Mitchell Institute Schriever Spacepower Forum with Lt Gen John E. Shaw

Lt Gen John E. Shaw:

On Role of Commercial Sector in Space Exploration:

• Commercial kind of had a little bit of an inflection point there. Starting to do a little bit more is mostly a linear change, you know, still mostly geosynchronous, a little dabbling in low earth orbit.
• Between civil and national security, our partnership is greater than it’s ever been.
• We actually we’re in a symbiotic relationship with commercial space today and in the ways that we support them and their operations to operate safely and securely. But they also provide capabilities to us.
• We rely on commercial imagery now more than we ever have as a department.

On Importance of Allies and International Collaboration:

• We you know, when I talk about that third space age, I talk about we’re all in it together, right? Commercial, civil. There’s interaction, interdependency and that includes allies.
• Many of our allies are making the same organizational changes that we have made four years ago. I won’t run through them now because it saves some time. You can go look it up. But some are changing the name of their service. Some are standing up commands and we’re all doing it together and in ways that we never did before.

On Challenges in Coordination and Communication with Allies

• But we also have challenges. Those tend to be on release. Classification. How do we get to a common terminology? A common framework that we can work on together?
• As they stand up these news command organizations, there’s work to be done to understand how you’re going to communicate with one another and coordinate and synchronize in a crisis.

On Space as a Warfighting Domain

• It was in 2015 that we first started talking publicly… of space as a warfighting domain that we saw that there were now threats in the domain that we had to consider operating within that environment.

On Change and Adaptation in Space Operations

• We provide transregional support to all the geographics, and they’re more dependent on space capabilities today than they were yesterday, and they’ll be more dependent tomorrow than today.
• This is probably the most fundamental doctrinal shift that we’re probably going to see in the next 4 to 5 years…We’re doing what I call positional space operations…But there’s an emerging set of platforms that we think have to overcome this positional approach
• We resemble the US Coast Guard as much as any other kind of service. We’re providing awareness of hazards in the domain. We’re trying to make it safe and secure.

On the Importance of Preparedness and Strategy in Space Operations and Space Defense Responsibilities

• You have to think about your command, offensive and defensive operations. You’ve got to protect what we have up here, up there that the terrestrial forces are so dependent on.
• We actually have a continuum of responsibilities. This is another doctrinal kind of emerging kind of doctrinal thought that we need to pursue if we just and I think it varies a little bit from air power doctrine.
• How do we do that all in an operational manner that is responsible but at the same time responsive?

On Situational Awareness in Space

• We have some satellites in geosynchronous orbit and their sole purpose is to move around the geosynchronous belt and to look at other platforms.

On the Increasing Need for Mobile Operations in Space

• There’s an emerging set of platforms that we think have to overcome this positional approach, and they need to spend most of their lifetime changing their energy state and maneuvering as opposed to staying in orbit.

On Observations and Future Predictions on Spacecraft Refueling

• One of the big impacts and why, for example, the shuttle could maneuver, but we husband that fuel carefully because it was a limiting factor on how much we could maneuver and when we had to save fuel to come home.

On Rethinking Resilience in Space Operations

• If I have dynamic space operations, capability and ability sustained maneuver, then resilience changes a lot.

On Deterrence Strategies in Space

• In the end of the day, we want to deter a fight in space or, you know, a kinetic fight in space with an adversary.
• There has to be an element of threat that’s positioned against an adversary.

On the Importance of Monitoring Cislunar Space

• -Maybe a little bit more on what you see from a requirements perspective as a combatant, part of a combatant command for what you need to know in your command centers about cislunar space going forward, say, in the next 10 to 20 years.

• -I do think Cislunar is important, but we’re not looking at cislunar at the expense of those capabilities closer and further down the gravity well that our joint force relies on day in and day out.

On the Prioritization of Immediate Space Security Needs over Long-term Goals

• -That is, the primacy of our focus is on those space capabilities that the joint force uses. And those today are predominantly geosynchronous or below.

On Collaboration between Governmental Departments in Space

• -What I envision in the future is we’ve been working closely with the Department of Commerce over the last couple of years as they try to set up their architecture to do space traffic management.

On Evolution of Intelligence Needs:

• -And we needed the NRO in that first space age to understand that strategic threat. It was all about strategic strategic intelligence.
• -How do we get that down to battlefield commanders? And we made some progress with that. And I think the NRO did an Na, did a nice job, and they did a shift.
• -It’s really becoming no longer a pure intelligence need. It’s a battle management need.

On Changing Requirements of Battle Management

• -That’s battle management. And that, I think, is where we start to have it. That’s where I think the discussion is happening today between title ten and Title 50 kinds of authorities with space based ISR and maybe ISR is not even the right term anymore because we’re really talking about battle management.
• -I think largely in a potential conflict with China, Indopacom is going to need and get the lion’s share of that, but they may not need to get all of it because there’ll be a global challenge that we’re facing.

On Importance of Inter-Domain Awareness and Threat Perception

• -We want to know where the threats are coming that are counter space threats, and those can come from any domain. They can come from the land domain in an ASAP launch. They can come from the sea domain from an ASAP launch or from jammers aboard naval vessels. They can come from the air domain of an air launched asset and they can come from the cyber domain.

Evolving Role of Other Services in Space

• -The other services are realizing more than ever the dependence that they have on space and maybe the advantages that space brings for them to do operations in their domains. And so they’re evolving their own space doctrine.
• -All of the services have some form of air doctrine, right? Mostly started because of threats from the air. And then how could they use the air domain to enable their scheme of maneuver within their domain?

On Interoperability and Integration across Commands:

-You need timely support as well as the terrestrial commanders. Very good. Well, while we’re on joint doctrine here and talking about that, you know, every regional CoCom has a component command for air, land, maritime, special operations and now space.

On Reliance on Space for Strategic Operations

-So, again, I think the message here is we all need all of these capabilities in a responsive way to manage a global battle, right?

-The other services are realizing more than ever the dependence that they have on space and maybe the advantages that space brings for them to do operations in their domains.

On Development of Space Expertise across Military Branches

• -So the Navy has actually begun a maritime space officer cadre. The Marines have done a similar thing and the Army’s been doing it for years. And so all of the services realize that space is important.
• -So they’re delivering, developing their own understanding and expertise of space. And at the same time, all of them will in some way or another contribute to our needs.

On Shared Threats and Opportunities with Cybersecurity

• -We also have a cyber component. It’s 16th Air Force is our cyber component that is assigned forces to Cybercom but is in support of us.
• -I’m fond of space and cyber BFFs. Best friends. Yeah. I mean always. I mean forever. We will always need to. Anything that cyber is interested in, we’re interested in whether it’s the advantage that cyber can bring to bear.

On Normalization of Space as a Domain of Warfare

• -I think this is one of the other characteristics of the third space age is this idea of normalization of space. A lot of what we’re seeing in space today, the congestion, the challenges, the threats, they kind of get us kind of concerned. But there’s a silver lining there, and that is we’ve arrived.
• -Space is now an integral part of human society, and we take everything into that domain that we endure in the other domains.

On Potential for Joint Force Capabilities

• -I expect that the Army in the future will have satellite capable capability to jam satellites from a lot of their maneuver forces. The more capacity we have that we can bring to bear as a joint force, the better.
• -Any service that has any capability to bring that’s going to allow us to achieve effects against an adversary in the space domain is therefore naturally part of a joint solution.

On the Evolution of Military Doctrine

• -How did air doctrine evolve over time? We’re seeing some of this start to happen in the space domain now.
• -When we made the transition from lighter than aircraft to powered aircraft was a huge inflection point in air power doctrine. I think we’ll see something similar . I think we’ll see some similar doctrinal developments with the idea of dynamic space operations to sustain space maneuver.

On Potential for Integrated Multi-domain Operations

• -Any domain can be the origin of a threat for US Space Command as we operate and defend in our air. So, again, I think the message here is we all need all of these capabilities in a responsive way to manage a global battle, right?

On Interdependency of Space and Cyber Domains

• -The first is we may have forgotten this now, but early on in the conflict, we may remember that there was a significant Satcom outage in central and Western Europe as a result of a Russian cyber, Commercial, Satcom commercial Satcom. So I would say let’s not forget that lesson, that dependency that our space, our commercial space and cyber, that kind of interface between those two domains, the vulnerability that that happened with an action that Russia took.

On the Role of Jamming in Modern Warfare

• -Both we see Russia and Ukraine are doing satcom jamming and so and that is having a role in their ability to affect the maneuver of the other.
• -And as you mentioned in your opening comments, I noticed that they’re jamming. Russia is jamming GPS. I think they’re jamming more than the GPS. That’s whatever the Ukrainians are trying to use. I think they’re trying to jam any of those systems that I mentioned. And Ukrainians are doing the same.

On Learning from Modern Conflict (Navigation Warfare – N’avoir):

• -What we’re seeing in Ukraine now is the largest war confrontation ever seen. We will learn from that how to conduct n’avoir at scale from both a defensive and offensive perspective.
• -We have our joint navigation warfare center in New Mexico that belongs to us, US Space Command joint unit. That’s part of US Space Command that’s really focused on that.