Classification Policy Changes to Strengthen Allied Partnerships in Space

When Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed a memo to initiate changes in the Department of Defense’s (DOD) classification policy for space programs, the move marked a tangible moment in the push to adapt traditional classification policies for a modern space era. Historically, high classification thresholds for space-based capabilities were designed to protect Cold War-era secrets. But as the DOD has sought to extend Allied partnerships into the space domain, through programs like the Combined Space Operations Initative (CSpO), classified designations such as Special Access Programs (SAP) and No Foreign Dissemination (NOFORN) can - at times - compromise their effectiveness.

In this episode of "The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security," Elara Nova partners Lt Gen (Ret) Nina Armagno, former Director of Staff for the United States Space Force, and Lt Gen (Ret) John Shaw, former Deputy Commander of United States Space Command, break down the coming changes to the DOD's classification policy for space programs and how these changes will support extending Allied partnerships into the space domain through multinational efforts like the CSpO.

"The Elara Edge" is hosted by Scott King and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. The full story can be found on Elara Nova's Insights page here. Music was produced by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio.

Transcript

Host: Scott King 

SMEs: Lt Gen (Ret) Nina Armagno, partner at Elara Nova (NA)
Lt Gen (Ret) John Shaw, partner at Elara Nova (JS)

00:02 - 01:45
When Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed a memo rewriting the Department of Defense classification policy for space programs, the move marked a turning point years in the making. Traditionally, space programs have been reserved at high classification levels, in large part to protect Cold War-era secrets. Then in the decades since the Soviet Union’s collapse, a benign space environment enabled civil, commercial, and military space capabilities to not only mature, but populate the orbits.  

But space is no longer a benign environment. Adversaries like China and Russia recognize the role space-based capabilities serve in Joint Force operations, and have developed their own military space assets to threaten the United States and its Allies. And in the absence of an international governing body for the space domain, the U.S. launched the Combined Space Operations Initiative - or (CSpO) - a multinational effort to preserve the responsible use of space, while deterring military conflict.

But until now, traditional classification policies have prevented the DOD from sharing much of its space-based capabilities and information - with Allies and partners.  

Welcome to “The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security.” I’m your host - Scott King. And we have two guests joining us today, to break down what this memo means, and how the DOD aims to strike a delicate balance between modernizing its classification policies, without revealing too much of its space-based secrets. 

Lieutenant General John Shaw is a partner at Elara Nova: The Space Consultancy, and recently retired as the Deputy Commander of U.S. Space Command. 

General Shaw, welcome to the show!

01:45 - 01:46
(JS): Good to be here, Scott.
 
01:46 - 01:58
Good to have you here, Sir.  

And also joining us is retired Lieutenant General Nina Armagno, who recently served as the Director of Staff for the United States Space Force.  

Thank you, Ma’am, for taking the time to join us today.
 
01:58 - 02:03

(NA): Thanks, Scott. And, I am really happy to be here as well.

02:04 - 02:15
Great. Well, we have a pretty robust discussion ahead of us here today. 

But before we begin, can each of you explain the DOD’s historical approach to classification policies for space? And how that leads us to where we are today? 

02:16 - 03:19

(JS): A good place to start on understanding why we are struggling with what some would call over-classification in space today goes back to the roots of why we were doing military space in the first place. 

And it was during the Cold War and during the Cold War, or what I call the first Space Age. Our space capabilities were strategic in nature, and they were very closely aligned with our nuclear capabilities.  

One example is the National Reconnaissance Office and its satellites that gave us ability to see what the Soviet Union was doing and assess its military capability and strategic capability.  

And they were closely guarded at the time because they were cutting edge technology. In the journey we have taken since the end of the Cold War till now - that's really the great miracle of the Second and Third Space Age, is that we now are so reliant on space everywhere in Joint Warfighting and our human society.  

And so how do you reconcile those two kinds of dynamics, right? The beginnings in the strategic arena where we were closely guarded secrets, and now the need to integrate with our Joint Warfighting Forces at every possible level.  

03:20 - 04:59

(NA): Speaking of beginnings, I spent some time in the Pentagon, and I guess that's an understatement. But I got to see the acquisition process, basically from its very beginnings with research and development and the technologies that are produced. They are very closely held secrets. So, you know, think about coming up with just the latest tech. So that gets classified, that gets developed into a concept. The concept gets developed into an acquisition program. That program stays classified at that level. The program becomes a system and the classification never changes. So, sometimes it's not deliberate. Sometimes it's very deliberate. The technologies should be highly classified.  

But there are some times when we do want our adversaries to know that we have developed a system because we want to deter them. And so we want to show them or reveal, not keep everything concealed, but reveal some capabilities. I can think of the B-21 as an example. The technologies that make the B-21 special are very highly-classified. But the fact of a B-21 is unclassified and there are pictures of the B-21. And so the space community has been struggling with this for awhile.  

There's a culture that persists around classification and that might be the toughest nut to crack as DOD goes down this path of what to maintain as highly classified and what to intentionally declassify or reveal.

05:00 - 05:10

So given this culture that’s persisted over time - how does the DOD and the Space Force go about striking this balance in deciding what to classify or unclassify?

05:10 - 06:02

(JS): Yeah. Hey, Scott, let me say Nina's absolutely right. When she talks about in order to have deterrence, your adversary has to know that you have something. And so even when the National Reconnaissance Office was a very closely guarded secret during the Cold War. The Soviets could see those satellites. In fact, it drove them nuts. To this day, I think Russia still hates those low-Earth orbit spy satellites because we see a lot of mischief going on and that was good. That was good because they knew that we were watching them and that it would be hard for them to surprise us. It would be hard for them to build up without us noticing it. And it would be harder for them to cheat on any kind of arms agreement. Not impossible, but much harder because we're watching. 

So really the question becomes about ‘How much of your capability do you reveal and then what do you conceal in terms of your operational art?’ And it becomes a good discussion from there.

06:03 - 06:35

(NA): Right. And it has to be considered and it has to be thought all the way through because if it's just applied in a loose manner, we could actually stand to unintentionally reveal or unintentionally give away some technologies that we do want to protect as long as possible. 

We can go back to that NRO example that John Shaw just had. The Soviets probably didn't know exactly what these systems were and so they were technologies that were protected hiding in plain sight.  
06:36 - 07:41

(JS): Yeah. And you almost want a little, some uncertainty because they have to assume the worst. Hey, Scott, back to your question though about what's that balance between classification or not. How did we do it in other domains? And Nina alluded to some of that, right?

You want our strategic adversaries to know we have a B-21. But there's a lot of things around that B-21 in terms of the tactics, its performance envelope, and such that you aren't going to want to reveal in order to preserve its capability best you can and be the strongest possible deterrent that it can be. 

Any weapons platform that our Department of Defense or our Allies put into the field is going to have some level of secrecy behind it to preserve the operational art and or the possible surprise that it could have in an engagement.  

So I would just look to that as a model. That's normalization of what we will do in space. A lot of things are going to be known that we have capabilities and we're going to want that for deterrence purposes, for planning and campaign execution purposes, both within the Department and with our Allies. But there are always going to be some things that you're going to keep close.

07:42 - 08:19

(NA): And John, let me just take it just a tiny bit step further, because I think what you're also suggesting is that no matter what our strategy becomes for the space community and the space domain, it really needs to be looked at holistically. 

It needs to be looked at across domains as well. Not just not just copy what other domains are doing or kind of use their same logic, but actually - we have an integrated and strategic conceal/reveal, classify/declassify type of strategy. I think we all just always have to remember space doesn't exist on its own or for its own, but as part of the Joint Fight.

08:20 - 08:31

Now, each of you just spoke to how the DOD can leverage what it reveals for deterrence.   

But what challenges does the traditional policy bring that is causing the DOD to re-think its approach to classification?
 
08:32 - 09:10

(NA): The most obvious answer is the United States can't afford to keep up with China and Russia to a lesser degree as far as the numbers of systems they are producing that we consider to be weapons. 

And so we're going to need friends and Allies and in order to fight in an integrated manner - they're going to need to understand what these systems are. To me, that's the most compelling reason to declassify. Maybe, maybe second to the deterrent reveal/conceal rationale. But we have to be able to share our capabilities with our Allies because we're all going to be fighting together.

09:11 - 11:14

(JS): So let me tell a quick story. You know, it was in 1999, and I was working in the air operations center as we were planning the Kosovo air campaign. 

And I was also working inside the top secret SCIF, working on some space things that we were working on at that time. And, I personally was trying to struggle. How do I use these capabilities and integrate into the air campaign because no one else is cleared for them? And very routinely the first place that those met was at the two-star level. That was the first place where a leader could see kind of the whole picture. 

I even got a reputation working with General, it was General Short at the time. He was the three-star air component commander. He ended up calling me Captain Briefcase because I would just kind of show up with this briefcase to go talk to him and say, ‘Here's what we're doing.’ And he would be happy and warm to chat with me and we developed a good relationship. But he said ‘You know, John, it's nice of you for coming to talk to me, but why aren't we putting this into everything else that we're working and planning on?’  

And, you know, I'm a Captain shrugging my shoulders, saying, ‘Sorry, General, I can't. They're not cleared, but I'm doing the best I can to try to synchronize it behind the scenes.’ 

And as the Deputy Commander of U.S. Space Command, we were synchronizing operational plans with other Combatant Commands, most prominently, INDOPACOM United States Indo-Pacific Command, of course, because of the pacing adversary in China. You know, we're bringing a lot of space capabilities into the fore, but we're needing to synchronize those operational plans, Space Command's plan and INDOPACOM’s plan. It's trying to synchronize goals and ways and means and effects at just the right time in different phases to achieve the optimal result for a combined campaign. And if you can't share all of those capabilities with the INDOPACOM staff or even the components there in INDOPACOM, you've got a problem. 

And so we actually made a lot of progress. We have more progress to make. So I'm not going to say it was as dire as it was in 1999, but it still remains a challenge for that overall, all-domain warfighting integration across Combatant Commands and ultimately to Allies.

11:15 - 11:29
And to that point, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed a memo earlier this year that essentially rewrites the classification policy for space programs.  

What changes are being made and how does this memo tie into the challenges we’ve been discussing?

11:30 - 13:39
(NA): Scott. That's classified. We can't share that information on this podcast. Seriously, I have not seen the memo itself, but I began working on it ten years ago. Then-Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, General Hyten. 

I was his J5 and we began working on a framework for this very reason. The very considerations that we've been discussing: deterrence and what makes deterrence actually work. What do you hold dear? And what do you share or reveal for a deterrent effect? So we set up a framework essentially, and kind of ironically, that memo was classified. 

But what it did was it broke things - systems, capabilities, technologies - into categories of classification. Things you wanted to keep at the top secret level, including Special Access Programs, things that we intentionally wanted to share with Allies at a classified level still, though, and then an unclassified, so it's actually time to reveal these technologies now, knowing full well that things classified at the secret level probably can be discovered by adversaries.  

Those satellites, much like the NRO satellites of the 80s and 90s that were confounding Russia, those capabilities will be able to be detected and tracked and that doesn't mean their true roles and the essence of what they're going to be doing needs to be revealed. But that's going to be a complication that the Space Force is going to have to deal with that their systems and even potentially how they use them can be known to adversaries. 

And I guarantee you, that's the essence of this memo today where all the details behind this memo will be highly classified, so that programs can begin the declassification process and that starts at the level that they're already classified at.

13:40 - 14:16

(JS): I think that's a great background because, again, Nina has been working on this a long time. So I remember early drafts of this memo bouncing around that OSD policy was working on. I don't think I actually ever saw the final version myself either.  

I think another feature, I’ll offer that was in it, and Nina kind of touched on it, is that trying to make a bigger distinction between technologies and general capabilities and physics and actual programs and vulnerabilities. 

And so we tended in space to kind of lump those all into one big basket. And this idea, you should be able to differentiate these things out was part of that approach.

14:17 - 14:36

And so my next question here is: why now? It seems like we have this convergence of space-based threats, our own maturing space-based capabilities, and the need to expand Allied partnerships into the space domain. 

Considering all of these factors - why is now the right time to be re-considering our classification policy for space? 

14:37 - 15:17

(JS:)Well, I would say, it was the right time was probably 20 years ago and then ten years ago. I'm not sure I would agree with the way you said that today - now is the right time. I would say it's more urgent. The urgency is greater than ever. 

And that is because, again, the Joint Force’s reliance and the Allied Force's reliance on space is greater today than it was yesterday, and it will be greater tomorrow than it is today. And so if you're going to properly account for that in multi-domain Joint Warfighting, you have to get to a point where we can all talk about it and understand the interdependencies and the synchronization of all of those capabilities, so that urgency is at its highest point it's ever been.

15:18 - 15:52

(NA): Absolutely, and the national security space architecture that is going to be augmented with Allied capabilities. They're going to want to protect and classify some of their capabilities, as well. Some of their sovereign capabilities, so they're going to have to decide what they want to bring to the table and reveal to the United States so that we can operate together. 

And I think it's just like John said, more urgent every day, because the threat - Oh gosh, it’s just not going away. It's not going away.  

15:53 - 16:34

(JS): Yeah, that's well said. I need to point out that my story about 1999, we had a little bit of a luxury there, right? Because Serbia didn't have space capabilities they were using against us, nor did they really have the ability to go after our space capabilities. 

And even then we struggled to kind of integrate it all together. And that's what I would call that's part of that Second Space Age from the Cold War until we really realized, ‘Hey we've got a threat and it's a warfighting domain,’ which I say was around 2015 is when we made that change. In today's Third Space Age, everything Nina said is true. 

Now you've got an adversary who is using space against you and going after your space capabilities and that just really ups the urgency of necessary integration more to the highest point ever.  

16:35 - 16:59

Thank you, Sir. 

And this leads us to the next stage of our conversation: the role of Allied partnerships in space. Over the past decade, the Combined Space Operations Initiative - or CSpO - has grown to ten members - with Italy, Japan and Norway joining just last year. 

For those in the audience who may not be familiar with CSpO, can you explain what CSpO is? And what purpose it serves?

17:00 - 18:12

(JS): CSpO really was led by the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the early twenty-teens, and its purpose was to start bringing Allies into a discussion about policy and shared architectures.  

And so this was this mechanism, ‘Hey, let's bring leaders together. How can we talk about shared policy? How can we talk about where we might have common needs or shared architectures?’ 

I have to stress that CSpO. The analogy I've used for it is that it is the lobby of a very large hotel or building. It's the beginning of discussions with Allies.   

It is getting in the door, having the discussion and then proceeding to someplace else where we normalize through either operational orders or relationships or command and control or even integrated architectures. So it's just the beginning of that discussion.  

And it was very successful. If one were to look back over the last ten to 12 years that CSpO has existed, we've actually had really constructive discussions with Allies, brought them along, integrated other Allies, brought them along and has been successful. 

But again, it's only the beginning of an alignment that then transitions to more traditional, proven Allied constructs for warfighting together.  

18:13 - 19:18

(NA): I think it was around 2017. And, I was at a CSpO event. It was a tabletop exercise where the scenario was that an adversary was lasing a certain orbit. And so this nefarious behavior was affecting everybody around the table and as we walked through, ‘Okay - what do you do about this?’ 

The representatives from two of the newer countries, the light bulbs came on, you could see it in their face. They're like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we are stronger together.’ And at the time, their nations didn't have a space policy. But when we went through some typical responses - those kinds of things were appealing to these two countries and they, well now, they're part of CSpO. 

But it was really neat to be there. The day that their representatives realized, this is an important alliance. We can participate and we can make our coalition even stronger by being part of this. So I think it's a powerful thing. CSpO has been very successful.  

19:19 - 19:32

Thank you, Ma’am. And so how will initiatives like CSpO help the U.S. extend its traditional Allied partnerships into the space domain? 

And at the same time, how does space present an opportunity to do things differently when it comes to Joint Force operations?

19:33 - 20:31

(NA): Everybody needs space today and so it might even be easier as we move forward with integrating space and it’s because it doesn't even have to be a sovereign capability that a NATO country brings in, for example. 

For space, you don't have to follow all the traditional examples. We can certainly learn from them. But, for example, why couldn't NATO buy space communications as a service? Every country doesn't have to bring a satellite, a space communications architecture, and it's a new way of thinking. So the traditional model of everyone bringing a sovereign capability to the fight. 

I don't think you have to do that in the space domain and that kind of opens the door for other things, like bringing in commercial capabilities where you can just purchase a service or rent a service. There's so much that we can tap into here. It's exciting. It's an exciting time. It's the growing space economy, right, John Shaw?

20:32 - 21:20

(JS): That’s right. Hey, here’s a way to think about it. I think it's inevitable that we're going to see growth of commercial space-oriented organizations in other Allied countries. Probably most of your audience right now could probably start thinking of aircraft-producing companies in other nations. 

Dassault in France, Saab in Sweden, British Aerospace. I mean, ‘How many commercial space companies in other nations can we think of right now?’ It's not a lot. There's a few, but you know, there's not many. Why is that? We just haven't gotten there yet. It's going to happen.  

And there will be other commercial capabilities in Allied nations. We don't really think about that. That's a growth area. There's going to be an emergence of the global space economy and a lot of other commercial space companies in other nations.

21:21 - 21:30

This brings us to an interesting point: we’ve talked about how classification relates to our Allied partners, but how do these policies relate to the DOD’s commercial partners, as well?

21:31 - 22:17

(JS): There are a lot of commercial companies producing cutting edge space capabilities that in many ways rival the more traditional ones that we've developed on the government side. Commercial imaging from space is getting very, very good and the ability to process it and disseminate it and exploit it is getting very good. Commercial communications are probably more advanced now in many ways with the proliferated low-Earth orbit architectures that are being developed and the universality in which that space communications is getting into our society. 

So, what I'm trying to point out is - we could make a mistake by classifying things that the commercial side might already be ahead of in the way that they're using them and there's going to be some cognitive dissonance between there that's not going to allow us to integrate as effectively as we could.
 
22:18 - 23:03

(NA): That's for sure. We definitely as a nation, it's almost like our secret sauce. Well, we have two secret sauces and one of those secret sauces is definitely our, our Allies, the way that we partner with other countries. But the other secret sauce that desperately needs to be brought to bear is the private sector. The commercial capabilities that are coming faster and they are leading edge technologies developed outside of the bureaucracy and integration with those capabilities also probably requires us to look at classifications and deciding, ‘Is it more important to protect secrets that are ten, 20 years old or, you know, is it worth the risk so that we can bring on performing tech?’

23:04 - 23:53

(JS): Yeah. I think Nina's second secret sauce there - commercial. It's really all about our strength and our ability to innovate. It's a great strength that we have and why is it so pertinent to space right now? Again, I’ll go back to space is more important to society than it's ever been. 

There are many opportunities to innovate and use space technologies to drive society forward, to generate capital flow for the space economy. It would be a huge mistake for the Department of Defense to not try to ride that wave. And in order to ride that wave together or work that together, you have to communicate as openly as you possibly can. 

And so that goes back to why we're still going to have to have some form of classification with regard to operational art, how we're going to use things but in terms of capabilities or strategic problems we're facing we should be communicating that with the ever-growing commercial space industry.  

23:54 - 24:06

So all things considered - what about Elara Nova? 

From your perspective as a partners - how can Elara Nova and its team of consultants strengthen these partnerships on behalf of the DOD and the United States Space Force?

24:07 - 24:33

(NA): Elara Nova was born for these kind of challenges.  

One of the things they ask people, ‘What are your challenges? What are your sticking points? Where can I help you?’ And then they put their brainpower to these problem areas and, and find success. All of this is right up Elara Nova’s alley. They can conduct studies, they can do assessments, they can write strategies and bring capabilities to bear for partner nations, all the while fixing their toughest challenges.

24:34 - 25:12

(JS): I'm proud to be associated with Elara Nova. I think that allowing for great communication of problem statements and understanding what challenges are, just like Nina said, I also think it plays a role in sort of we’re necessarily generally poking, ‘Hey, you're doing it wrong, whether it's Department of Defense, stifling innovation or it's commercial, not quite hearing about what the threat is and what we're might be facing or Allies might be facing in the future.’ And so it's just it's all about, I think, communication and sharing the broader problem statements of what we're facing in the domain moving forward and then contributing to the potential solutions there.  

25:13 - 25:50

This has been an episode of The Elara Edge: Expert Insights on Space Security. As a global consultancy and professional services firm focused on helping businesses and government agencies maximize the strategic advantages of the space domain, Elara Nova is your source for expertise and guidance in space security. 

If you liked what you heard today, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a rating. Music for this podcast was created by Patrick Watkins of PW Audio. This episode was edited and produced by Regia Multimedia Services. I’m your host, Scott King, and join us next time at the Elara Edge.