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 are direct-assent anti-satellite weapons or ASATS. And this is, effectively, a missile that’s launched from the Earth that would be targeting a satellite in orbit, destroy that satellite and then render a large debris field that could pose risks to other space systems. As of today, there are only four countries that have demonstrated an actual ASAT capability. That’s the United States, China, India, and Russia.
There are also orbital intercept and satellite capture technologies out there through what we call rendezvous and proximity operations, or RPO for short. The nature of orbital mechanics makes it that satellite trajectories are predictable, and, therefore, targetable.
There is also the technology either exists or might soon exist for some kind of directed energy or laser weapons on orbital platforms. Now, we haven’t seen evidence of an active system as of yet, but this goes back to the 1980s in the Strategic Defense Initiative that envisioned the constellation of orbital lasers to shoot down incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles. So, it’s not a new idea, it’s just something that people are talking about.
I’d also like to mention the problem of orbital debris, or space junk. This is more of a space safety issue than a space security issue, but it’s very real and it is a pernicious problem that affects everybody indiscriminately. There are over 30,000 pieces of space junk ranging from the size of a softball to larger than a school bus. Basically, anything that gets thrown up into orbit kind of stays there and decays over years—decays in orbit. The reality is that there just hasn’t been enough of a problem to really warrant any kind of multilateral action. And so ,it’s one of those problems that we’ll just wait and see what happens.
Host
I’m glad you mentioned Ukraine a little bit earlier because you used Russia as a case study in your paper, and I would love to hear more about that.
Kuzminski
We already talked about our state actors are the biggest threat, and Russia really has been the most active and threatening actor in this space domain in recent years. For the current war in Ukraine, there was a very specific example. In February of last year leading up to the attack, Russian hackers disrupted the commercial ViaSat satellite communications network, which is a commercial satellite communications provider that the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian government was contracting for their communication purposes. It was part of a coordinated effort to disrupt Ukrainian command and control and defensive operations leading up to the Russian attack.
There are two other examples that are worth mentioning. In November of 2021, Russia conducted an ASAT test that we talked about, and it targeted one of its derelict satellites in orbit. But this event created a substantial debris field that threatened the International Space Station to the point where NASA actually had to wake up the astronauts and tell them to get into their emergency escape capsules in the event that there was some sort of catastrophic collision. Thankfully nothing happened, but this reveals the kind of potentially nefarious effects of an ASAT—even if it’s not targeted against an opponent system.
And then lastly, I just wanted to mention that in 2018 the French government accused Russia of spying on one of their military communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which is the farthest out orbit. The French space agency had observed what they called a Russian “inspector satellite” that had maneuvered and changed its orbits to within a few 100 meters to drops of communications. Geosynchronous orbit is a stationary orbit. So the fact that these satellites had maneuvered into place was really indicative of some sort of potentially hostile behavior. And this is an example of these rendezvous and proximity operations that we spoke about earlier.
Host
Lots of scenarios here, lots of threats, potential vulnerabilities.
Kuzminski
We talked about how states such as Russia and China remain the greatest threat to space critical infrastructure. Increasing resilience across all the space segments is probably the best way to enhance deterrence by denial. And what I mean by that is ensuring that the specific capabilities that we discussed have enough redundancy in systems, whether in orbit or on the ground through different pathways and through different partners, not just American systems. But partnering with our allies and also through commercial operators is the best way to ensure that these critical functions will remain online in the event of an attack.
There’s also an opportunity for some degree of international partnership or multilateral initiative to help prevent the rampant weaponization of space or some sort of new arms race. This was a problem in the 80s because the reality is that the only space treaty that’s been ratified in the international community is the Outer Space Treaty, which was signed in 1967. And although that prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons in space and on the moon, it hasn’t really been updated to reflect some of the more current threats that we talked about. There have been a few ongoing efforts to limit weapons proliferation in space under the auspices of the United Nations, but they’ve been problematic and generally weak. True progress will really require commitment and leadership by the great powers, not only the US and its European partners, but also Russia and China. And the current situation right now doesn’t look like there’s any prospect for that.
Host
Give us your final thoughts before we go.
Kuzminski
I think it’s important to remember that space critical infrastructure, like all critical infrastructure, is something that we all tend to take for granted. We don’t really think about it. It’s just kind of there and we just use it. But we already talked about how vulnerable it is. And it’s important to remember that it wouldn’t take a whole lot for an adversary or some sort of malicious actor to disrupt the capabilities that we rely on on a daily basis. This isn’t specifically for military forces, but also just for everyday people and large segments of modern society.
I think it’s worth thinking about how someone might react if their smart board stops working or the credit card stops working or the Internet stops working or the planes stop flying, not only for individuals but also for states.
But I don’t want to be super pessimistic. I do think that the future is exciting and offers a lot of potential for the benefit of mankind because the threshold for access to space and space-based capabilities is being lowered every day, especially through the growth of commercial operators and service providers. And I really think that the more access to these capabilities that exist and the more people that have access to these capabilities, it just helps level the playing field, not only in the security dimension, but also in economic and societal and commercial spheres. And I think that translates to better economic opportunities, especially for the developing world. And generally, a higher quality of life for most people. And I think that’s a good thing. I think there’s definitely a lot of things to be optimistic about when it. Comes to space this.
Host
This a very full chapter about critical infrastructure, security and resiliency. Listeners, if you’re interested, you can download it at press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/957.
Thanks for sharing your insights with us today, Frank.
Kuzminski
Thank you for having me.
Host
If you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.
About the author: Frank J. Kuzminski is a US Army officer and strategist. A native of Poland, he emigrated to the United States in 1990. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 2004 with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and was commissioned as an Infantry officer. After serving in multiple operational assignments worldwide, Kuzminski was assigned to the Army Staff at the Pentagon, and he later served as a strategic plans officer with I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. He is currently a doctoral candidate in international studies at the University of Washington. He holds a master of public administration degree from Harvard University. He is married with two children and speaks Polish and French.
