the 2022 National Defense Strategy. Plumb told the story of a radio frequency engineer working with his company on one highly classified program but prohibited from working on another within the same company, even though it required the same skill set. “He didn’t have the right tickets yet. That’s silly.”

I think the space community will slowly start coming to terms with these data exchanges that really are hindering the flow between partners right now.” — Glen Grady, SSA data sharing program manager, USSPACECOM

The challenges of interoperability among space partners arises from the different development tracks each has taken — some influenced by their historic connections with nations such as the U.S., the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and France, said Glen Grady, SSA data sharing program manager with U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM). One nation, for example, “might have a cool ground radar, but we can’t pump that in because it’s like apples and oranges,” Grady told Apogee. “Totally different setups.” He likened it to music platforms. “I remember as a kid, companies agreed we’re going to standardize a music format and mass sell it. Well, we don’t have a compact disc for space. We have records and eight tracks and cassette tapes. I think the space community will slowly start coming to terms with these data exchanges that really are hindering the flow between partners right now.” Progress has been made with U.S. partner the U.K. in other domains on systems such as submarines, where the two nations work “hand in glove, to some degree,” Grady said. Sharing what the U.S. can about how it operates in space, as the world’s leading spacefaring nation, can help advance interoperability with other nations, he said. “I think the idea now, at least from a Space Command perspective, is helping our partners build up their capabilities. It could really yield a lot of fruit.”

Royal Australian Air Force Squadron Leader Jamiee Maika works alongside U.S. military personnel at the Combined Space Operations Center (CSpOC ) in California. The multinational CSpOC force also involves partners Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom. STAFF SGT. J.T. ARMSTRONG/U.S. AIR FORCE

Space information stovepipes are a legacy of the Cold War, when keeping information from the Soviet Union was a top priority, Grady said. “At the time it was probably warranted. Think Cuban missile crisis.” That’s no longer true, he said. The PRC is the new “pacing threat,” according to the National Defense Strategy, and the number of nations and organizations with satellites in space has grown from the U.S. and Russia at the start of the space race to more than 100 today, according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, which maintains a Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space to identify which states bear international responsibility and liability for space objects. . The need for change is a view shared by an “almost never-ending litany of general officers standing up and saying, ‘We’ve got to bring down the barriers, we need to share information,’” Grady said. “Needless to say, the big, ‘Turn the Queen Mary,’ moment hasn’t happened. Or is happening very, very slowly.” Still, the U.S. military has moved mountains like this before, Grady said, noting the extraordinary levels of cooperation that characterized the global war on terror, coordinated through U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) over a period of nearly 20 years. The CENTCOM Coalition, which includes resident representatives at the command’s Tampa, Florida, headquarters, started with some 15 nations after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and now numbers 46.    

As noted by one top space defense leader, another modern example of allies operating together is NATO. “When nations developed their capabilities, they don’t necessarily think in space about interoperability the way, let’s say, NATO nations think about more conventional capabilities, such as radios, ammunition and things like that,” said Army Col. Ted Hanger, chief of strategic engagement with USSPACECOM, during a March 2023 interview with the technology website Nextgov. “It’s pretty straightforward; that’s why we’ve adopted certain munitions that we put through our weapons. A 5.56 round that I shoot out of my weapon would work in a German’s weapon, or Italian’s, etc.” With space capabilities, Hanger said, “they weren’t really thinking along those lines. It was a little bit more sovereign, if you will, and not how we’re going to be able to share that information and then integrate that as part of a multinational force, which we’re trying to go into now.”

Space information stovepipes are seen as a legacy of the Cold War, exemplified by Fidel Castro and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It was an era when keeping information from the Soviet Union was a top priority. GETTY IMAGES

A roundup of the consequences of inaction on overclassification, as well as potential solutions, was published in March 2023 by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a think tank focused on controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The 130-page paper, “Over-classification: How Bad Is It, What’s the Fix?” details writings on the topic and discussions held during a series of working groups convened by the center. Space defense is a focus. Overclassification, according to authors quoted in the paper, has hobbled important space collaboration with America’s allies; delayed hiring of top-notch, high-tech staff who cannot get special clearances because of artificial billeting limits; and has undermined support for advanced U.S. military space programs that might otherwise grow if diplomats and officers could share more of what they knew.

One key question that emerged in the paper is how to find the right balance between transparency — including the need to share information with elected officials and the public so they can evaluate space security as a national priority — and the real need for secrecy. Another question is how to overcome a fundamental disincentive to information sharing at the gatekeeper level: If you lower or eliminate a classification, you could risk your career. Center founder Henry D. Sokolski, in a summary of the paper, described the thought process among many of those presented with a request for declassification: “Solution: Don’t declassify, just say no, then, overclassify, just to be ‘safe.’” But the paper also suggests a number of routes toward greater information sharing. Among them: Redirect and fully fund the work of the Public Interest Declassification Board, a group established in 2000 and appointed by Congress and the president; replicate the consolidation and automation work of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which boiled down 65 classification guidebooks into one; establish a high-level commission of former military officers and officials to recommend a better system; set up a space defense hotline for anonymous tips on the damage caused by excessive secrecy; and require an annual report from space defense leaders on the costs of excessive secrecy.  

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