Freedom of Navigation & Airpower — Interview with Dr. Dale Stephens

Howdy, and welcome to the Allied Airpower Podcast, NATO's sole broadcast that controls the full spectrum of air, space, and cyberspace. By tuning in, you won't miss out on our special interviews and exclusives with senior leaders, subject matter experts, and front-line airmen. I am your human host, Jose Colesign Houdini, and yes, there is an embarrassing story of how I caught my Colesign. I am here at Headquarters Allied Air Command at Rammstein Air Base, Germany, and I am not an AI, nor do I want to be. And at any rate, we have a special episode for you today. This is our first live interview for this show, and we clean that thought of a better subject to begin with, freedom of navigation, or in the terms of air and space power, freedom of maneuver. What is this you might be asking? Well, that's a great question, and we're going to find out. Traditionally, the rule of law has defined freedom of navigation as an agreement of all nation states to sail on the high seas, and, subject to specific regimes, through other maritime zones. In the air, nation states have complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above their territory and territorial waters. International law has this whole encyclopedic and comprehensive framework on freedom of navigation of ships. Today's guests on the podcast and Aussie from down south will help us unpack it all. Now break break, when I deployed to Afghanistan and the Middle East, the Aussies were some of the most reliable, some of the most easy going, and just my favorite people to work with. So you can imagine how excited I was to interview our guests for this episode. Now this subject matters immensely to NATO air power because the ability to deter, and if necessary, defend Europe depends on moving people, material, fuel, data, money quickly and safely across oceans and airspace. And that only works if freedom of navigation is maintained and freedom of maneuver is secured. With the Black Sea constrained and Arctic warming creating new challenges in the high north, NATO faces new dynamics in its security umbrella. For example, in NATO's 2022 strategic concept, it flags the high north in risk of disrupted freedom of navigation across the North Atlantic. Now, let's go delve deeper into this concept of freedom of navigation. Today's guest on the Allied Air Power Podcast is Professor Dale Stevens, a career naval legal officer turned scholar who bridges the flight deck and the faculty. He is a professor of law at the University of Adelaide in Australia and a captain in the Royal Australian Navy Reserve. During more than two decades on permanent service, he had held senior legal roles across the Australian Defense Force, including director of operations and international law, director of Navy legal and senior fleet and command legal posts. And he's deployed as a legal advisor to East Timor and Iraq. For that service, he's received Australia's conspicuous service medal and from the U.S., both the Bronze Star and the Meritorious Service Medal. In academia, Professor Stevens directs Adelaide's research unit on military law and ethics, is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Law, and has supervised numerous doctoral projects across operational and international law. He is a co-editor and governance chair of Wulmora Manual on the International Law of Military Space Activities and Operations, the new Oxford University Press Reference on anything to do with military space law. And he's previously taught in the U.S. Naval War College International Law Department. He holds a couple of degrees from Harvard Law School. And frankly, I can't think of a better guess to start off our inaugural podcast here at NATO Allied Air Command. Professor Stevens' research and teaching spent international law, law of the sea, national security law, military operations law, and space law. Again, the perfect person to discuss this very important topic for us here at NATO. We'll tap into his unique perspective today, how the law actually shapes decisions in real operations at sea, on land, and increasingly in space. Welcome Professor. Thank you very much, Josiah. It's great to be here. Now before we begin, as you can imagine, we have to do the disclaimer. The views expressed on the Allied Air Power podcast are those of the guests, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NATO, NATO Allied Command, or any national government. Now that we got that boring stuff aside, let's get into the really cool stuff. So Professor, in your words, could you just define for our audience this concept of freedom of navigation and in the case of air power, freedom of maneuver? Thank you, Jose. So freedom of navigation, in its essence, is the capacity to sail the world's oceans and seas without unlawful interference. Subject only to agreed rules of international law, and we'll talk about what those agreed rules are. In the case of air power, it's very similar, the capacity to fly freely in areas beyond national airspace, subject again only to applicable rules of international law. Interesting. So I'm sure there's a whole legacy of what freedom of navigation is, especially in international law, where it began. And I imagine the maritime, the world of maritime centuries ago with the United Kingdom kind of owning the seas. Could you just kind of discuss the historical roots and tie it into the current interpretation in international law today? Sure. I mean, it goes further back than the UK. It goes back to the Romans. And the Romans back in 2000 years ago declared large swathes of the Mediterranean Sea as belonging to them. And through history, we've had rising powers that would claim areas of the sea as being sovereign, a sovereign territory. It sort of reached its peak in the age of discovery. The Treaty of Tordesillas between Portugal and Spain, where the Pope divided the world between Portugal and Spain and said, "This is yours, Portugal. This is your Spain." And that also had with it a sense of maritime entitlement. At that time, though, you had the Dutch East India Company wanting to trade, wanting to travel around the world, and this bloke called Hugo Grotius, who's this famous name in international law, wrote this treatise back in 1609 saying, "Well, actually, let's have a new principle that the sea itself is international territory, and all states are free to trade and travel on the sea." There were some pushbacks at the time, but that has become the dominant theory as reflected in international law, which we'll discuss in more recent times. It hasn't completely, this idea of freedom of the seas wasn't completely successful. States always clung to at least the narrow band of sea around their states as having sovereign status. So the idea of a territorial sea, which we'll talk about, in the olden days would extend out to three nautical miles, and that was a very practical rule. They say it was the distance that a cannonball could be fired from the shore out to sea. It's a very pragmatic way of determining what the breadth of your territorial sea was. And so that was retained, and it's always been acknowledged, I guess, that states have this element, this close element of sea around their territories, where they had sovereign tea. I call it a sovereign tea minus regime, we'll talk about that, and then extending out increasingly less sovereign rights, but still some rights. So yes, for human history, the status of the sea and the tussle between those states wanting to close it off, and those states wanting to expand it, expand navigational freedoms has been a tension in world affairs. You used a very interesting term earlier, maritime entitlement. So I'm curious, especially now leading up today, where commercial companies have just as a huge maritime presence as nation states. So I guess my question is, how did that evolve in parallel to nation states in claiming entitlement of the seas? So in recent times, so the issue of who is entitled to what has been a subject of great debate for centuries, and in the last 60, 70 years, there were determined efforts to try and codify or codify, as you say in America, codify the law. And we had attempts in 1958, 1961, and then finally, between 1973 and 1982, we had the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea that led to the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention. And that convention was profound, 320 articles, it's huge, it's like a book, and it tries to settle all of the maritime rights and entitlements for states, for civilian activity, commercial activity, and also, to some extent, military activity, both at sea and in the airspace above maritime areas. And it settled, it did a number of things, it settled the breadth of the territorial sea to 12 nautical miles. And I can just say that, and we can just agree, oh, that's, yes, that's self-evident, that's contained in the manual, but it took 2,000 years to come to that conclusion, that people grudgingly states acknowledged three, and then it got to 12, and there were trade-offs. We'll talk about that, but America was one of the countries that resisted the expansion from 3 to 12, it became 12, but then there were trade-offs. When you have more territorial sea with more sovereign rights, then you have to acknowledge that maritime rights, freedom of navigation rights, would now be codified as well, and the right of innocent passage is one of those rights through a territorial sea. So the whole Law of the Sea convention is a package deal, it's a fine balance between coastal states' rights and freedom of navigation for ocean-going states, and ocean-going states in terms of navies and air forces, but also for commercial traffic, and commercial traffic in this interdependent world comprises a major proportion of international trade. 80% of world trade is by sea, and for countries like my own, Australia, that figure goes up to 90-93%, when you're an island nation, it's a pretty obvious arena of trade via the sea. So understanding maritime rights is critical to a state survival, in some respects. That's the truth, and I've always been fascinated about this subject, just the idea, maybe getting a little philosophical, but the idea that groups of people can come together and agree on something almost abstractly, I mean I think a good corollary example is maybe the Geneva conventions, when you think of war, where all-out war is the expectation in a way, common-sensically, but then the reality is human beings come together to, even if they're completely in polar opposite points of view, but they still can come together and agree, or in your words, by a law, an agreement in a certain sense. Well that's right, but I agree with you, but it features a moment in time where everybody's self-interest aligned, and world trade in the 1960s, '70s and '80s was expanding, and the interdependence between states was becoming more of a phenomenon. So it was in everybody's interest to understand what the rules were, and to try and promote world trade, that was a way that the world could become more prosperous and so on, but I will say in recent times that alignment is frying, and there are states that are reasserting the age-old tension between coastal state security and international trade, and so we're experiencing that now in the world. Yeah, that's one of those people who understand things when I can have a practical example in front of me. Could you provide, I guess, just a practical example, like as you said, where things are fraying now after consensus earlier, now things are not so in agreement around the world? So thank you for that, Jose. The basic rule is this. If I have a territorial sea, I'm allowed to claim out to 12 nautical miles from my baseline, and I get to have what I call sovereignty minus, if you like, in that zone. I have full entitlement to resources, I have full entitlement to exercising jurisdiction, et cetera, but the trade-off is I must recognize that other states have a right of innocent passage, both merchant ships and military naval vessels, through that territorial sea. That's the trade-off. When you go from 3 to 12, you had to give up something, and one of those things was recognizing the rights for ships to transit through. What we're seeing now is some states starting to declare security zones in the territorial sea, there is a provision in the law of the sea convention that does allow for temporary suspension without discrimination for security reasons in a territorial sea, but it doesn't allow for a generally applied prohibition for transit or passage through a territorial sea just because of security, these abstract security reasons. So we're seeing that. You have a right of innocent passage, but we want you to give us prior notice before you pass through our territorial sea. That issue was actually voted on in the 1972 to 1973 to '82 convention, and it was defeated. There was an attempt by some states to insert that into the convention, and it didn't prevail, and yet states are saying, well, the law of the sea convention is silent on that point, so we are at liberty to start requiring this. And other states, Australia, the United States, most Western states have pushed back and said, no, there is no requirement to give prior notice. We have a right to, as long as we comply with what innocent passage is, which is continuous and expeditious and nothing threatening, we can transit through your territorial sea without getting you prior notice. So states are in these areas of ambiguity are starting to find rights with a tenuous hold to the law and are seeking to assert them. And then more broadly, we have, of course, and this is well known in the world, we have China and the South China Sea that is claiming all sorts of rights, historic rights that have no correlation in the law. So they famously have their nine or 10 depending on what you're reading at any given time dash line around the South China Sea. And this was something that China for at least the 1930s, if not earlier, had always sought to advance as their idea about the South China Sea is being, I guess, internal waters. And that's fine. When they were part of the negotiations of the law of the sea convention, this was not raised. This was not, this was not an argument they put forward. They signed and ratified the convention without this idea being acknowledged or aired or voted on or advanced. So it's pretty rich now to say, here is our historic rights and we're going to claim them. I can say that with some confidence because in 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration actually made that determination when the Philippines took China to the to the Permanent Court of Arbitration. And they said there is no legal basis for these, for these, for this nine, 10 dash line. So when American ships and Japanese ships and Australian ships and Western ships sail through in Philippine ships and Vietnamese ships sail through the South China Sea and China reacts to that. It's on the basis of a political reaction, not in my view or the view of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, a legal, legally entitled reaction. So this is where you have fraying. You have fraying at the edges. And the problem in international law is that if you acquiesce, if you acquiesce in this, that has legal significance. If countries said, we're not going to risk going in there because of this, the law under the Vienna Convention on the Law of treaties is able to say that has legal significance and this can become the way you interpret the law for that part of the world. So as a matter of law, you need to react unless you are happy with that, with that view. So that's the political and legal reality that we're in right now. Are you seeing that kind of same fraying at the edges in the air domain specifically? Is there a corollary between what's happening in the seas with the air? There absolutely is. So aircraft do not have the right of innocent passage over the 12 nautical miles. For an aircraft, military or civilian to go within the 12 nautical mile zone, they need state consent. But outside of that zone, so beyond the 12 nautical mile limit, aircraft can go wherever they like. With due regard to the safety of other aircraft, they can fly wherever they like. But when you've got aircraft, in this case in the South China Sea, flying over what is international air, so flying within international airspace, you've had many incidents and in our case, in Australia's case, we've had since February 2022. We've had China pointing lasers at our aircraft, releasing flares and chaff in front of our aircraft. They've been buzzing our aircraft, coming perilously close to our aircraft, exercising normal rights of overflight, as understood by international law. So yes, absolutely in the air domain and in the maritime domain in the South China Sea, you're seeing these types of incidents that have no basis in law. And I imagine this is becoming increasingly more perilous for civilian population. Because when we think about these kind of like the scenario you provided, we're thinking about a kind of a military scenario, you know, and a lot of maybe civilians think, "Ah, well, you know, that's a political military thing, not my problem," right? But as I imagine, as this becomes increasingly more frequent, it's going to start to impact day-to-day lives of traveling of civilians, right? It is, and it's going to impact, I think, civilian merchant ships in particular. So civilian merchant ships will avoid, as will civilian aircraft, areas of contention. You don't actually have to have an armed conflict, which of course everybody seeks to avoid. You can have areas of tension that will be avoided, because why wouldn't you? Why risk an incident or damage if you don't have to? At the moment, I don't think we are there yet. I still think merchant ships travel in certainly the regions I've spoken about, but it is. It's a possibility, a real possibility in the future. Now, are there any gray zones where, you know, nation states or actors in general can stretch the interpretation of exceptions to limit freedom of navigation? Oh, absolutely. So you've got a definition. So I spoke about ships having arighted innocent passage through a territorial sea. There's an article, article 19 of the Law of the Sea Convention. And by the way, the United States is not a party to the Law of the Sea Convention. However, President Reagan in 1983 declared that certainly all of the navigational components of that treaty are recognized by America as being customary international, or as having legal force independently. So you've got definitions of what is innocent passage through a territorial sea. And countries, one of them is, and any other, one of the famous throwaway lines, I guess, is in any other activity not bearing on passage. And so countries are able to interpret that. Well, what does that mean? For us, it means this. For you, it doesn't mean that, but we're going to assert that over you. Similarly, you've got concepts like marine scientific research. You must to conduct marine scientific research in a territorial sea. You need to have state consent, coastal state consent. And so there's been an enormous debate. There's a famous debate between an American scholar, Pete Pedrozo, from the U.S. Naval War College, and various Chinese academics about what that means. And the argument was, on the one side, some of these Chinese academics were saying, well, any activity that acquires information about the sea is marine scientific research. And the alternative argument from Professor Pedrozo, amongst others, is, well, no, it depends on what purpose. When I'm taking readings for safe navigation, that's not marine scientific research. That's just for safe navigation. It depends on what I'm going to use this purpose for. So here is an ambiguous term, because, of course, marine scientific research is not defined in the law of the sea convention. So every, you've got the Vienna Conventional Law Retreaties, you've got state practice, but these are the sorts of arguments that come up. And so in terms of gray areas, you've got a semblance of lawful authority, and you push it as far as you can to try and, what Professor Pedrozo says, create a security zone that the law never allowed, but I'm going to use this little, tiny hook down here to create something much bigger in order to get my way. And we're seeing an element of that in the Arctic, with the melting of the ice, you see Russia claiming under Article 234 certain rights that you have for environmental protection of ice areas, and under this semblance of protection under a small provision of the convention seeking to advance broader security rights. So yes, the lawyers love gray areas, because that's where we earn our living, but it can have operational impact, and so you need to be alive, you need to be vigilant to what's going on. And because the other part of it too is that for countries like my own, Australia, we are an island nation, and to go anywhere, we've got to go through the seas of other nations, and so it does matter that we preserve navigational freedom. And America, of course, is a two ocean navy, it needs to have that sort of freedom as well. So the stakes are high in getting this right. For sure. And this is super fascinating, but I think we may be letting our bias out, because I am an airman, and so I would be, I would do injustice if I didn't ask this question. What would you say are the differences between, through the lens of international law, between maritime and the air domain? We've talked a lot so far about how they parallel each other, but where's the differences? Okay, so are you sitting down? This is for an airman, this is not going to sound good. The law of the sea convention does have, within it, elements that, key elements that impact the air. So you've got maritime zones, and in those maritime zones, there are comments, there are legal, well not comments, there are legal rules that apply to aircraft, so territorial sea, no innocent passage. Beyond the territorial sea, full rights of freedom, of flight in those, in the international airspace, you're allowed to fly in international airspace, which is any airspace that is not above a state or not above a territorial sea. The question though is how high is airspace? How high do you go up before you hit outer space? And that question hasn't been solved yet. At the moment, it's a very practical test. It's as far as an aircraft can fly, deriding lift from the air and flying in a natural way. But at a certain point, an aircraft can't fly vertically, and that's where you have space and you have satellites that orbit, and somewhere between the furthest point at which an aircraft can fly, and the lowest point at which a satellite can orbit is that point of division. At that point, that's where national airspace begins. And then you get into outer space, and in outer space, there is no sovereign claim. So a satellite can orbit around the earth as long as it wants forever, and it can orbit over another territory, and it can look into that territory, and it can suck up all the good intel. There's no prohibition in states having satellites do that. You don't have to-- the state doesn't have to reveal all of its stuff. It can hide it if it wants, unless there's a treaty, like a weapons limitation treaty that might require that. But that is-- so that's that point of where airspace ends and outer space begins is a contentious issue. And there's a committee, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space, that have been looking at this issue for 60 years and have yet to come to a conclusion about where one ends and one begins. So that's the other element of air activity that needs to be resolved from a legal perspective. Well, let's actually go above that line, because you bring up a very fascinating point here. So if we go up into space, right, we're seeing some actors start to weaponize space in terms of satellites, right? You know, as you said earlier, satellites have free-- you know, they're floating out there. And I think a decade ago, we didn't really have to worry about this. And now, we're seeing space become more contested and congested. So what do you think is going to happen in the future? In terms of international law, are you going to see laws in space parallel what we see in air and maritime, or is it going to be completely novel? So good question, Jose. At the moment, there are five treaties that apply to space. As you mentioned in the intro, I just worked on something called the Wommerer Manual, where we spent a number of years ourselves in the University of Adelaide, the University of Nebraska, the University of Exeter, the University of New South Wales, Canberra, coming together to try and find what the rules are. There are five treaties that apply to space. Of those five treaties, the Outer Space Treaty is the most significant one. And interestingly, China, Russia, the USA, India are all parties to that treaty. So we're in a safe position of having a treaty that governs activities for the main space players. There's only one article that deals with, specifically, with military activity. And that's Article Four of the Outer Space Treaty. It says that there shall be no weapons of mass destruction in full orbit around the earth. So that is the one and only prohibition concerning weapons. It also talks about not building military installations or bases on the moon or testing weapons on the moon or other celestial bodies. So if I am at liberty to launch a weapon into space, provided that it is not a weapon of mass destruction. But what we are seeing is concern, because for a long, long time, the United States had the technological advantage and could have space superiority. But you're right. Other countries, China, Russia, are catching up. And so there is concern about space being an area of operations, an area of armed conflict. NATO itself has declared space an operational area many other countries have. And there are space forces now dealing with the US most famously with the space force, but don't be fooled. Most countries have a space force element, usually in their air force, but it's common enough around the world that space is, in fact, an area of operations. And I thank you for not falling asleep with me talking about so much law. But Article 3, if you'll just bear with me, Article 3 of the Outer Space Treaty applies all international law up into space. So the laws that you spoke about, the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, all of that ostensibly applies into space and how that applies, we grappled with in the Wommerer Manual. So it's the same in many respects, it's the same legal issues and solutions in space as it is in the air as it is at sea, but with some key differences. One of those key differences is you can't claim the moon or space itself as national appropriation. You can't do that. And Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969 in Buzz Aldrin and they planted the American flag, the American government said at the time, "This is not a claim by the United States to the moon. This is just a symbol of our pride in reaching the moon." And so everybody understood that to be the case. But there are some key differences about space because of the legal regime, but there are some similarities between the space, the sea and the air. This is great stuff, Professor, and I promise no one's falling asleep at any rate. I love the Australian accent, so I can listen to it all day. No, this is super fascinating, sir. And thank you for deep diving into these very important domains for us here at Allied Air Command. I don't want to change this conversation to get a little pessimistic, but I am, you know, I think a lot of people, in a lot of people's minds, especially as they listen to this podcast, is do you think the legal concept of sovereignty is still a reliable framework when applied to all these domains, especially space, considering the rapid commercialization? So sovereignty, thank you for that question, Jose. So sovereignty is the basis of all international law, certainly in the modern era. So sovereignty is the foundation for the laws that we talk about, is the foundation for interactions between states. It clearly applies on Earth in terms of the territorial sea, in terms of state status of warships and military aircraft and all of that that we understand. In space, it is a little bit different because you can't claim the moon, you can't claim space as sovereign territory, but you do have, this gets a bit technical, but you do have exclusive jurisdiction under the outer space treaty of your space objects. And you do have, in the event that we ever have installations on the moon, and there's a question about military activity on the moon, but certainly, my view, military forces providing basic security for, say, American or British or German or French companies on the moon is something that I foresee as being possible. In that event, you do have jurisdiction, you do have a level of autonomy, I guess, over the facilities you've got under Article 12 of the outer space treaty. So sovereignty is the fundamental principle for ordering international law and relations between states. It does not apply in space, but there are other mechanisms by which states can protect their interests in space and can ensure security for their activities. So that gets very technical, but I think sovereignty is alive and well, and I don't think we're seeing the end of the nation state anytime soon. I think that is still the fundamental principle of international relations and international law. Yeah, that's fascinating, especially as we kind of veer this conversation into space. Space in a way is really the final frontier. My Trekkie's coming out, you know, because we don't know, we don't, what is that frontier going to look like in terms of... Okay, here's the question. Here's the key question. If you're a Star Trek fan or a Star Wars fan, you can't be both. Which one do you pick, Hosea? Star Wars is a Star Trek for kids, so I think that's my answer right there. Trekkie all the way, sir. Well, sir, you know, let's wrap up this conversation because there's a lot that our audience needs to unpack here. There's a lot of interesting and, you know, to be frank, you know, a lot of concerning things as we look into the future, and that is my last question I really wanted to ask you is, as we look into 2030, 2040, 2050, what do you think are the geopolitical and legal developments that are going to reshape the meaning and enforcement of freedom and navigation in all the domains, whether they're going to be the same or different, maritime, air, space? What do you think about that? So thank you very much for that question, and that is, I guess, the $64 million question. I think that since the post-war era, post-World War II era, we have created a framework for interaction between states in the liberal democratic order that has been sustainable. And we have been dedicated to rules-based order. And I know my country in its various iterations of its security strategies reinforces the rules-based order. And that has given us all a level of certainty and security and freedom, frankly. My great worry at the moment with what some countries are doing in the world, and we see that manifested by Russia and the Arctic. We see that with China and the South China Sea, is that if the West and others don't resist that, don't reassert the rule of law and abide by the rule of law, then we just break up into tribal groups and fracture into national interests. And I personally think that would be a disaster. I think the rules-based order for almost a century has given the world great security and prosperity. So my hope in the future is that we reassert, with some risk, with some risk, we reassert the rule of law in instances where it seems to be fraying because it would serve all of our interests to do so would be my final comment. Yes, sir. That's very well said. Now, I do want to actually truly end with saying thank you for your service to your country, to everything that you've done. Now our primary audience here on the podcast is NATO service members across 32 nations. Obviously, we have a wide range of different listeners, but is there anything you would like to tell these committed service members who are securing every inch of an centimeter of alliance territory, considering everything that we've discussed about today? I think that the service, we are all indebted to being an ex-service member myself. We are all indebted to the sacrifice that service members make for national security and for global security. And I personally thank them. And I see there is absolute value in their work and in their commitment to their work. So that would be my last comment. It's a sacrifice. It's an honorable sacrifice in the world. These to thank these members for that. Thank you, sir. Thank you for being on the Allied Airpower Podcast. We wish you well. I know it's nighttime over there, so sweet dreams. Take care. Thank you very much, Jose. That wraps up this flag of the Allied Airpower Podcast, where news-driven updates meet the authentic voices behind the mission to defend every inch of NATO territory. We learned a lot today about freedom of navigation on the sea, in the air, and up in space. International law has this whole interesting history on freedom of navigation, and it will most certainly inform the rule of law's expansion into the stars. In this episode, we trace the historical roots of maritime law from roaming clans over the Mediterranean to groceries as the principle of "freedom of the seas." Modern law has codified much of our understanding of freedom of navigation, such as the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Today's security tensions in the Arctic and South China Sea illustrate how some actors are pushing the legal gray zones to expand their control. All things considered, NATO remains steadfast in securing an alliance airspace despite those gray zones. Now, if you found value in today's episode, share the show, and leave us a rating so others can navigate airspace and cyberspace with us. Explore deeper coverage anytime and anywhere at ac.neto.int, and don't hesitate to just send us your questions or topics you'd like us to tackle. Until our next sortie, stand ready in the air, secure our cyberspace, and steady on the path to the stars.