The Defense Department is overhauling the way it handles space operations, from the way decision-makers buy satellite communications equipment to the guidelines for maneuvering against potential adversaries, according to one top official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have to start thinking differently about how we design, develop and, in cooperation with industry, operate these systems to exist and survive in a potentially contested environment,” said Winston Beauchamp, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space. “We’re going to have to identify the fact that we need to know what’s going on; we need to be able to observe the space environment and identify potentially malicious actors.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beauchamp spoke April 27 at the C4ISR & Networks Assured Communications breakfast in Arlington, Virginia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To take on the modern-day space domain, DoD is tapping into the extensive network of sensors that have been assembled over the years, which Beauchamp said the department relies on to keep an eye on what’s going on in the space environment. At the center of all those sensors is the Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, where operators use the sensor network to calculate potential run-ins as space continues to get more congested, Beauchamp said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“To avoid a catastrophic outcome, the JSPOC provides conjunction warnings so operators can maneuver their systems to avoid collision,” he said. “We do this for everybody, not out of pure altruism but because a collision is a debris-creating event, which makes the environment more dangerous for everybody.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an example, Beauchamp noted a 2007 incident in which the Chinese tested out an anti-satellite missile and shot down one of their own weather satellites \u2014 the debris of which continues to orbit the Earth and pose hazards to space assets today and in decades to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Going forward the goal is to not only avoid those kinds of issues\u00a0but also collaborate between countries to operate in space, including through promoting international standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We believe that having norms and standards identified for how operators should interact with each other is important,” Beauchamp said. “So we have the equivalent of maritime rules of the sea about encounters and how to deal with them, as well as some amount of transparency into what is occurring in the environment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DoD officials also are tapping the Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center, which is gaining momentum since it launched last year. Currently JICSPOC officials are finishing the first phase of test-run activities that Beauchamp said are aimed at further defining how to best operate in space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We are working to develop tactics, techniques and procedures in order to respond to potential threats, and the JICSPOC is an activity to do just that \u2014 work through a series of scenarios, vignettes, of what a potential threat might look like, modeled on what we see in real life today, and how we respond,” Beauchamp said. “It’s structured to help us learn how to execute the command and control function in a contested environment\u2026our hope is we will be able to use the information learned from those experiments to inform what our battle management command and control capability needs to look like in the future.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New rules of the road and a new joint space office testing out scenarios are changing how the U.S. military operates in space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":62516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":39,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[8,16,39],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2772],"class_list":["post-20843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c2-comms","category-it-networks","category-satellites"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"PRQSXEQSQVEUFH4GHUD4ORWJ4I","arc_canonical_url":"\/c2-comms\/satellites\/2016\/04\/27\/how-dod-is-re-writing-the-rules-of-space\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n