Conversations on Strategy Podcast – Ep 15 – Frank J. Kuzminski – “NATO Space Critical Infrastructure” from Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 2)

Every day, malicious actors target emerging technologies and medical resilience or seek to wreak havoc in the wake of disasters brought on by climate change, energy insecurity, and supply-chain disruptions. Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield is a handbook on how to strengthen critical infrastructure resilience in an era of emerging threats. The counterterrorism research produced for this volume is in alignment with NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept, which details how NATO Allies can transform and maintain their advantage despite new threats for the next two decades. The topics are rooted in NATO’s Seven Baseline requirements, which set the standard for enhancing resilience in every aspect of critical infrastructure and civil society. As terrorists hone their skills to operate lethal drones, use biometric data to target innocents, and take advantage of the chaos left by pandemics and natural disasters for nefarious purposes, NATO forces must be prepared to respond and prevent terrorist events before they happen. Big-data analytics provides potential for NATO states to receive early warning to prevent pandemics, cyberattacks, and kinetic attacks. NATO is perfecting drone operations through interoperability exercises, and space is being exploited by adversaries. Hypersonic weapons are actively being used on the battlefield, and satellites have been targeted to take down wind farms and control navigation. This handbook is a guide for the future, providing actionable information and recommendations to keep our democracies safe today and in the years to come. Click here to read the book.Click here to watch the webinar. Episode Transcript: “Space Critical Infrastructure” from Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 2) Stephanie Crider (Host) You’re listening to Conversations on Strategy. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army, War College, or any other agency of the US government. I’m here with Frank Kuzminski, today, US Army officer and strategist, and author of “NATO Space Critical Infrastructure” from Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency. Thanks for making time for this today, Frank. Frank Kuzminski Thank you for having me. Host Space is a relatively new operational domain. Since 2019, you note in your chapter. Through the lens of those core missions of deterrence and defense, what do our listeners need to know about space? Kuzminski Space is relatively new in terms of the overall history of the alliance. And that really stems from the NATO ministerial meeting in December 2019, where they declared space as an operational domain. And then, more importantly, in June 2021, NATO issued a communique after the NATO summit that the mutual defense provisions of Article 5, which treats an attack on one as an attack against all, would apply to the space domain as well. And they specifically mentioned that any attack to, from, or within space could be as harmful as a conventional attack, and therefore warrant an Article 5 response. And that’s important because space really touches nearly every aspect of daily life in modern society, (including) commercial activities, economic activity, information, communications, and especially national security and defense. And so today, more than ever, NATO as an alliance, depends more than ever on space-critical infrastructure for its core missions of deterrence and defense. Host Let’s talk a little bit more about space critical infrastructure. Can you give us an overview? Kuzminski So, space critical infrastructure comprises the physical systems, the orbital platforms, and the data transmission networks and the people that work across the four segments of a space system to provide the space domain capabilities that we rely on. There is this space segment, which consists of the satellites, spacecraft, and technical payloads that occupy the different orbits. There’s a user segment, which refers to any user or person or system that relies on satellite information or satellite signals to function. This includes military forces as well as ordinary people—businesses, organizations, countries, people who use smartphones, etc., or the Internet. There’s the ground segment, which includes the physical elements of space infrastructure on Earth, everything from launch facilities to Mission Control centers, to tracking stations around the world. And then finally, there’s the link segment. And this is the data transmission networks that connect the other segments together and through which we derive the systems. And so the space domain operations and space-based capabilities require all four segments of space critical infrastructure to provide the core functions and capabilities that the alliance and that the world relies on. Host You talked about in your article, these five core capabilities. Let’s walk through them. Let’s start with secure communication. Kuzminski Satellite communications, or SATCOM for short, is vital for the effective command and control of military forces today across large areas, regardless of terrain. It really helps overcome the line-of-sight problem, but also facilitates the use of remote weapon systems such as drones. It’s also important to note that secure communications is where the space and cyber domains intersect because the data transmissions on the link segment that we talked about that provide this space capability by transmitting data utilize the communications protocols that have been derived from the cyber domain and the Internet. And so the vulnerabilities that exist in the cyber domain are also inherent to the space domain for that reason. Host Positioning, navigation, timing, and velocity. What do we need to know? Kuzminski So simply speaking, this is GPS. We know it as plugging an address into our phone and letting it direct us to our destination. But for military forces who rely on PNT for short for targeting and precision strike, advanced conventional munitions rely on GPS to precisely strike a target. Military forces also rely on time reference from GPS satellites for encryption purposes. It’s also important to note that GPS (Global Positioning System) is an American military system that the Department of Defense provides for everyone’s use. There are other systems out there that other countries operate, for example, the European Union has a global navigation satellite system called Galileo. The Russians use a system called GLONASS, and the Chinese recently have deployed a system called Baidu, and they all generally provide similar functions, but it’s important to note who kind of manages these constellations. Host The next step is integrated tactical warning and threat assessment. Kuzminski Space systems are important for detecting missile launches and, therefore, providing the earliest possible warning of a missile attack. We’re talking about strategic nuclear attack, intercontinental ballistic missiles—the kind of broad early warning networks that were common during the Cold War but are still very important today to deterrence and defense today. These space systems are a really integral part of that and help provide ballistic trajectories and provide the decision space for senior leaders. Host How does environmental monitoring fit into the picture? Kuzminski This is commonly known as weather forecasting, but space systems enabled meteorological operations and the kind of weather forecasting that’s important because weather, of course, can affect military operations on land, sea, and in the air. Accurate environmental forecasting also can help reveal longer-term climate trends that might affect agriculture or food supplies in different parts of the world, which may have security implications for NATO and the alliance. Host Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Kuzminski ISR for short. Space-based ISR, we think about satellite imagery. So again there are commercially available options such as Google Earth, but this goes back to the earliest days of the space age when the United States and the Soviet Union deployed a variety of satellite intelligence platforms and photo reconnaissance platforms to not only provide detailed mission planning and help forces understand the effects of terrain on land-based operations but also to provide indications and warnings of potentially threatening behavior. I mean, one of the reasons the alliance in the United States were able to anticipate Russian aggression in Ukraine last year was because they were able to monitor force movements through the use of space-based ISR. Host What are some examples of threats and vulnerabilities that need to be addressed? Kuzminski Space systems are especially vulnerable to both kinetic and non-kinetic threats. So in the chapter we talk about how terrorists and hackers might possess some of these capabilities that could affect one or more of the space segments. But the overall impacts to a terrorist attack on space critical infrastructure would be pretty low. The real threat here is state actors, specifically, the great powers, who both possess the kinetic and non-kinetic destructive capabilities and the capacity that could seriously damage space critical infrastructure. In terms of non-kinetic threats, we talked about the intersection of the space and cyber domains. And so many of the vulnerabilities, cyber vulnerabilities, that an adversary could exploit through hacking or other malicious software or malware could also be deployed against this space system and disrupt a particular satellite capability. In terms of the kinetic capabilities, the most obvious ones...