Irregular Warfare Podcast - The Fight for the Final Frontier: Irregular Warfare in Space

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

Episode 99 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast takes us to the final frontier as we examine irregular warfare in space.  Our guests begin by explaining the importance of the space domain in the private and public spheres. They then give us multiple frameworks for thinking about space by using more familiar, terrestrial-based concepts to enhance our understanding of space competition. Finally, our guests conclude by contemplating how private industries could shape the space domain, and how U.S. policymakers should approach space-based deterrence.

I like to always say space is not a seasoning. One does not simply cook up a stew and then at the end of the stew says it needs a little salt and you sprinkle on some space as you're seasoning on the back end of it. It has to be cooked into the stew for the greatest effect. And so what that means for planners, for strategists, is think about space first and foremost, alongside all of the other capabilities that can be brought to bear across all of the domains. And they wanted to integrate space,

and it was in the traditional sense of space supporting the terrestrial warfighter, which is perfectly valid. I want to flip it, and what is not well understood is space activities can have strategic effect in themselves. Welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm your host, Ben Jebb, and my co-host today is Frank Straczynski. Today's episode takes us to the final frontier as we examine irregular warfare in space. Our guests begin by explaining the importance of the space domain and the private and public spheres. They then give us multiple frameworks for thinking about space by using more familiar terrestrial-based concepts to enhance our understanding of space competition. Finally, our guests conclude by contemplating how private industries could shape the space

domain and how U.S. policymakers should approach deterrence in the space domain. Colonel L. Gardner currently serves as the Director of Space Strategy and Policy at Headquarters U.S. Space Force. In that role, he is responsible for developing Space Force institutional visions, strategies, and campaign plans to support national security objectives. Colonel Gardner is a doctoral student at Missouri State University, where he also teaches a graduate course on space policy. Dr. John Klein is a senior fellow in space strategies with Delta Solutions and Strategies, and also instructs space policy and strategy

courses at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctorate levels. In September of 2023, Dr. Klein published Fight for the Final Frontier, Irregular Warfare in Space, which serves as the anchor for today's conversation. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Dr. John Klein and Colonel L. Gardner. Patsy, L., thanks for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. It's great to have you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you very much for being here. Thank you. So today we're going to be delving into new territory. Rarely have we done episodes on space on the Irregular Warfare podcast, and luckily we have two resident experts with us today. And today's episode will actually be framed around John's book. So John, I'd like to just ask you, what inspired you to write a novel on irregular warfare in space? Well, the short answer is it's a book that's been about 20 years in the making. I've always been kind of drawn to understanding the space domain and what strategy means as far as competing nations and states. So my first article, when I delved into it, was when I was at the Naval War College. I wrote an article called Corbett in Orbit, and that used Sir Julian Corbett's

maritime model as inspiration to think about space. That turned into my first book, Space Warfare, shortly after that. I realized you can't really take one domain and one analogy and apply it fully to competition and conflict in the space domain. So if my second book would be called Corbett is Not Enough as a follow-on, so I'm looking at Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Thucydides, B.H. Littleheart, Mao Zedong, and the like, to see what their lessons are. I was always kind of in the back of my head was nagging. Something didn't really seem to be right. When you study Clausewitz's On War,

you talk about total war, major force-on-force action, the decisive point, centers of gravity. The space domain didn't really seem to fit that, at least what we've been seeing for the last decade or so. So I was reading a friend of mine, B.J. Armstrong, who's at the U.S. Naval Academy, wrote a nice little book called Small Boats, Daring Men, and it had to do with irregular warfare in the early Navy. So, you know, because I had taken

maritime analogies, I said I had an aha moment. Perhaps it's not a domain analogy, but what we're talking about is a mode of warfare. So I thought if we explored competition and conflict in space as from an irregular aspect, maybe we would get additional insights. And that's when it kind of brought us to fight for the final frontier, irregular warfare in space. Patsy, kind of building on that, how should our audience think about the space domain? And how is this domain different from traditional domains, you know, such as land, sea, and air? You have a couple of common themes in the book in terms of making that correlation to the sea domain and space domain throughout history, which I think is a pretty powerful analogy. Then how is it important for the U.S. and our allies in terms of understanding

and appreciating this emerging warfighting domain in space? So I'll go back to, can't go wrong quoting Clausewitz. So we talk about the enduring nature of war. I focus on space, but it has to fit into the strategic logic that we already understand of Clausewitz. So to understand the space domain is to understand the other domains of competition and conflict in a fundamental sense. So you can go to the seminal works of others that we've studied for hundreds of years. The space domain has a different character. The character of competition and conflict in the space domain will be different than the character of warfare in the other domains. And so that's fundamental. The geography of space, if you will,

some people say it's geographic. We have astrographic as a term of art. But, you know, space is different. We have Earth orbits. We have low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, geostationary. We have the moon. We have Lagrange points. I go back to celestial lines of communication a lot in my writing. It has an operational context. We know what lines of communication are in land warfare. We know what sea lines of communication are in maritime strategy.

So I use that a lot. The analogy, you know, the celestial lines of communication are different in a geographic sense because they can move as the satellites move and the like. But I think that's an important function. It's not just about things. It's about information in the space domain. So we're using electromagnetic spectrum. We're doing Earth observation, just the services, the context. You could use the analogy tyranny of distance, which is what IndoPACOM uses a lot.

There's a lot of tyranny of distance in the space domain, too. So I think that's helpful. We can go into more specifics on the functions that you can, too. But how should you think about it for your audience? The space domain is an operational domain of competition and conflict. Yeah, Patsy, I agree with what you're saying there, particularly with some of the similarities as well as some of the distinctions that you make with the space domain. We often talk about space as a warfighting domain, and there's a lot for us to try to unpack in terms of what are the implications of that statement. And so the

first principles types of questions that we must ask ourselves is how do we understand this domain? We don't physically reside there. We don't have guardians on ships in space as you would have a naval officer on a ship right there in the domain. There's other characteristics of this domain that I might also bring into the conversation as well. We operate in a domain where there are commercial vendors, there are civil vendors, and they're all in the same domain, all in the same orbits moving around. So we're all in the physical space of this area that we consider to be a contested area under certain circumstances. And so that's an important additional nuance that I would offer when we talk about space as an emerging or fighting domain. There are those nuances, and it's important to understand the nuances so that when we contextualize theories that are out there, we put those theories into the appropriate context to figure out what we can glean from those theories as well as what we might discard from those theories. And Al brings up a great point.

I think it's important for your listeners to understand. Sometimes you'll hear this statement, satellites don't have mothers. And the context is these are just autonomous systems, robotic systems. Who really cares what happens in the space domain if a domain, or elsewhere. So that's a current thinking. That's not going to always be the case. We do have a human space flight taking off, if you will, and in the next few years we'll have more human presence in commercial space stations. So the equivalent for the SOF or the land warfare expert is drone warfare. If you had drones countering other drones, that's a form. But, you know, eventually it's going to be autonomous systems impacting people. And I think that's a good analogy too. Patsy, you bring up an interesting point that

I think is so rich for discussion on space and war fighting. This idea that satellites have no mothers is kind of the calling card for the distinction of space. And it's also the calling card for the idea of we have not yet wrapped our arms around how to treat violence that happens in the space domain. We haven't quite gotten there yet, but we'll need to get there at some point in time. If, in fact, space is a warfighting domain, then how do we feel about warfighting in that domain? We won't take human losses to the same effect that we would in other domains, but we can take losses. So how do we feel about an aircraft being shot down or a ship being sunk versus a satellite being destroyed? Perhaps today there's marked significant difference, and maybe that is appropriate because there are no lives lost. about how do we deal with violence and aggression and low-level intensity types of activities,

gray zone activities, when they happen in space versus when they happen in other domains. Today, I think how we treat that, how we think about that is evolving. And we have not yet reached our full maturity in terms of where we want to land on our reactions to those things. of maturity in terms of where we want to land on our reactions to those things. So, Al, this won't be a show primarily about the U.S. Space Force, but I do have to ask, and this may seem like a really simple question, what is the purpose of the Space Force? What value does it bring? And why do we need an independent U.S. military service branch dedicated to the space domain? Why do we have a Space Force? First and foremost, we have a Space Force to secure our nation's interests in, from, and to space. That is our mission. That is our reason in being, is to secure our nation's interests in, from, and through space. And General

Saltzman has rolled out that mission statement under his tenure as how we identify for ourselves who we are. And that mission statement is from guardians for guardians, not a marketing agency or anything like that that came up with a great slogan. That is from us for us, that those words came out. And though there are only a few words, each of those words has important meaning. Secure. We recognize that this is a contested domain. And so from a space superiority perspective, we need to be able to operate in that contested environment. And we may need to not only operate in a contested environment, we may need to control certain things in that environment as needed for the purposes of securing our national interest. The national interest also become important because space is woven into the very fabric of our everyday being, not just militarily, but across the spectrum of what we do, whether it is agriculture or aviation or banking or shipping. There are a myriad of different ways that we use space on a day-to-day basis. It is a huge part of our economy, and that is growing. And so when you recognize the importance in our day-to-day lives that space provides for us, we recognize that that is worth

preserving and protecting. Patsy, I think that's a great segue to kind of the major components of your book. And two things really struck out to me. One, make the argument that we can readily apply lessons from terrestrial combat to the space domain. And then second, you claim that irregular warfare concepts are highly relevant to the space domain. Can you kind of elaborate on those two points and that connection between what we've seen in conventional irregular warfare and the terrestrial domain and the connections to the space domain? And that is the heart of it. And whenever I talk about the topic of the book, I usually go in some terms of reference. So let's spend a little time, what are we talking about when we say irregular warfare? So again, I took the writings of others that have been doing this for a while, but irregular warfare is apart from major conventional

wars against an enemy who takes a similar approach. Spoiler alert, irregular warfare is not an irregular occurrence. And sometimes I have to emphasize that to the folks. It happens all the time, even though we call it irregular. For some of your listeners out there, they may do some internal eye-rolling because they've just realized I've defined irregular warfare as the opposite of regular warfare. And I would just point out for anyone involved in strategic studies like Elle, this is fairly common. We talked about the direct and indirect approach. We talk about symmetry and asymmetry, where asymmetry only has

meaning with regards to symmetry. So the same with irregular warfare only has meaning relative to regular warfare. It's an old, old idea. Throughout the last few decades, even hundreds of years, we've talked about irregular warfare, but the terminology changes. Sometimes it's asymmetric warfare, counterinsurgency. Sometimes it's asymmetric warfare, counter insurgency. Now we have gray zone operations, which are related but somewhat different, low intensity conflict, terrorism, small wars, which Caldwell wrote about over 100 years ago, paramilitary operations, and the short-lived military operations other than war, which I thought was very descriptive. It's also helpful to have some examples. So the thesis of this is, this is ongoing. And that's why Elle was mentioning

satellites don't have mothers. That's why the irregular warfare model is helpful. You know, we see it in Ukraine right now. We have GPS jamming on both sides. This is not major force on force action. These are actions that are happening below the threshold of armed conflict. force-on-force action. These are actions that are happening below the threshold of armed conflict. We have cyber attacks against commercial companies, rendezvous and proximity operations for coercive effect, and then commercial, which is considered the role of proxies. It's also illustrative of giving examples of irregular warfare. What would regular warfare look like? Fortunately, that will sound like science fiction, and that's good. Let's keep it that way. But this would, again, would be major force-on-force actions in space. So that could be

direct ascent hit-to-kill ASATs against GPS satellites. That could be kinetic kill vehicles against our high-end exquisite intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance satellites. Laser against the same. And then everyone's favorite is rods from God, which are tungsten rods in Earth orbit that could generate maybe two kiloton equivalent. So, Patsy, one of the things I think that's fascinating about what you just said, and in discussing why you have the book, why you wrote the book and what the contents are in imagining conflict in space. I think it's important for military practitioners to have that kind of imagination of how warfare might unfold. And this takes me to a thought on theory, irregular warfare from a theory perspective

and then bridging that to the idea of what we should be thinking from as practitioners, as policymakers, et cetera. And one of the things that I've learned about theory is when you think of theory and its purpose, theory's purpose is to define, explain, connect, and hopefully somewhere along the lines, help you anticipate. hopefully somewhere along the lines, help you anticipate. And so as a practitioner, thinking through the various permutations of how warfare might unfold from a theoretical perspective is what arms you with the ability to imagine how war is going to operate. And from that, it gives you an opportunity to think through, how do I respond to this? How do I respond to that? think through, how do I respond to this? How do I respond to that? You develop your TTPs,

you do war games, you do exercises, you do all these things so that when you step onto the battlefield per se, you have mentally raised your IQ to a level that you are reasonably prepared. That is theory's purpose. And I think it is important to think about irregular warfare as one of those theoretical frameworks for how warfare might unfold in space. So we're starting to put some meat on the bones here. But to me, maybe to some of our listeners, the space domain is pretty intimidating, right? Because it's simply hard to conceive of what space competition and conflict actually looks like. So to demystify space as an operational domain,

could you kind of walk us through maybe a hypothetical scenario of how a space conflict could emerge and what it would look like? I'll go back to that, and I won't actually have to be hypothetical. If I'm doing the irregular warfare model, which again is fairly commonplace, we'll just go to the headlines of the papers. So if irregular warfare is below the threshold of major force-on-force actions against an adversary who takes a similar approach, before the Russian aggression into Ukraine, we had cyber attacks against commercial satellites, space architectures. That was a precursor. We have ongoing GPS jamming on both

sides, trying to deny the access to that. Again, this isn't violence per se in a Klaus Witzian sense, but it's still actions that are coercive in effect. We do have open source. You have rendezvous and proximity operations. You have China PRC capabilities on orbit that a lot of people are taking note of with their rendezvous and proximity capabilities and the like. The more fun one, I think the genesis of your question is, what would large-scale conflict in space look like? And again, I hope we don't see that because I'll just point out to your listeners, like in the land and maritime domain, that because, you know, I'll just point out to your listeners, like in the land and maritime domain, you can choose certain weapons that are indiscriminate obstacles that potentially violate

the law of armed conflict. We're supposed to separate the military object from the non-military object. In space, you have the potential of generating debris, which is the residual effect. So if you kinetically kill a satellite in low Earth orbit, you could cause one object to turn into thousands of pieces of debris that go faster than the speed of a bullet. So that's an indiscriminate obstacle for anything that's in its path or its trajectory. And in land warfare, we talk about anti-personnel mines. We kind of frown upon their use. We don't like open water mining in the maritime domain because you really can't control the eventual effect you have. That's an ongoing occurrence there. So to your question, what's a hypothetical? It's a direct ascent, hit to kill

ASAT, which we test. The United States has tested, Russia has tested, China and India against a satellite in orbit. That would be something impactful. And then you could also have chemical sprayers that could spray the electro-optical system. We have jamming of radio frequency spectrum, and we have lasing of exquisite electro-optical sensors. Yeah, Patsy, I would add to that, perhaps on one or two considerations, you always have the option, if you were to go there, of nuclear weapons could be employed in space for effect in space. As a particular tool, we've often talked about high altitude hemp, if you will, high altitude nuclear detonation. You've also brought up an important point that is another one of those key distinctions when it comes to the space domain and what is perhaps unique.

You brought up debris. And so unlike any other domain, if warfighting is to occur there, it plays out in two categories. There are the things that are perhaps we might categorize as kinetic and those things that are non-kinetic, those things that are reversible effects like laser jamming and all those things. And then you mentioned things like ASATs, which is a fairly permanent kind of thing that destroys something and puts it into a lot of different pieces. Unlike any other domain, we care about creating debris because of the secondary impacts that happen with that. We now have to be concerned about subsequent satellites being destroyed by hitting that debris. That is an aspect of warfighting in space, if it goes kinetic, that the other domains don't have to be concerned with.

If you sink a ship, you torpedo a ship, there's really not the same concern on, I have to avoid that debris. If you shoot down an aircraft, there's not the same concern of I have to make sure that I don't fly into the wreckage. It's a different mentality, if you will, in terms of how things could unfold and the implications of those. And that's why I think some of the things that General Saltzman has mentioned in his competitive endurance, when he talks about responsible counter space campaigning, becomes important. We recognize that we don't want to have conflict in space. However, if it has to go there, we still have considerations and restraints that we choose to place upon ourselves in order to preserve the domain.

Because once things go kinetic, there is no undoing that. And, Al, you brought up the Chief of Space Operations, Competitive Endurance. I started writing the book about three years ago, and that was before General Saltzman came up with this wonderful phrase, Competitive Endurance. Why do I like that term, even though it's not in the book, it's the other side of irregular warfare. So he's talking competition. He's not talking conflict. Okay. So that's below the threshold. And he's talking endurance, which is a protracted, the element of time, which is also a key element in irregular warfare. So, you know, my last chapter, I tried to give, based on historical experience,

what is a cookbook approach on how to counter the irregular strategies of China and Russia, and that's to answer the CSO's question, which I think he gets at. And just to pile on your debris spot on, the other thing is, the debris can be in orbit for decades or centuries. This problem, depending on the altitude, it just doesn't fall from the sky. It could be up there for a long time. So you've used some jargon that I'm slightly unfamiliar with when it comes to maneuvers that are specific to the space domain. For our audience, could you explain what satellite jamming is, what rendezvous and proximity operations are and space system cyber attacks. So satellite jamming is the interfering with the satellite communication. So most satellites use the electromagnetic spectrum, whether it's radio frequencies or lasers.

So if you're ever driving late at night and listening to AM radio or something like that, sometimes when you get within the next station, you'll get the signal interference of the next station. So kind of think of it like that for your radio. Laser blinding, that can be a typical laser that goes after the electro-optical sensors. So again, a driving analogy, if you've ever been hit by the high beams of an oncoming driver into your eyes, if your eyes are the electro-optical sensor, maybe that kind of distorts your vision and what you can do. For rendezvous and proximity operations, again, that's satellites getting close to one another. Maybe you've had a good time in a bar one night, and you're at the bar and maybe being a little too loud or boisterous, and then the bouncer comes up next to you, and he's's really big and he'll move up next to you.

And maybe his presence is causing a coercive effect to change your behavior. So that's a good example of what proximity operations can do. And then cyber attacks. A lot of folks don't realize that the cyber domain and the space domains are kind of intertwined. We have space architectures and the network domain, and we share information. So a cyber attack, if it involves computer networks, can be also a space warfare cyber attack. Patsy, one thing that I'll mention going back to this question too is the questions use an important word when you talked about maneuver. And that's something that I think worthy of exploration in a good conversation about space and warfighting. If we are constrained by

Kepler as our rule set, the way warfare unfolds in space is predictable. You have predictable orbits. You know where satellites are going to be, and there's no element of surprise. It's pretty predictable how to target things. So it gives way to the ability to do the satellite jamming and blinding and to be able to do the rendezvous and proximity operations and some of these other attacks that are mentioned there because we have known trajectories for things as they traverse around the Earth in predictable fashions. And so there are other terms that are beginning to emerge that will become part of our lexicon in the near future as we talk about on-orbit servicing and the myriad of different terms that spin off from that idea, whether it's space access, mobility and logistics or in space assembly and manufacturing,

whatever those terms are, there's a whole emerging suite of technologies that will again change the character of how warfighting could be imagined and unfolded in the space domain. So there's a lot for us to think about now. And on the horizon, there's a lot more for us to think about now and on the horizon, there's a lot more for us to think about because if we get into principles of war, perhaps more of these principles of war will begin to become facets of what we begin to imagine. Maybe we don't have to be beheld by Kepler in its entirety on a day-to-day basis. Maybe rendezvous and proximity gives way to maneuver warfare as a construct. That is another possibility we might consider down the road as this technology continues to evolve. The character is evolving and changing. Patsy, you've kind of alluded to it already,

but a prominent example you used in your book is when Russia conducted a cyber attack against the American satellite company Viasat prior to launching their ground invasion of Ukraine. So how do space operations complement traditional warfare? And how should military and civilian strategists think about integrating the space domain with other warfighting domains? Wonderful question. And of course, I'm going to caveat, that's probably one of the more important questions for the folks in uniform. A little side story, I was supporting the development of a irregular warfare war game, and they wanted to integrate space. And it was in the traditional sense of space supporting the terrestrial warfighter, which is perfectly valid.

That's nothing new or original. If you're in the space community, we do that all the time. Some of the key mission areas that do that are position navigation and timing. So that's your GPS, which is a wonderful technology courtesy of the U.S. Space Force. I can get tacos and pizza delivered to my door, compliments of GPS and our apps on our phones. We have satellite communication. So again, I can get my direct TV or military command and control. That can be via satellite. We have intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. We've seen pictures of that in Ukraine, where you saw the Russian tanks lined up in a row, courtesy of the commercial company Maxar. So that's Earth observation data. And then we have Space Launch, which is part of Space Access Mobility and Logistics. So these are traditional things that we think of. These support the terrestrial warfire, those capabilities, SATCOM, PNT.

The SOF community is very aware of that. I want to flip it, and what is not well understood is space activities can have strategic effect in themselves. So it's not to the terrestrial warfighter. Space maneuvering, actions, non-kinetic, reversible, can have irregular warfare or regular warfare element that can support joint effects for achieving political aims, which is the goal of all wars per Clausewitz. So again, space to support in a conventional sense that we understand how it supports joint operations. But let's not forget that the joint warfighter needs to understand how space can be used to achieve those effects too. That's absolutely right, Patsy. Understanding from the space perspective how things fit and

also in the other domains, also understanding what contributions space can make. So when I think about this question that's been asked on how space complements traditional warfare, I can use words like enable, and I can use words like enhance. And each of those words has extraordinary explanatory power. Enable. One does not drop a GPS guided munition when one does not have GPS. So the ability to have GPS is enabling to be able to drop a GPS guided munition. And so that is one consideration for enabling. And then there is a question of enhancing, being able to see with clarity where the enemy is on the battlefield, where they are massing, where their logistics lines are, seeing with clarity, being able to communicate with certainty, being able to bomb with precision.

These are enabling and enhancing capabilities that we continue to work to understand what is the scheme of maneuver, what is the war plan that includes all of the other domains and activities that will happen, and where does space fit in there to enhance, to enable, to complement? And so it's important for strategists to continue to think about what about space? And most importantly, it's important to ask yourself that question on the front end. I like to always say space is not a seasoning. One does not simply cook up a stew and then at the end of the stew says it needs a little salt and you sprinkle on some space as you're seasoning on the back end of it. It has to be cooked into the stew for the greatest effect. And so what that means for planners,

for strategists, is think about space first and foremost alongside all of the other capabilities that can be brought to bear across all of the domains. Yeah, those are great points. I'm over here trying to brainstorm. If a military decision maker on a joint staff somewhere who has spent their whole life concerned about competition and conflict here on planet Earth, which I think is pretty reasonable and understandable, if they're brainstorming how his or her land operations can support space operations and vice versa, what would you tell them? The second part is pretty easy. So space, again, supporting land warfare, that's the conventional sense. You know, if you ever study the strategy of the People's Liberation Army, you know, we like to segment our strategies and our war fighting per domain. The People's Liberation Army, PRC,

warfighting per domain. The People's Liberation Army, PRC, strategic writings do not do that. So I would say, you need to find out the political aims you're trying to achieve, use your military services to support those aims. If space can help achieve political effect, strategic effect, coercive effect, wherever you want it, that's the role. Do all countries care about space the same as the United States? No. There's going to be some cases where space may have more of a supporting role. There may be occasions in the future where it has more of a significant or primary role to achieve effects, especially if you're trying to keep things below the threshold of armed conflict. You know, if I was to ask, what can the SOF community do to help with irregular warfare in space? One, the SOF community has a wonderful knowledge base. They know their

history. They know the seminal writings, I would presume. So help educate the workforce in that regard, but also realize it's not just space supporting their efforts. It's space achieving those effects too. So Space Force is a military service that needs to focus on competition and conflict in space in its own right. I would also add, if I'm tracking the question, what should a planner think about and how would we advise them? One of the things that I would say is, look to your left, look to your right, and find the guardian force that's right there with you. One of the things that the service has done is it has stood up these component field

commands. And there is one present in Indo-PACOM. There is one present covering down for UCOM AFRICOM. And there's one covering down for U.S. Space Command. And there's in the works to cover down on additional combatant commands in the future. And so the importance of this construct is those guardians that I mentioned before that are trained and educated and think through the tough problem sets on what are our issues and challenges in space, as well as how do we integrate and support and enhance and enable the other domains, we are working to make sure that they are right there present with the other warfighters so that that integration can happen right there where the thinking is happening. Patsy, thanks for incorporating your thoughts on a conversation we had a few months ago at Georgetown on a presentation about this book about the role of SOF in the space domain. I think that'll really appeal to some of our audience. Kind of going further, another prominent theme in one of the chapters in your book discusses how China and Russia have used this concept called law warfare to constrain American actions on orbit. Could you kind of delve into this topic

and talk about kind of the policy implications? Yeah, as a writer, sometimes I know there's a topic I want to address and I don't understand the topic at all. So I use that as an opportunity to research and educate myself. And that was the topic of lawfare in space. So first I'll define it. Lawfare was defined in the early 2000s by Charles Dunlap, the use of the law as a weapon of war. So using legal means to achieve political effect, a weapon of war. It's not violence per se, but that's the terminology used. I was very fortunate when I wrote the book, Charles Dunlap offered to review the chapter on it and incorporate some of his additional ideas. So I'm not legally trained. Whenever I

try to write on strategy, I try to look at the intersection of policy, legal matters, and strategy because there's an interesting dynamic. So what is lawfare if it's use of legal means as a weapon? So I usually define strategy as balancing ends and means. So what are your political ends you're trying to achieve and what are your means? We usually think about military forces, but in this case, it can be legal means. your means. We usually think about military forces, but in this case, it can be legal means. Fundamentally, and this is one of my things that I believe the U.S. DOD does poorly, is sometimes understand the cultural societal differences of our rivals. So a lot of this is called mirror imaging. You know, when we do look at deterrence theory or imposed cost, deny benefit. We use our own view. China, for instance, has a very different view of the law. So in the West, we talk about rule of law. So that's using statute and laws to protect the rights of citizens, privacy, property. In China, it's rule by law. So that's using legal means as a tool of the state for political aims. That is a fundamental difference. I'm not saying this is right or wrong. This is just a societal difference.

So they're going to use legal means to achieve political effects. So that could be distorting using what we consider false narratives, delaying, obfuscation, and the like. And we have some real world examples of that. There was a draft treaty that Russia and China put together. The short version is called PPWT, the long name of it. And you'll understand why there's a short version. It's the Prevention and Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and the Threat and Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects. So it was a draft treaty that China and Russia said, we are against weapons in space. We don't want to see conflict in space.

So we're putting forth this draft treaty, and it talked about space weapons. It did not include direct ascent, hit-to-kill ASATs, which they had capabilities of. So fundamentally, we say, what is a space weapon? Does it include things that are terrestrial launch that can take out satellites? The U.S. purview is, yes, it does. And they were being disingenuous by putting forth a treaty that they knew would kind of limit U.S. advantage in the space domain because we were perceived as having more capability in that regard. So other terrestrial

examples, if you look at the South China Sea, how they're harassing the Filipino fishermen, building artificial features, trying to extend out, not observing world courts, judicial rulings on what their behavior is, that goes along with lawfare. I think it's fascinating to explore, and it'll be a continued topic. That's a great put on lawfare, and I'm glad we brought this question up because it's important to recognize. I mentioned before about theory and I mentioned before about some of the considerations of what happens before the conflict begins. And setting conditions on how to put yourself in a favorable position before a conflict begins is part of the art. And Russia and China play this game quite adeptly. Another example beyond the ones that Patsy mentioned is Russia recognizes how commercial space capabilities contribute to the ability of Ukraine or you pick a country to be able to do

the things they need to be able to do to enhance and enable their warfighting capability. Being able to have something as simple as internet and comms is one example. And so for its effort, Russia now opposes and is trying to use the UN and some of the various venues within COPUS, et cetera, to try to advance an agenda that says we should stricken the use of commercial capabilities in enhancing warfare. That would be another permutation in my estimation of how we were playing the lawfare game and how Russia is playing a lawfare game. They're trying to set legal conditions that give them military advantage that they would not otherwise be able to get other than going into a kinetic state. And so that's another example that I

would offer for that. And I would offer one other piece on this. When it comes to typology of lawfare, one of the other considerations is this idea of compliance and compliance lawfare. And what I mean by that is there's an expectation that the U.S. will play by the rules and Russia and China will count on that and use that to their advantage as they break the rules. And so this is why we have to always be circumspect when we have discussions about rule setting and laws and treaties because we have to be very cautious and circumspect on making sure that we don't disadvantage ourselves as we approach these different vehicles. So I remember being fascinated by the idea that Elon Musk was using Starlink to provide a digital lifeline for Ukrainian soldiers, which is really my way of asking, what role will private industry or even individual space privateers play in the space domain? I dedicate a chapter to it. It's fascinating. You know, as background going forward, most of the satellites on orbit are commercial. Right now,

if you want to get to space on a space launch vehicle, it's a commercial asset. You know, Starlink's commercial has been used in Ukraine by Ukrainian forces, at least in part. I find it fascinating, and especially for this community. So as irregular warfare, commercial is important because you have the indirect approach. So just a quick background, B.H. Littleheart coined the word in his book, Strategy. So just a quick background, B.H. Littleheart coined the word in his book Strategy. He saw the indirect approach as a suitable method of avoiding class witsy and classical violence. So no need to have all the dead bodies in a traditional conventional force on force

action if you could achieve your aims otherwise. So commercial companies are seen as a way of that and also for potentially asymmetric advantage due to their technology and their capabilities. I want to also highlight that commercial companies and competition and conflict can act as proxies, and it can be proxy war. So again, this is an idea that goes back millennia. The idea of force for hire goes back to ancient times. If you don't have a military capability, you are going to purchase it if you have the economic means. In more recent times, we like to talk about, well, maybe we don't like to talk about private military companies. And it's a little dirty secret, there's a big

business for that, even in the West. But we'll pick on the Wagner Group since they made the headlines. So most private military companies since they made the headlines. So most private military companies, they'll provide services. So training is something private military companies can do, logistical services, and then, of course, in the classical security services, some types of armed force potentially. I will point out in the space domain, we are seeing logistical services now. We have potential refueling satellites in geostationary orbit by commercial companies. So maybe we see the beginnings of private military companies, and Sean McFade doesn't pull any punches, and let's call them

what they are. These are mercenaries. So are we going to have space mercenaries? History would suggest money always finds a way. So there's a broad array of ways that private industries can play in the space domain, even in times of crisis and conflict. And I think from a policy consideration, an interesting question to ask ourselves is where do we want to draw the line in terms of what commercial can and will or should do? Because in terms of a technological capacity, there are marketplaces and there are companies that are building an array of different technologies that have dual use capability, that can have military utility for whatever scheme of maneuver we have for warfighting purposes. And so one of the questions we ask ourselves is, if we talk about things in terms of kill chain, and we talk find, fix,

target, track, engage, assess, within that, where would commercial not be a participant? From a policy perspective, we have to ask and answer that. Find, okay, fix, okay, track, probably target, maybe we're getting a little uncomfortable now, engage, probably getting uncomfortable, assess, I'm comfortable with that. There's so many technologies that are on the horizon or exist today that the possibilities are limitless across the kill chain. The only question that I have with my policy hat on is, where are we going to say, I'm going to reserve this activity to be a uniquely military function versus something that I would choose to use as a service from a commercial provider? That becomes a policy

consideration that we'll have to work our way through going forward. So that's kind of a good way to wrap up, I think. And this question will be for the both of you, but I'll direct it at Elle first. Based on today's conversation, what are the major considerations for policymakers, academics, and practitioners who are interested in the space domain? Some of the major considerations that I might offer for you is we have to imagine from a policy perspective where we want to draw lines in terms of what is okay and what is not okay. From a policy perspective, we have to think through the challenges of attribution and make sure that we equip and enable being able to see with clarity

what our adversaries are doing and when they're doing something nefarious, be able to call that out. From a policy perspective, we need to have clarity of thought in terms of when we see nefarious activity, how will we respond? Going back to the idea of satellites have no mothers, we must come up with our own thinking framework on how we choose to respond to escalation and aggression as it applies to space. If there are no mothers to lose, if there are no soldiers, sailors, airmen to lose, and we choose to say, well, that makes things different, then let's imagine within the context of that difference, what our policy, what our national interests are and where we want to draw those red lines on how we want to respond. We may not choose to declare those red lines. We may choose to declare those red lines,

but how deterrence works and how some of these other factors work become very important for us from a policy perspective. We've got a lot of thinking to do. And when it comes to the participation of commercial entities and recognizing that there's human space flight and all these civil activities that are happening in the same physical confines. We have to work our way through who does what to whom and who has what mission authority. And those are some of the policy considerations I would offer. And then Patsy, same question to you. What are some of the considerations for policymakers, academics, and practitioners interested in the space domain? Whenever I start talking about space policy or

future initiatives, I always come back to a saying I write about. Space is not special. It's just wonderfully different. It's just policy that involves space. So it's not space policy per se. So you can't separate it as to something else. So Elle was spot on when it has to do with space domain awareness and attribution. We touched on the role of commercial a little bit. It's still not well understood. You want to point again back to Ukraine. Putin said that he considers SpaceX's Starlink an extension of the United States.

So basically, a commercial company is a legitimate military target. a commercial company is a legitimate military target. It's not an original insight that future U.S. rivals may consider U.S. companies legitimate military targets, but let's flip it. Let's ask the folks in uniform, are the commercial capabilities of future adversaries legitimate military targets? And when I ask that question, about half of them say, yeah, of course we will. And then I do teeth sucking, but we have the law of armed conflict. We say that we separate the military object from the non-military object. So we know this question is going to come up. So maybe it's not even our rivals. Maybe it's third-party services.

Maybe there's a country such as India that's not part of a conflict, but is providing commercial services to our rival. Are we going to consider that fair game to go after? country such as India that's not part of a conflict but is providing commercial services to our rival? Are we going to consider that fair game to go after? Again, these are questions that we know we are going to have. Let's ask them, and our allies and partners are going to have a view too. If you're going to do coalition warfare, which is something the U.S. has done the last few conflicts, we need to have this a conversation because they may not feel comfortable with our answer. Another area, this interconnectedness of the cyberspace and space domain, I don't think it's fully understand. From a strategic point of view, does that mean that

warfare goes between the two domains pretty rapidly, where initiation in one domain can translate into another? I don't really know. This idea of space debris, you know, DOD issued the tenets of responsible behavior, avoiding long-lived debris was one of them. So how do you achieve military effects by trying to minimize debris? I think we know part of that answer, maybe technology has not really kept up. And the last one is the future is uncertain. So I live in DC. There's lots of think tanks in DC that think they have the dominant solution for all the country's woes. And they give you these glossy little brochures of the next deterrent strategy or whatever it's going to be. I was studying under Colin Gray and he always beat us up. The future is unknowable

in any detail. So you have to plan for a range of potential futures. So that includes the high end from the low end, regular warfare, irregular approaches. Let's have a deterrent strategy that impacts intra-war deterrence. So we know we should have effective decision calculus of rivals during conflict. Let's start fleshing out some of those strategies too. All right. Well, gentlemen, this has been my first theoretical foray into the final frontier. And what a pleasure it's been to host you two, you know, just two absolute subject matter experts. So thanks again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast.

Thank you for having me. This was wonderful. Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare Podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks. Next episode, Alyssa and LJ will discuss disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration in post-conflict societies. will discuss disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration in post-conflict societies. Be sure to subscribe to the Irregular Warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode. The podcast is a product of the Irregular Warfare Initiative. We are a team of all volunteer practitioners and researchers dedicated to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners

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