NE Space Law Week - Counterspace Threats Today and Tomorrow

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10/07/2020 Added

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Speaker Brian Weeden, Director of Program Planning at Secure World Foundation joins Nebraska Law Professor Jack Beard for a discussion on counterspace threats.

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[00:59:29.010]Jack Beard: And now I get to introduce my very good friend distinguished colleague Dr Weeden of the secure world foundation with his
[00:59:37.350]Jack Beard: Presentation of great actress, we're not losing any participants at this point. I know they're probably growing with this opportunity to look at Outer Space weapons threats today and tomorrow, please take it away, Brian.
[00:59:51.990]Brian Weeden: Well, thank you very much, Jeff for that kind introduction and for inviting to today's discussion. So what I'm planning to do here is I've got you know roughly 15 minutes or so of comments.
[01:00:06.330]Brian Weeden: Sort of on that general topic that you were just talking about of counter space capabilities kind of based weapons. Where do we stand today where we potentially going in the future.
[01:00:16.950]Brian Weeden: And then I'd like to open it up to any kind of questions from the audience questions from you jack or others for the remaining amount of time here.
[01:00:25.440]Brian Weeden: Um, so I'm going to, I think, make the mistake of following what was an excellent panel discussion on the fallacy of making legal analogy. It's been space in their domains.
[01:00:36.330]Brian Weeden: By starting out with analogy myself between space and the domain. If I had to pick one word to talk about what is happening with counter space threats.
[01:00:48.090]Brian Weeden: I would use the word proliferation and I use that with a deliberate nod to the nuclear context. What I mean by proliferation.
[01:00:58.200]Brian Weeden: Is that we are seeing a growing number of countries that are pursuing counter space threats and the type in a number of countries threats is diversifying
[01:01:11.820]Brian Weeden: And that's for leading to a much more complex and potentially serious threat environment in the very near future. So let's let's sort of unpack that a little bit. Um,
[01:01:24.180]Brian Weeden: During the Cold War, we had two superpowers United States of Union who were engaged in a serious competition. Pretty much everything short of active armed conflict.
[01:01:35.730]Brian Weeden: As part of that competition. They both develop space capabilities and they both developed and tested counter space capabilities.
[01:01:44.520]Brian Weeden: And I said, indirect sort of a contrast is somewhat you may have heard some political rhetoric of, you know, space was always peaceful before and now it's not peaceful and now its potential war zone.
[01:01:56.010]Brian Weeden: It's more complex than that. We had a period of roughly 50 years where there was development and testing and operational deployment.
[01:02:06.990]Brian Weeden: Of offensive counter space weapons. I want to make the point that you know in the 1960s, United States had rockets.
[01:02:15.630]Brian Weeden: Operational in on Johnston and Kwajalein atolls and the Pacific equipped with nuclear warheads to take out satellites that was not a threat threat a capability that was an actual deployed capability.
[01:02:28.620]Brian Weeden: So there was this brief law in the 1990s, following the class of Union where we sort of forgot about the importance of or the threat of counterfeit weapons.
[01:02:40.980]Brian Weeden: But that didn't last very long since the early 2000s, there has been a resurgence. And this is where their proliferation comes in.
[01:02:48.750]Brian Weeden: Of the offensive kind of his capabilities with several countries now developing them so quick rundown of what we have right now. And this is based on the
[01:02:59.700]Brian Weeden: data that we've collected the assessment we made in the annual global counter space capabilities reports that the scheduled foundation develops and publishes last few years.
[01:03:11.400]Brian Weeden: Also not shout out to our colleagues at the Center for Strategic International Studies CSIS who we collaborate with and they published a separate kind of fish report of their own.
[01:03:24.420]Brian Weeden: So what we're seeing is that all three of what I'll call the great powers currently US, Russia and China have multiple efforts underway to at least do research and development of offensive counter space capabilities.
[01:03:38.040]Brian Weeden: And they're also doing some on Oba testing and demonstrations and a few of those things may actually becoming operational. I'm going to go through some categories here.
[01:03:48.540]Brian Weeden: The first is we call direct ascent weapons. These are some sort of a kill vehicle launch from a ground based missile or a ship or an aircraft that goes up into space and collides with a satellite
[01:04:01.650]Brian Weeden: For directors in a SAS targeted against low Earth orbit satellites
[01:04:07.230]Brian Weeden: China is likely have an operational input capability, Russia is testing a capability that may become operational the next few years, and the United States likely has an operational capability.
[01:04:18.600]Brian Weeden: With its missile defense interceptors that were tested in 2008 against a satellite particularly there's a new version of the ship based SM three block to a now entering production.
[01:04:33.570]Brian Weeden: That could be significant directors nascent weapon beyond Leo. We've seen one test from geo that may have gone as high as 30,000 kilometers, but there's no confirm tests that we know of. Beyond that, so that may just been experiments that doesn't look like there's a lot of focus on that.
[01:04:53.280]Brian Weeden: Second big category is co orbital, a set weapons and these are essentially a satellite that are put into orbit.
[01:05:00.540]Brian Weeden: And then alter or change their orbit to get close and approach and their object and do bad things to it and that that could be through direct contact collision. It could be some sort of fragmentation. It could be some sort of onboard direct energy or or or electronic warfare weapon.
[01:05:18.540]Brian Weeden: We know that the Soviet Union had an active quarter program during the 1960s in the 1980s couple dozen tests.
[01:05:28.530]Brian Weeden: That has gone away, but there is currently being testing underway by Russia at least one that we think, pretty sure was a cobra lace that weapon.
[01:05:41.280]Brian Weeden: US and China. Both have active programs to develop rendezvous and proximity operations capabilities that are being used for inspection surveillance intelligence collection, but could be turned into covertly set weapons in their future.
[01:05:59.730]Brian Weeden: In the geostationary belt or regime. We've seen again, Russia, China and the US all have active RP oh programs there again for inspection intelligence, surveillance.
[01:06:11.310]Brian Weeden: That could be used for offensive capabilities, if they so chose
[01:06:16.740]Brian Weeden: Third candle or next categories can be directed energy weapons. This is really hard to judge based on open source because it's kind of hard to observe
[01:06:24.150]Brian Weeden: We know both us and Soviets had Cold War era efforts to develop things like high powered lasers and particle beams. We are pretty sure the US and Russia have restarted at least a few of them.
[01:06:38.130]Brian Weeden: China or Russia, in particular, likely has an operational or near operational mobile ground and air based laser dabblers
[01:06:47.430]Brian Weeden: These are not things that can punch a hole in a satellite, but they could, you know, sort of like turning up shining a flashlight in your eyes temporarily blind the optics and prevent it from taking photographs
[01:06:57.960]Brian Weeden: China also has some dedicated facilities and research potentially an operational one near its Carla missile test site.
[01:07:06.810]Brian Weeden: Electronic warfare. This is jamming spoofing interference. This is a relatively new capability because we're actually seeing it happen if you look across
[01:07:19.290]Brian Weeden: Some several armed conflicts right now going on in Ukraine, Syria, previous one in Crimea.
[01:07:25.230]Brian Weeden: There is relatively routine operational use of electronic warfare as part of those armed conflicts. And then we're also seeing
[01:07:33.810]Brian Weeden: Electronic Warfare jamming interference, particularly with GPS being used outside of those there's
[01:07:40.920]Brian Weeden: I say the first new entrant, I would say outside of the US, Russia and China on what highlight is that is India.
[01:07:46.860]Brian Weeden: India has tested a ground launched recognize that weapon twice. The first was a failure. The second was success and destroyed any and satellite
[01:07:55.710]Brian Weeden: They have since said that was a one time demonstration. But there's reasons I think to, perhaps, doubt that
[01:08:02.820]Brian Weeden: We just saw that, for example, the Indian government is selling commemorative stamps of this indication
[01:08:08.580]Brian Weeden: Of this test and several months ago at a defense Expo show had the missile system on display bragging about is being used.
[01:08:17.730]Brian Weeden: This is actually a show where they're having many other weapons systems that are up for export being shown off. So I think that I'm not quite convinced that India has said that is a one time use only and will never be done again.
[01:08:31.380]Brian Weeden: There are a few other countries that we know have at least some
[01:08:36.240]Brian Weeden: Electronic Warfare or cyber capabilities that can be used against satellites, the two big ones. There are Iran and North Korea. North Korea.
[01:08:43.380]Brian Weeden: And there's been several examples of them using those either to jam commercial satellite communications signals or to jam civil GPS satellite navigation signals.
[01:08:55.290]Brian Weeden: To relatively new countries that all call. It's a counter space curious.
[01:09:00.030]Brian Weeden: France and Japan. Both have recently issued policies or strategies that call for developing their own offensive counter space capabilities.
[01:09:10.530]Brian Weeden: Although we don't know yet as to what degree that is going to be followed through or what they're actually going to do
[01:09:17.460]Brian Weeden: Francis openly talked about mounting directed energy weapons of some type on small satellites and also developing ground based directed energy weapons.
[01:09:26.550]Brian Weeden: Japan certainly has the technical foundations for several different types of counters capabilities and they're also partners with us in the ages Missile Defense Program, which gives them access to the SM three, which again as I mentioned earlier, is a potential director sent a set weapon.
[01:09:44.760]Brian Weeden: And then there's another group of countries that I think have the resources and potential ability to develop counter space weapons of their own.
[01:09:56.100]Brian Weeden: Should they choose to do so, but have not yet done that. And on that list. I'll put Israel Australia, the United Kingdom, Turkey, United Arab Emirates.
[01:10:06.660]Brian Weeden: Now obviously, most of these countries are not likely adversaries of the United States summer several are actually even close allies of United States.
[01:10:15.090]Brian Weeden: So question is is really a concern if we're talking about counter space threats in the context in their states.
[01:10:22.050]Brian Weeden: I think it is because I think it's important to think about this as a whole, if we're talking about proliferation dynamics.
[01:10:31.080]Brian Weeden: We're talking about a potential situation where there may be counter space weapons used in a conflict that the United States is not a party to the United States did not start
[01:10:42.930]Brian Weeden: Or or maybe neutral in or just may not even see coming and that may have an effect on the United States and other countries.
[01:10:53.400]Brian Weeden: As was mentioned in the previous panel. One of the big differences between warfare in our space and warfare. Elsewhere is the weapons used in our space may have potentially lethal effects that long last type far out last the length of the conflict itself.
[01:11:12.990]Brian Weeden: Beyond just armed conflict itself. I think there's a whole other issue of counter space use and so called gray zone conflict or even in periods of geopolitical tension.
[01:11:25.620]Brian Weeden: We've seen long running a rainy and jamming of Eutelsat because they did not like some of the signals are rebroadcast we've seen
[01:11:37.050]Brian Weeden: Pretty blatant a regional jamming are spoofing of GPS signals in Russia, Moscow Moscow in Crimea in that region.
[01:11:47.370]Brian Weeden: And then also, most recently, last year in the port of Shanghai region where over the course of one day more than 300 ships reported a GPS disruption to the point where basically their GPS unit showed, they were all running in little circles which they were obviously not
[01:12:08.880]Brian Weeden: So in conclusion, where does that leave us going forward. Well, I think, unfortunately, we'd have to say that the development of offensive counterfeit capabilities and weapons is here to say
[01:12:25.050]Brian Weeden: That is a function of space, having emerged as an important part of military capabilities military operations and national security writ large.
[01:12:39.510]Brian Weeden: Because space is playing a part of military operations. There is an incentive for countries to try and deny degrade destroy those capabilities.
[01:12:51.150]Brian Weeden: If they're in a conflict with that other country in the future. So you have a much greater incentive today to develop these counters capabilities. I think even then.
[01:13:02.580]Brian Weeden: When we were back during the Cold War, while I said, you know, early. I started this discussion. There was quite a bit of development during the Cold War, we didn't see destructive counterfeits typically used between the US and the Soviet Union.
[01:13:18.510]Brian Weeden: And I think part of that was that space capabilities at that time were primarily being used for strategic purposes. Things like monitoring movements and collecting intelligence.
[01:13:32.790]Brian Weeden: Verifying treaties and also nuclear warning and nuclear command and control.
[01:13:39.780]Brian Weeden: So there was not nearly as much direct, you know, kind of tactical benefit that could be gained by interfering with this capabilities.
[01:13:51.690]Brian Weeden: And that potential interference, may you know impact, something that was used again for new get a warning nuclear command control which could then trip nuclear conflict that everyone was trying to avoid today things a little bit different.
[01:14:07.710]Brian Weeden: There are countries that are using space that don't have those same links between space and nuclear warning and you could grant troll.
[01:14:16.530]Brian Weeden: And I'll go as far as to say, pretty much, Russia and China or Russia United States are the only countries that have any sort of a link between their nuclear
[01:14:27.030]Brian Weeden: Deterrence and space. So for many other countries. That's not even really a consideration.
[01:14:33.000]Brian Weeden: We've also seen again space capabilities move down the chain from tactical down to operational and aside from strategic down to operational even tactical use interdimensional warfare, which means now there are much more of a legitimate military targets in those in future armed conflicts.
[01:14:55.800]Brian Weeden: So I think all all that to say counters weapons are here to stay. I think if there is a future armed conflict, it's, it's essentially
[01:15:08.520]Brian Weeden: Certain. Well first, I'll say that outside of armed conflict we are likely to see routine or relative or routine interference jamming was base capabilities, because right now there isn't really anything preventing us
[01:15:23.250]Brian Weeden: We didn't talk about on the previous panel. But there are some pretty big loopholes in things like the it you convention and other existing international legal frameworks.
[01:15:34.620]Brian Weeden: That just sort of make room for military interference and jamming. And we've seen quite a bit of state practice, suggesting that that's routinely used and not a lot of complaints about it.
[01:15:46.980]Brian Weeden: Within an armed conflict. I think it just assumed that there's going to be widespread interference that may even spill over to civilian effects and then the big question is what about kinetic weapons are they going to be used in a future armed conflict.
[01:16:02.850]Brian Weeden: I I unfortunately think they might, but there is the case, there is that the chance that they may serve mainly a I'll say a performative role in that.
[01:16:16.680]Brian Weeden: They're used for demonstrating publicly that your space power. And I think there may still be some
[01:16:24.810]Brian Weeden: hesitancy to use them in armed conflict. But unfortunately, we just don't know. And we probably won't know until we get to that point. So with that, jack, I will wrap up and back over to you for any questions or comments you have or we want to take some audience questions.
[01:16:41.070]Jack Beard: Well, I'll start. I'll start with one Brian and thank you very much. You know, it's obvious how popular you are as the count only goes up when you come on for audience. So thank you. The draw
[01:16:54.960]Jack Beard: I guess my first question is about all of these rendezvous and proximity operations obviously trance got very upset about the Russian
[01:17:08.130]Jack Beard: Based object slash satellite and the United States has made some similarly pretty if not threatening serious comments. What are the Western Allies to do about these
[01:17:20.910]Jack Beard: ever closer almost interference, but not called that RPM. So is there is there any option to the Allies and then complaining or starting a war what's what's
[01:17:34.110]Brian Weeden: That that's a great question. So to briefly recap which X talking about there was a. It's been a long running series last few years of a Russian satellite
[01:17:43.380]Brian Weeden: Known closed loop that has been moving around the geostationary belt and parking itself next to a satellite to several different countries and a couple of years ago. It did so.
[01:17:55.530]Brian Weeden: Next to a satellite that is that is partly owned by the French military and and is considered a military communication satellite
[01:18:04.830]Brian Weeden: On the other side we have seen just in the last year, a series of Russian satellites in low Earth orbit that have done some rendezvous approx outs with each other.
[01:18:15.150]Brian Weeden: To have those have since gone off and I'll use the word shadowed a US reconnaissance satellites, a very expensive important classified reconnaissance satellites and then after shadowing it moved away from it. And then one of them released. What is only best subscribers a high speed projectile
[01:18:35.760]Brian Weeden: So there you have something that's very disturbing united states that this thing was
[01:18:41.610]Brian Weeden: From, from a relative energy perspective fairly close to an important strategic asset and may have had a kinetic weapon of some kind, on it.
[01:18:51.540]Brian Weeden: So those are the two incidents that the jack was referring to.
[01:18:54.660]Brian Weeden: At this point, there really isn't anything that can be done in terms of a legal sense given the current framework because there is nothing that says you can't come close to another satellite
[01:19:07.830]Brian Weeden: There's no legal definition of a keep out zone or a boundary or to close.
[01:19:13.860]Brian Weeden: And also, say, the United States has conducted its own fair share rendezvous approx ops, including with other countries satellites in the geo belt and low Earth orbit.
[01:19:25.800]Brian Weeden: Before Russia and China did this. So, the United States has been part of this establishment of what I'll say state practice that it's okay to come within what's in the geo belt 10 kilometers of somebody else's satellite
[01:19:39.270]Brian Weeden: without their permission or without really telling anybody, you're there. So right now we're in a situation where that's just sort of accepted behavior.
[01:19:47.220]Brian Weeden: Going forward, I think there are some options right there's been quite a lot of discussions within the US military and the allies.
[01:19:53.640]Brian Weeden: Over whether or not they should establish some sort of a keep out zone or if you come within a certain distance of a satellite. You have to you know make some sort of a declaration.
[01:20:07.590]Brian Weeden: That is very difficult to do. It's a difficult from a legal perspective, it's also difficult from a technical perspective.
[01:20:14.850]Brian Weeden: Because we're talking about relative energy here I can be saying the geostationary belt. I can be you know 200 kilometers away from you and it's still relatively easy for me to get right up close, whereas in low Earth orbit.
[01:20:29.160]Brian Weeden: I can be in an orbit that periodically comes very close to you but energetically, but really quite difficult distance. And if I wanted to do something. It's require a lot more effort so
[01:20:39.570]Brian Weeden: Just, you know, designing a I'll say a militarily useful and legally useful keep out zone is extraordinarily difficult to do.
[01:20:49.380]Brian Weeden: I'm so close by, say think the one thing that they may be able to do is, there's always, you know, our Article nine Outer Space Treaty.
[01:20:57.060]Brian Weeden: Which says you can request consultations, if someone else and outer space is doing something that you think might have my cause interference.
[01:21:05.190]Brian Weeden: Or might cause you problems to date. I'm not aware of any examples of a country invoking Article nine so so that's always something that that that's a potential tool, but I don't think really has been used yet.
[01:21:18.000]Jack Beard: That's a great answer. You've mentioned the legal and technical problems of setting up a zone, in theory, some sort of warning zone could
[01:21:27.720]Jack Beard: Perhaps forestall some conflict but applied in properly or applied in a way that makes the other side of react and create their own big zones, you don't know the policy.
[01:21:38.220]Jack Beard: Question is pretty significant. If you're met an excellent point to and categorizing whatever that project out going by, or that proximity operation means you could say it.
[01:21:49.590]Jack Beard: A lack of due regard by the other state and Oracle mind, you can say it's interference or
[01:21:55.080]Jack Beard: Or potential. And as for the consultation, you can get more angry and say that it's a threat of the use of force or using boards or an incipient arms attack or and I'm detect as you go up the scale, but you would hope that
[01:22:07.860]Jack Beard: The cause of world peace to try to find a way lower down the scale to characterize it and read some sort of of understanding about what's happening, but that is that is not what they're doing, as, as you said,
[01:22:21.930]Jack Beard: So what one real quick point on that I
[01:22:23.490]Brian Weeden: I think you're on. I think the main benefit of declaring a a keep us on whatever
[01:22:29.940]Brian Weeden: Is to be used for indications and warning. Right. I don't think it's, it means, as we talked about to be very difficult legally enforce that. It's very difficult to use it.
[01:22:38.730]Brian Weeden: As an actual protective measure, I think there could be use in using it for indications and warning that something potentially aggressive is happening that you could then working your rules of engagement. I think that's probably the primary benefit there, right.
[01:22:52.080]Jack Beard: And for for the audience here this topic of zones of courses is absolutely at the forefront of military space operations right now and
[01:23:02.250]Jack Beard: While Brian and I are talking about something that involves indicating and warning loose ambiguous language about what the zone is and what it means is very dangerous because
[01:23:14.760]Jack Beard: As Brian noted the initial reaction that a lot of countries and viewers might say is, you're talking about an exclusionary zone.
[01:23:21.900]Jack Beard: And that's going to not be consistent with the Outer Space Treaty and it's going to offend allies neutrals and
[01:23:30.120]Jack Beard: antagonize adversaries as well. So it's a it's a dicey operation to try to get to in a way that's going to stop or prevent or limit conflict. Well, I think we have a question that you and I will both enjoy
[01:23:44.160]Jack Beard: In terms of comparing weapons systems and I know you'll have an opinion on on this, this question is I'm not. It's not an optimistic comparison.
[01:23:53.970]Jack Beard: But isn't there more than a little similarity between landmines left in the ground and armed conflicts and the creation of debris in orbit. I think I know part of what you're going to say, go ahead, Brian.
[01:24:07.890]Brian Weeden: Well, okay, let's just start from a tactical standpoint, right, because people have talked about, you know, space minds, right, that, that, that is something that back in the 1980s. People were writing about
[01:24:19.350]Brian Weeden: And what that's being referred to is a relatively small satellite that would get close to their satellite, maybe even, you know, physically like like doc to it or attach itself to it. And then at some point in the future could detonate that's destroying that the parent object.
[01:24:40.200]Brian Weeden: And by the way, that that seems to be the primary reason that US military there's a soul worked up about rendezvous and proxy shops.
[01:24:48.960]Brian Weeden: Is the potential for something to be used as a, let's say, a limpet mine in space. So limpet mind being something that you would have
[01:24:55.560]Brian Weeden: A diver might attached to a ship a Navy ship and then it would rupture on the hall and put a hole in the hall and and you know you know cause damage, maybe in the ship the sink.
[01:25:05.310]Brian Weeden: So the first thing to say a spec or physics question explosions and space or not really. Not really explosions, like we think of our earth.
[01:25:12.180]Brian Weeden: There's no atmosphere. So there's no pressure wave. There's no concussion. If I you know explode something next year satellite
[01:25:19.770]Brian Weeden: You're going to get a spray of fragments that the pieces of the thing that exploded a burst of energy that kind of just transferred line of sight. And that's really about it.
[01:25:31.200]Brian Weeden: So if you, you know, most people don't realize this. When you throw a grenade into a closed room.
[01:25:36.300]Brian Weeden: A Hollywood. We see this big Fireball. That's not what happens reality, what happens, the reality is there's a concussive blast.
[01:25:42.930]Brian Weeden: From the explosion and then the shrapnel goes everywhere and you die, either because of the older pressure from that concussive blast or because the shrapnel, you know, put a lot of holes in your body.
[01:25:54.750]Brian Weeden: In space, you basically just have that second one is the holes. So first I'll say is that mines in space.
[01:26:01.830]Brian Weeden: Or not. Probably not as effective as a as a limpet mine or equivalent bomb being used or mine on earth in a terrestrial sense because there's not can custom, you still have this this fragmentation thing.
[01:26:16.170]Brian Weeden: But now you've got sort of the probability of are you getting enough fragments and are those fragments going to go in the right direction and are they going to hit something critical on the target satellite
[01:26:26.010]Brian Weeden: So it's not quite as useful a weapon, I would say, um, but it still could be and if you've got a couple of them and you know use one or even just want to damage the satellite
[01:26:35.340]Brian Weeden: And so, so it's so quick question was about, about the legality of landmines and the creation of debris.
[01:26:43.500]Brian Weeden: Um, there are some differences. One is landmines don't move and debris does right so you can say, you know, this particular area was mind and you can put it off limits and have some sort of a cleaning operation.
[01:26:55.770]Brian Weeden: In space stuff moves. And so if you create debris in even if you created just an NGO, it's going to move and it'll eventually percolate down even through Leo given enough time, sort of kind of everywhere.
[01:27:09.570]Brian Weeden: So I think that that's a really big difference. And then the other one. And I like your opinion on this jack is
[01:27:17.130]Brian Weeden: You know, a lot of stuff in space or robots. Right. And so a lot of as I understand it, the law and the concern around landmines is the damage to civilian populations.
[01:27:28.440]Brian Weeden: And even the suffering they can cause to humans. And if we're talking about robots in space. Is that is that there's not really the same consideration, you're talking about a robot. So I guess back to you jack. If you want, you know anyone that you want to add to that.
[01:27:41.730]Jack Beard: Well, we do have you highlight all the major points land mines are described by some as indiscriminate in a way like no others there temporarily indiscriminate they stay there, arguably forever and forever. And with these
[01:27:56.370]Jack Beard: debrief fields in space, depending on how far out, they are. It could be a forever sort of thing or or many centuries sort of thing, but I'm not sure that
[01:28:07.230]Jack Beard: I guess the other thing whenever you talk about autonomous weapons and people talk about banning lethal robots. Well, we've had lead the robots. Since the 1890s, we've had
[01:28:16.620]Jack Beard: Land mines that detect things they they have sensors that data comes in and then they decide and kill so so that's that's where you begin your discussion of autonomous weapons and the
[01:28:31.470]Jack Beard: Situation right now is they don't violate customer international law, but part of that is precisely because of what Brian is saying it's a
[01:28:39.840]Jack Beard: Particular area you can market. You can warn people you can make it so that it is an area that is less likely to be tied to a travel that mark and then they can be removed.
[01:28:52.620]Jack Beard: Removing the debris. When this could be an entire lecture by by Brian you're removing debris is quite a trick and outer space.
[01:29:01.500]Jack Beard: As opposed to more sophisticated minds that can deactivate or not that Nate interest circumstances saw after some period of time. So the technology is always trying to compare, but that's that's a great topic. So I am going to conclude with
[01:29:20.460]Jack Beard: With this question for you. You made a great point about how
[01:29:26.190]Jack Beard: Jamming is this happening all the time, it's being done by everybody, and all sorts of circumstances and the ICU.
[01:29:34.830]Jack Beard: Which you would think would have a voice in this stopping Iran and others from jamming and stays pretty quiet about it. And so this seems to have become one mechanism that states are using that
[01:29:49.200]Jack Beard: Temporarily disables the functions of a lot of satellites we seem to be moving on into experimenting with other systems.
[01:29:59.220]Jack Beard: That don't use that end of the electromagnetic spectrum, but instead move to optical and they temporarily dazzle
[01:30:08.010]Jack Beard: objects like a bright flashlight on something or popped up. They can disable them and and blind them so forth. What's the current
[01:30:16.200]Jack Beard: Because it seems to be one of the popular topics, when we talk. What's the latest on dazzling, what, what's the, what's the thinking of you as an expert on this at this point today.
[01:30:28.470]Jack Beard: Yeah.
[01:30:28.770]Brian Weeden: So, um, it's real challenge. So I'll say from a technology standpoint. What we're seeing become operational is these these dashes relatively low power dabblers I mentioned
[01:30:41.730]Brian Weeden: The rest of there's a Russian system. I think it's a pair of a set or something like that, essentially the mobile truck with a laser mounted on top. Now again, this is not a laser is going to blow a hole through satellite. But if you park this next to an airbase or another important
[01:30:57.120]Brian Weeden: Site and a satellite images of like comes overhead and tries to image it
[01:31:02.340]Brian Weeden: That and the laser and that and you can tell that you could theoretically shine the laser into the satellites optics and overload the the sensors and make it so the the picture. It takes has like big blurry spots in it or maybe just
[01:31:15.630]Brian Weeden: It can't take anything at all. So that's the thinking here. These are sort of like a, an area of denial sort of the capability.
[01:31:23.460]Brian Weeden: Now there's some challenges right you, it has to be able to kind of hit the optics, right. So if, if you've got a satellite that is low and client little one low on the horizon.
[01:31:32.130]Brian Weeden: How do you know what actually looking in this direction. Maybe he's looking somewhere else. He was looking off axis.
[01:31:36.780]Brian Weeden: There's some ways to protect against that you could put something on the satellite that if it detects the energy it flips like a shutter over the front to protect the optics.
[01:31:45.240]Brian Weeden: There are various ways to deal with it. But we're seeing that said there's a there's a Russian
[01:31:50.910]Brian Weeden: Air mobile system is rushing ground mobile system. He was militaries, and a lot of stuff on this Chinese and a lot of work on this.
[01:31:57.420]Brian Weeden: I would not be surprised if this was a an operational capability in the relatively near future.
[01:32:03.930]Brian Weeden: You move beyond that to more destructive lasers. The challenge now is are a lot higher power, particularly on the ground because I got to get through the entire atmosphere with enough energy left to do something bad to a satellite
[01:32:18.000]Brian Weeden: There's a lot of things written letter hyperbole about these during the 80s with Star Wars and the SDI program and some things that the Russians, the Soviets were doing quite a lot of that turned out to be very far ahead of the time.
[01:32:32.490]Brian Weeden: You know, I think we're still today, there's some operational testing of lasers for counter drone use. Now we're talking there about hitting flying drones in the atmosphere.
[01:32:44.220]Brian Weeden: Or maybe hitting you know small boats at see that is still not quite powerful enough to go through the atmosphere. So my sense is that
[01:32:53.010]Brian Weeden: Destructive lasers lasers against satellites is still a little bit off, but people are working on it and the more difficult question is when that you can mount these things on satellites themselves.
[01:33:05.460]Brian Weeden: Now there are lasers on satellites, right, if you talk about something that has something called LIDAR
[01:33:09.960]Brian Weeden: Lidar is with a call for laser imaging. So you shine a laser another object you detect the light reflected and you build an image of that object and lidar. It's very, very useful for that and actually it's really useful rendezvous proximity operations.
[01:33:26.190]Brian Weeden: Now, you can imagine a higher power LiDAR, at what point does that become potentially disruptive to the optics that you're shining it on
[01:33:35.580]Brian Weeden: So that I think is also part of this co orbital RP, oh, question is, are those satellites are getting close to you if there's something on board with directed energy weapon on board.
[01:33:46.110]Brian Weeden: That could do something bad to your satellite. It doesn't need it can be much lower power could just not having to travel through the atmosphere and travel
[01:33:53.550]Brian Weeden: You know, several hundreds of thousands of kilometers to hit your satellite. It's coming much closer
[01:33:59.130]Brian Weeden: The flip side is you're still requiring a lot of power on board that satellite and particularly small satellites. It's not clear to me that they can actually provide that much power. Yet even the very big
[01:34:12.120]Brian Weeden: Geo communication satellites, with huge solar arrays, you're talking at most a few kilowatts of power that they can draw. And so that's what the concern there.
[01:34:21.870]Brian Weeden: Obviously back to, you know, sort of the broader legal question. One of the big challenges is, where's that line between dazzling and destroying and you may not know
[01:34:32.010]Brian Weeden: If you're actually doing permanent damage or not when you attempt to dazzle us. I like because you may not know, maybe the satellite has some particular weakness. You didn't know about. So that's a real challenge.
[01:34:43.770]Brian Weeden: And I'll say, just sort of in general, we haven't seen really any moves in the legal world to make any of this illegal or country saying this is
[01:34:55.890]Brian Weeden: Not right. This is a breach of international law, somehow, everyone's kind of inquired, then sort of right, bye, bye, you know, silence is consent, right, that sort of are saying, well, okay, maybe this is OK to do, which I think is a problem.
[01:35:10.380]Brian Weeden: Other countries.
[01:35:11.130]Jack Beard: That's an extremely important point, the more the incidents that occur and the more silence surrounded by all the states involved, the more likely it becomes that these things are life, as usual, as opposed to a violation of international law, it's a really great and important point.
[01:35:28.200]Jack Beard: Smart
[01:35:29.010]Jack Beard: I reached the end of this week of presentations closing it out really on a high with you, Brian, I want to thank everyone for attending and I know you all want to
[01:35:40.320]Jack Beard: express your thanks to Dr Weeden for giving you the up to date discussion of threats.
[01:35:45.120]Jack Beard: Present and Future. And so we're we're signing out. Now I have to give a special shout out to
[01:35:51.750]Jack Beard: The executive director of our program Elspeth magilton who has made all of this possible on screen.
[01:35:58.470]Jack Beard: For all the panels and for all the presentation. So a special thanks to her and to all of you joining us, hoping that next year we will reassemble in Washington DC for the end person experience.
[01:36:11.010]Jack Beard: Of the Nebraska DC conference. Until then, I guess. Be safe on land and peaceful in space, and we'll see you next year. Thanks very much. That's been

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NE Space Law Week - Counterspace Threats Today and Tomorrow

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