From Orbit to Objective: Space and the Future of Conflict

Let's think about last year when Operation Midnight Hammer happened. That operation took place with seven bombers. While those bombers were en route from the continental United States, they had complete command and control because of space-based capabilities. They knew what the adversary was doing at the target because of space-based ISR. They knew what the weather was at the target and en route because of space-based capabilities. And so that's why we say at US Space Command it's a moral obligation for us to deliver those space effects because the rest of the joint force cannot fight the way it's designed without those capabilities through all levels of conflict. In a really dual-use systems change grey zone conflict and proxy warfare I think in two ways. And they really greatly reduce the price of entry to capabilities, democratizing ability to democratize violence and increase their coordination and livality. But there's also a flip side and I'd like to sort of talk about that a little bit more, which is increasing attribution. Welcome to the regular warfare podcast. I'm your host Ben Jet, joined today by my co-host Charlie McGillis. Today's episode examines have space has shifted from a niche enabler to a foundational domain of modern warfare. Opening everything from global finance and precision targeting to command and control in contested environments. Join by Dr. James Kyrus of SAS and General Stephen Whiting, commander of US Space Command. We explore how space power, special operations and cyber capabilities converge in what some call the soft space cybertriad. From a new warfare in orbit to great power competition with China, this conversation unpacks why this space domain is no longer distant or abstract, but central to a regular warfare and the future of joint campaigning. 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. James Kyrus and General Stephen Whiting. Okay, Dr. James Kyrus, General Stephen Whiting, thanks for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. It's great to have you. Charlie and Ben, thank you so much for the opportunity. It's great to be back on the Irregular Warfare podcast series. I'm a repeat offender, so thank you so much. Hey, and that thanks for me as well. This is my first time and it's great to be with both of you, Charlie, a long time friend and great to be here with Dr. Kyrus as well. Thanks, Ben. We'd like to start by simply trying to understand the scope of what we mean by space. I'm sure it's all pretty simple, right? But it seems like space has shifted from kind of a niche domain to something that underpins nearly every aspect of modern life, from global finance to military operations. So for Dr. Kyrus, could you explain the importance of space in everyday life and also at the geopolitical level? Yeah, sure, Ben. I'd be glad to. I thought I'll frame it first this way. Space importance is so universal and I hope you'll pardon the bad pun because it's integrated into our everyday tasks that we very rarely consider. The theme of what I'm going to say is that we take space for granted. So if we think about it this way, any device you owner operate that's a so-called smart device, has a connection to or a reliance upon space in some way. And unless you're retrocool and use a flip phone or a landline, you're carrying such a device in your pocket right now. So think about it this way. Anytime that you use road directions or traffic apps, weather applications, ride share apps, gambling or financial management apps, the list goes on. All of these rely on data from precision navigation, timing satellites, more locally known as GPS or goes weather satellites. Space's impact, I think, can be summarized as what I like to call the three C's. Cheap, convenient, and then complacent. So access to space data is cheap in relative terms. Some of it like GPS is almost 3D users, but even the price of commercial services has decreased dramatically. Like for about $50 a month, you can get fast, reliable, starling service, and that's whether you're static, mobile, or you're trying to use it globally. They have different packages. But space's impact is also convenient. We know more in greater detail about our environment, making us more effective, spending less time on tasks, which means we're more efficient. Some examples. So I'd ask the listeners out there, once the last time that you had to get out and read a map, an actual physical paper map, having not known about a major change in the weather, and if you last visited a teller at a bank or had to see a cashier to go pay for gas. So these are some of the conveniences that space helps enable. But because of these two, unfortunately, we've become complacent about space. We don't care about it, or we don't think about it very often. And this often applies to the military just as much as it does the civilian sector. And there's a well-known adage about air power that I think captures this for the military. Ground elements are after think of air power much like a light switch. All they need to do is flick it on, and it'll be there. And when it doesn't go on instantly, boy, let me tell you, you certainly hear about it. But to modify that in the context of our current conversation, I'll suggest that space support is like outlets or wall plugs. And I'm pretty sure General Whiteing is going to blatch at that idea. But follow me out for just a second here. Light outlets are wall plugs. There's plenty of them around. We expect them to work, and we rarely think about all that's required to ensure you have the power when you want or when you need it. And I know that it's General Whiteing is going to expand on the fourth C, which is competition in space. But I'll say this about space's importance geopolitically. The number of actors in space has increased dramatically since we put a man on the move. And just for some examples of this, it includes nations that you wouldn't necessarily normally think of, like Kazakhstan, Argentina, Monaco, and Laos. They all have satellites in space. In addition, space is increasingly commercial. Half of the top 10 owners and operators of satellites in terms of their numbers are privately owned. And this list goes on. So why does this matter? Aside from the scientific and commercial reasons that I mentioned, space geopolitically has a symbolic and a prestige value, as well as a strategic value in its ability to see or cover what's going on in the air, land, and sea, and provide data that makes maneuver in firepower so much more effective. Hey, if you don't mind, just like to jump in, I thought Dr. Kairst did a great job there of talking about the importance of space to our way of life, our economy. And then at the end there, he was touching on our national defense. And in Ben, you alluded to this, space is foundational now to how we defend our nation and our allies. And I wanted to give maybe an example of that. Hopefully, most of your listeners have seen the Apple+ TV show that came out a couple of years ago called Masters of the Air. It was part three of the three parts Band of Brothers series that the same producers did. Of course, Band of Brothers, US Army, coming ashore at Normandy, working their way to Berlin, the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany. About 10 years later, they did a show called The Pacific, United States Marine Corps doing island hopping in the Pacific, working their way toward the Japanese home islands. Of course, didn't have to ultimately invade the home islands because of the capitulation of Japan. Part three is Masters of the Air, which is about the US Armed Air Force is flying out of the United Kingdom bombing targets in the Nazi Germany in occupied Europe. There's an episode in there where they show the Regensburg raid, which had hundreds of bombers above an individual target. And the historical record says there were raids that had a thousand bombers over an individual target. So let's look at how the US Army, early US Air Force, fought that battle. So a thousand bombers, each B-17, had about 10 airmen. So that's now 10,000 airmen over a single target. They're going to have 10 to 20 percent losses most likely. So now one to 2,000 airmen are dead, POWs, or evading, and they're going to drop dumb bombs, and they're not even going to completely destroy that ball bearing target or that oil refinery. And either the Army Air Forces or the Royal Air Force is going to have to go back and hit that target later. Now let's think about last year when Operation Midnight Hammer happened. They were synchronized in time across the whole force package because of the GPS timing signal, and then they dropped independently targetable weapons, not against one target, but against multiple targets, with an incredibly high assurity that all those targets would be struck. We're talking dozens to maybe low hundreds of airmen were at risk compared to 10,000. The US Air Force doesn't even have 200 bombers today. They could not fight the way they did in World War II when we didn't have space-capabilities. And I could give similar examples for the other services. In the Army, the Army Space Officers, the FAA 40, so I get the pleasure to work with, they talk about an Army Brigade Combat Team has over 2,000 space-enabled pieces of equipment. equipment. If that brigade combat team loses the space capabilities that we provide from U.S. Space Command, they just can't fight the way they're designed. And so that's why we say at U.S. Space Command, it's a moral obligation for us to deliver those space effects because the rest of the joint force cannot fight the way it's designed without those capabilities through all levels of conflict. So general lighting to that point, we know that U.S. Space Command and U.S. Space Force is new, right? It's a new command. It's a new service. And so can you kind of go into far listeners, you know, what is that difference? I still get questions on that. I know people are kind of confused. Sure. Charlie, let me start by talking about, you know, the command that I have the privilege to be the commander of. U.S. Space Command is a combatant command, period dot, one of the eleven inside the United States. That means we're a joint command, composed of members of all of the military services. I have forces from all the military services. And at the heart of our responsibilities, they're the exact same as U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. European Command, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Special Operations Command. And those core responsibilities are defined in Title 10 of U.S. law. In fact, they lay out three core responsibilities. Number one is we plan for the employment of the armed forces to implement defense strategies and respond to contingencies around the world. And so, you know, as your listeners are reading about any potential defense contingency, national security contingency, you know, they should know the U.S. Space Command is right there planning with those other combatant commands on how we will respond. Second core responsibility is to deter a war, a general war from breaking out. And so anytime again, your listeners are reading about flashpoints around the world. You know, you have to, I want everybody to be assured U.S. Space Command is right there with all those other combatant commands planning on how we deter conflict from breaking out. And then third core responsibility is to command and control the armed forces which are presented to us by the Secretary of War and the President. And so that means we're responsible for our military operations in our AOR. And your listeners may not know, we are a geographic combatant command. We have an AOR. That AOR starts 100 kilometers above the Earth's surface and extends out. Now if you want to be one of the real cool kids, we don't like the word geographic. We use it. We like the word astrographic because geographic actually means of or pertaining to a map. And you cannot look at a map and see our AOR, you have to look up to see our AOR. So Charlie, that's what we do. And then think about everything I did not talk about. That's what the Space Force does. They are recruiting the guardians who will spend their entire career focused on the Space Domain. They are training them. They are equipping them. They are organizing them. They are presenting them. And in fact, your listeners wouldn't be surprised that I have a component from each of the armed forces. The largest of those components is my Space Force component. And they provide the lion's share of my capability. And so we do have this special pairing of a service and a combatant command focused on the same domain. But a US Space Command, we can't do our job without the Space Force. But also the US Army, US Air Force, US Navy, US Marine Corps. They all bring me capability, that's vital to my mission. General Whiteing, I did not know you had a geographic combatant command that was literally infinite. And here I am thinking that Indo-Paycom had the largest AOR. We are larger. But it's a very light population density. And to Dr. Kyra Stewart earlier point, I am one of those guys that kind of thinks of air power as a switch I should be able to turn on and off. But I'd like to turn to a slightly new topic. So a few years ago, leaders introduced the idea of something called the Soft Space Cyber Triad. I think it goes by different nomenclatures or permutations. But it's a way to think about modern warfare. So Dr. Kyra, what is the triad and plane terms? And how does it change the way we should think about warfare today? Ben, you know you're asking an academic to explain something in plane terms. I don't know that I'm cold of it, but I'll give it a try. The triad was really an attempt, which began in late 2021, to get the special operations community to think, act, and engage with the space and cyber domains. The rationale behind it is it's a recognition of how critical space and cyber are an ongoing competition. It's also a recognition of how much we rely on both of those domains for joint and multi-domain effects. And specifically with great powers, it's important that it will assist in denying, contesting, and seeking control from them in future conflict. But really at its most basic level, the triad is talking about special operations forces integrating better with space and cyber to create combined, converge, or whatever sort of other modifier you'd like to use in terms of effects, but for the ultimate purpose of influencing adversaries. To do Stephen further, the triads and attempt to get special operations forces to answer how they can help space and cyber do what they do better, and how all three combine preserve our advantages and contested environments. In addition, those effects are designed to create complex dilemmas for an adversary, complicate adversary decision-making, and ultimately influence those decisions positively and negatively. I know we're likely to get into a greater detail later, but for now in general terms, the triad should guess to think about a regular warfare a little bit differently in the following three ways. One about the reach and persistence of non-kinetic effects, I know that General Whiting spoke a little bit to this, the impact physically and cognitively on adversaries and partners alike, and the increasing impact technologies having on the foundation of a regular warfare, which is society's populations and their governments, who use those technologies. And for General Whiting, how do you think about the triad? Over the last several years, as Dr. Kyrus highlighted, the space community, the cyber community, the soft community have all come to the recognition that the unique attributes each of the three of us bring, plus the interdependencies that we already have, really afford us some opportunities to figure out how we can better work together. For example, space capabilities, as I spoke about with Operation Midnight Hammer, they really allow the joint force to be untethered from terrestrial networks, you know, a place to plug your ethernet cable into the wall because we can do all that from space. So that enables a very mobile force like soft to operate anywhere around the world. And of course, soft, then, has these unique relationships, these unique capabilities, these unique skills that they can find places to provide us unique ground entry points or places that we can, you know, talk to our satellites from unique entry into these areas that maybe we can't otherwise get into. And then of course, cyber just runs over space, also some of our space missions are dependent on cyber. Sometimes we're looking at the same targets. And so all of this interdependency, we've really awoken to the idea that we can be much stronger operating together. And in fact, here at U.S. Space Command, in concert with Socom and Cybercom, we run an exercise called Apollo Nexus, where we bring all this together, even with some international partners and we, you know, we talk about, you know, upfront kind of an academic portion of doctrine and TTPs and then we go do live fires and we actually operate together. And I think we saw the culmination of that earlier this year when the chairman at the press conference after Operation Absolute Resolve talked about the contributions of cyber command and space command as part of the layered set of effects that helped, you know, open the door for soft capabilities and that provided overwatch. That's indicative of the level of planning we're doing across the joint four. So immensely proud of those space-focused joint team members who contributed to that along with their cyber and soft teammates. What are other effects that you could see where those campaigns? I mean, that's a recent example, but let's kind of look at maybe some others and what are those other effects that you could see from an irregular, you know, softened space perspective. Yeah, thanks, Charlie, you know, one of the sets of our targets that we look at with this community, this nexus community is what we call out of area space enabling infrastructure. You know, to have a global space capability, countries have to have locations around the world so that you have the literal visibility to satellites, for example, on the other side of the planet. And we know that the Chinese and Russians have built out of area space enabling infrastructure in South America, in Africa, in locations in the Pacific. And so obviously those are locations of interest for us and things that we work in concert with our teammates in the soft and cyber world to be able to study what those might be doing and what we might need to do in various levels of conflict. So that's an example of the kind of things that we're working together. General Whiteing, that's a great segue because I feel like we can really talk about space without mentioning America's primary geopolitical rival. Over the past decade, China has built space partnerships with dozens of countries, especially in the global South. So how should we interpret this strategy? Is it mainly economic cooperation or part of a broader influence campaign with security implications? You know, there's a lot of, a lot to talk about there. I would point to the influence campaign, certainly the, you know, look at some of the other initiatives that Chinese have had, the Belt and Road Initiative, you know, a lot of the money they've spent in the global South to try to purchase influence. And yeah, they've signed a lot of countries up, a couple dozen to support their space aspirations. However, with that, That said, one of the unique advantages of the United States is our set of partnerships that are decades long, built on shared values that include security alliances, not just people signing up to a big set of principles, but where we will, we have agreed at the national level, we will come to each other's defense. In fact here at US Space Command, we have a named operation in space, Operation Olympic Defender, with seven nations, United States, plus Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Germany. We operate together in space each and every day, you know, the Chinese just don't have anything like that. I wasn't going to do the China piece. I was going to revisit the question of impacts that we were talking about. I just had a couple of things. I should have stuck my fingers up and gotten in the patient a little bit early. Really, I think the issue about campaigns or effects has to do with your vantage point and in a lot of cases, it's sort of the eye of the beholder. So General Whiting talked about, you know, sort of space commands, position and vantage point. Did a great job on that. And it's really about, you know, how you're going to utilize the triad to offset or deny adversaries, contesting your controlling space to rest really where it's most vulnerable and where we don't have the capabilities. Again, I think you did a fantastic job with that. The ground links are ground segments. The triad, however, and trying to generate effects from a campaign perspective for soft and particularly in a regular warfare to get back to something that you mentioned earlier Charlie is that it's challenging for a simple reason who or what are soft actually trying to influence. And I'm not trying to be clever or academic about this, but it's, are we primarily thinking about this triad in terms of deterrence and influencing national leaders or are we thinking about this more in the framework of a regular warfare, which is at the bottom up level where struggles of legitimacy among populations or collections of individuals below the state level where proxies malicious and non-state actors operate. And so here what you're really talking about in addition to the partners that General Whiting mentioned is utilizing space to make host nation forces proxies and others more capable. So that's all I wanted to have. Well, so I'd like to turn to quickly is this idea of dual use systems, right? So many modern space systems are dual use and that they support both civilian and military purposes. I'd be curious to hear from each of you, but how does the spread of dual use space technology change the nature of competition and potentially conflict? And I'll direct that question at Dr. Kyrus first. Yeah, sure. Thanks Ben. You know, really, dual use systems change gray zone conflict and proxy warfare, I think in two ways. They really greatly reduce the price of entry to capabilities, democratizing sort of ability to democratize violence and increase their coordination and lethality. Audrey Curth Kronin makes this point, I think, very clear in her book, Power to the People. And there's an example that I'd like to use to illustrate the point. If you think back to the 2008 Mumbai attack by Lashkaray Taiba, they use dual use systems that allowed two format teams to infiltrate, move and communicate and cause chaos throughout an entire city for 72 hours thanks to satellite phones and GPS map data. The teams handlers who were using satellite communications were able to exert a relatively high degree of direct control over some of the teams watching satellite provided news in order to order specific actions such as setting a rugs a light in a specific corner of the Taj hotel knowing these images would be broadcast. Thanks to social media, specifically Twitter, Indian first responders were overwhelmed with reports, many of which were accurate, but some were not adding confusion and creating confusion. And in addition, social media put the Indian government step behind the narratives that were coming out. But those same dual use systems, however, had signals that could be intercepted in equipment traceable back to certain purchases. So the Indian government ended up releasing audio transcripts and translations of the intercepts. What was clear for them was not only were Lashkar controllers directly involved, but so were some Pakistani nationals who some alleged were tied to the ISI. So some of the phones were also traceable back to Pakistani sources as well. The bottom line here is that while these dual use technologies improved capabilities in control, they also increased the likelihood of attribution. And dual use data, in the form of imagery, geotagging, and tracking ability, is also important to Greyzone Warfare in another way, and I'd like to recall, if you will, the shoot down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 7 2014, Russia came out and immediately put the blame for that downing on Ukraine. But they did so because Ukraine also possessed brute-surface air missiles, and that narrative had a level of plausibility to it. But some very enterprising think tank researchers use data from social media posts and maps to use that geotagging data and photographs to basically show visual proof that the launchers moved from Russia into those firing positions and ended up countering that narrative. So the issue here is attributions difficult, but also you're able to counter narratives by providing visual proof, thanks to dual use technologies. Yeah, if I could jump in and give my perspective on dual use, and that question is really interesting, and as I think about it in terms of the United States and China, it really goes to the very heart of the types of societies that we have. In the United States, we have a market-based economy, we have a federal public government with free elections, and so we can clearly differentiate a commercial entity, a company from the federal government, and yes, the federal government contracts with, you know, and does basic research through universities, but you can trace that money and then we have a transparent licensing process. And so it's very clear what's commercial, what's government, and by the way, we're in a new golden age of space, where commercial space in the West is leading the innovation and is producing cost curves and acquisition timelines that are just radically different than what we've seen in the past, and you know, we in the government are trying to get on those cost curves and take advantage of that and deliver capability a lot better. But if we look at China, where we have a command economy under the oversight of the Chinese Communist Party, they ostensibly have these companies, but when you look at the backside of them and who's funding those companies, ultimately, it goes back to the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army in some way, shape, or form. And so, you know, when those companies are launching things, yes, they may support the civil society, but they all, you know, we just assume they always are going to have some kind of military use, because that's ultimately where, you know, they're having to report back to and where their funding is coming from. So I think, you know, that's just a fundamentally different conversation in those kind of close societies. So, Sir, if I could follow up with that, because, you know, as you talked about the commercial capabilities have just exploded, especially over the past seven to ten years. And so, how are you integrating those with operational looking defender there at your command? How are you taking advantage of that? Yeah, Charlie, you know, we've built up a number of structures over the last decade to help us do exactly that out at Vandenberg Space Force Base, where I know you served when you were on active duty. We have an entity called the Commercial Integration Cell, where we bring 17 companies that the Department of War contracts with for space capabilities, think things like satellite communications or launch services, plus some companies that also support the Intel community with overhead ISR. And those are, you know, all these 17 companies are supporting the U.S. government. And so, we bring them in at the classified level and share with them through this commercial integration cell information about threats in the domain, because they're operating in the domain and their satellites are in the weapons engagement zones of some of the threats that we now see. And sometimes they are the first to detect things like EMI that might be jamming a satellite communication. So, we've got this structure that they can report to us. They can see the classified threat intelligence that we have. And that's been enormously helpful into your question about Operation Olympic Defender. Some of the other countries, pardon me, have now built similar CICs at that mimic hours, so they are bringing in their commercial partners who help enable them. And so, I'm going to shift here a little bit because you talked about, you know, the commercials operating in the weapons engagement zone. And so, you know, I've heard you mentioned this before in some of your previous talks about space operations. And it is shifting right to maneuver-based thinking. So what does maneuver warfare in space actually look like? And how does this integrate from a timing and tempo perspective with the joint war fighter on Earth? Yeah, to start by answering that question. First, let me maybe highlight this interesting, ironic place we find ourselves in in space for your listeners, which is the following. Everything in space is in motion. But we don't maneuver hardly at all. Now, what do I mean by that? You know, once you're in space, you're subject to Kepler's physics, and you're going to orbit in a very defined way, and we can predict that. But it's also an energy-neutral state. It takes a lot of energy to get to orbit. But once you're there, you're just subject to, you know, to Kepler, and it's a little bit like Toy Story. You're falling with style at that point, you know. But if we want to move a satellite, that takes a lot of energy. So it's really what we've done for decades. it looks much more like like static warfare. So I think the Maginot line of World War II where France thought they were gonna defeat Nazi Germany with this set of static defenses. And Germany instead was thinking no, we're gonna execute mobile lightning warfare through Blitzkrieg, a new form of warfare. So maneuver warfare is all about using movement for advantage. The Marines have a fantastic doctrinal statement. I won't get it precisely, right? Whiteyne's paraphrase of it is that through movement in time, in space, and through psychological disruptions, you cognitively attack your opponent in a way that they cannot keep up with you and they eventually collapse. So in space, I wanna use maneuver for advantage. Not just be subject to where Kepler says I'm going to go. And today, we launch with all the fuel we will ever have on board a satellite. And that makes an interesting discussion that we have to have because every time you wanna move that satellite, you're burning fuel. And so essentially what you're doing is you're taking time off the life of that satellite. So you trade maneuver for lifespan of the satellite. And that produces a psychology of scarcity in the entire enterprise from the tactical squadron that's commanding those satellites up to the operational level, up to my level, the strategic level. It's hard to have mission command. It's hard to give that young Lieutenant or Captain the authority to maneuver their satellite for best advantage when we're gonna take three years off the end of this seven year design life of this satellite. And that's what frequently pulls decisions up to a higher level. So that gets at some of the considerations, but it's bottom line core. I wanna be able to use maneuver for advantage, just like we do in the land domain, the air domain, the sea domain. In fact, that's a defining characteristic of the U.S. joint force that we almost always have an advantage over other, we can outmaneuver them. And that's what we wanna be able to do in space. - General Whiting, we recently had a snow day here in New York and I finally got the opportunity to introduce my son to Halo 2 on Xbox. So a maneuver warfare in space is top of mind, but for Dr. Curus, looking ahead to capabilities like on-orbit logistics and space enabled cyber or electronic warfare, how might these technologies shape campaigning over the next few decades? - That's a really interesting question and I'd really like to know if I could phone a friend here right now. - Specifically some of my friends that's bass or General Whiting who are experts in this space domain, 'cause after all, I'm just a simple IW guy from Alabama. But when you're talking about on-orbit logistics, I'll admit where my mind immediately goes to this and that's as a means for SOF to potentially go into orbit and do what they do so well. And it also raises the possibility of rapid response, mobility and logistics or supplies for SOF, but as General Whiting reminded us with Kepler, physics and economics bring that thought right back down to reality pretty quickly and the costs of both getting folks up there or sustaining and prepositioning operators or logistics in space is just, it's too high right now. So if anybody was expecting that I might answer this question with Starship Troopers and they answers no. But for SOF and EW systems in space, I'm not sure we have to wait decades. I make the argument that maybe the future's already here. And here's the reason that I say this. I already mentioned the ability of space-based systems to help in the attribution and elimination of gray zone activities and influence by shaping narratives. It's important to recognize that space and cyber are inextricably linked. Space relies on cyber for its uploads and downloads of data. It's just kind of a simple way to put that. And where we've seen some of this, or how we might see some of this playing out, in terms of denial, is Iran, which we've already talked about in General Whiting has sort of filled that and very admirably, I'll mention an example from Crane. Recently, SpaceX, Geofence areas in which Russian forces were using Starlink illegally. And what that did to their, the Russian command and control coordination and some of their fires and drones ascended completely into disarray. So like I said, I don't think we have to wait for the future. I think it's here. - Yeah, if I could build on that, the limitation to us today in campaigning is that again, we're constantly having to work through this psychology of scarcity of having to consider what are we gonna use our fuel for. Now, in my perspective, campaigning achieves three goals for me. Number one, it helps set conditions in our AOR. Number two, it reduces risk if we have to execute an O plan and number three, it promotes deterrence. And so we can think about our soft teammates and they may be the masters of this campaigning. You know, they can send a team to go do some training inside another country. They can do exercises. They can do shows of force. They can do all these things and they have all these mobile elements that allow them to do that. In space, again, we're having to decide, hey, we can move these satellites, we could execute these on-orbit maneuvers, but is the return on investment enough that we wanna burn the fuel that's gonna take life off of the end? And so developing an on-orbit logistics refueling capability would allow us not only to further improve our ability to do mission command, but also allow us to really get after real world training, real world campaigning in ways that have been more challenging in the past. - So that's a great point 'cause as we know, you know, the on-orbit capability is nascent. And actually, so if I could just kind of transition us, you know, so when you talk about the soft element and getting those effects, how do you actually coordinate with SOCOM, right? From a combatant command to a combatant command and where do you see the biggest opportunities for that deeper integration? - Yeah, when space commands stood up in August of 2019, which predates my time in the command, although I was a supporting component commander at that time, there was a very important design decision made about the headquarters staff. The team, the initial US space command team had justified the number of bodies they were gonna get, and then they decided, hey, let's take a hundred plus of those bodies that should be at the headquarters and let's put those out in our liaison elements that sit at each of the other combatant commands. And so at headquarters, US SOCOM, we have a joint integrated space team. That's my liaison element that sits at SOCOM and persistently integrates with them for their planning, for their intelligence, for their operations, for their exercises to make sure headquarters to headquarters that they are getting everything that they need. And I really give a thumbs up and a thank you to our teammates at SOCOM 'cause they have given me a liaison officer as well and Air Force '06 that sits with us persistently and make sure that we are well integrated. Now you asked about the opportunities going forward to improve that. You know, I joked with the previous SOCOM commander that I want my own T-SOC here at US Space Command 'cause we're a geographic combatant command and we're not quite there yet, but we are working a process with the two liaison elements and the two staffs to look at how we can improve the integration going forward. - Sir, so I would second that that you need a T-SOC. I actually wrote my SAMS thesis when I was there on standing up a T-SOC at Northcom. So maybe that can give some insights into how that should be done for combatant commands. - I would welcome the chance to read that, Charlie. Please send that to me. So for general writing, I'm interested in how we improve both our intellectual and human capital regarding, you know, just general space-based awareness of capabilities. So what does education and training look like at the operator and planner level and what are some of the biggest blind spots you worry about? - You know, at my level today, I don't have to convince anyone in the senior leadership of the Joint Force or the Department of War that space is important. In fact, regularly in meetings now, it's other combatant commands who are talking about their operations, their plans, and they are the ones leading with space because it's become so foundational to their operations. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't pockets of the Joint Force and places that we've got to improve a broader understanding. And in many ways, it's really the same challenge that other domains have as well. How do you get everybody smarter about cyber? How do you make people who operate on the terrestrial land and maritime smarter about air power and vice versa? And so there are ways that we help shape the joint professional military education with the Joint Staff J7. Here at Colorado Springs, working with the National Security Space Institute, we have stood up a course that we've done a couple of iterations of now that actually is a multi-week course on space, soft and cyber. And we've brought practitioners from all three combatant commands here to go through that training together. And then we're constantly doing these exercises, you know, with liaison officers in multiple places, you know, we're just constantly trying to build that space knowledge. And we like to say at US Space Command, we think one of our jobs is to put the joint in space but also to put the space in joint. And then my last question before I move on to implications, but you know, not just soft doctrine, but military doctrine tends to emphasize the importance of people, right? Even claiming that people matter more than hardware. So do you think that joint units need new kinds of embedded space expertise, like the equivalent of, you know, space J-Tax, for example? And should guardians play a larger role, I guess that kind of the lower tactical levels? You know as we look across the joint force there are a number of places that we find this kind of space expertise Certainly the entire US space force all guardians will spend their entire career focused on the space domain Whether their specialty is operations intelligence cyber acquisition. You name it The US Army has been getting after this for over 25 years, and you know, they have 500 plus I think 40 space officers at at echelons down to the division level They're incredibly capable and competent space officers and I get the pleasure of serving with them each and every day Including my deputy commander lieutenant general Rick Zellman and in fact, I think the Army's talked openly They're about to pivot that into a branch and then they're also going to have a an enlisted space in OS They've had great enlisted soldiers come through their space jobs But then they would lose them to big army because they didn't have a way to track them and develop them And now they're going to have that US Navy has a long history in space and over the last five or six years They've doubled the number of maritime space officers and I tell you the US Navy out in the pacific deeply understands the implication of space to the Survival of the fleet and Indo-Pacific given the threats that that China now brings and then the US Marine Corps You know, they're starting from a small level, but the Marines are you know, they're all a few in number You know a lot more than guardians, but you in number relative to the army Navy and Air Force But man, they punch above their weight and they have maritime space officers as well now to your question about the should the the guardians play a bigger role I think you've seen some reporting here just in the last few days that the chief master sergeant of the space force is talking about the need for You know a bigger space force, you know We certainly would advocate from US space command that they need more resources to pivot as General Saltsman the chief space operation says you know Equivalently they they've been pivoting from being a merchant marine force to a Navy and So they're going to need the resources to do that and I think as they grow the services can have Conversations about whether you need a space JTAC a space liaison officer at the inside the other services But but I did want to point out and walk through that there are other services developing space expertise and it's it's vital to those services Primary missions and then here at US space command where the fortunate beneficiaries of getting to take advantage of those people when they come work for us Well, I think we've covered some of this ground, but there's a few I think details that I'd like to add to the conversation I think General Whiting is already sort of painted the picture of where space space command is and the relationship It has with the combat and command levels while space is vast the resources that that they have for it both in orbit and the space force are very Limited by comparison to like US so com so so com has somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 personnel The space force right now with its responsibilities. I think has somewhere around 15,000 guardians or so and Are looking to to double but to your specific question related to JTACs and embedding down to the unit level But there simply aren't enough and I don't think there'll ever be enough guardians to scale down to that level and alternative to keep Using that analogy is certifying soft operators for what I'll call S tax instead of J tax The primary challenge here. I think though is the the technical knowledge and expertise and them but more importantly The mindset that's necessary to employ space effects properly and so I don't think that a certification process will provide You know sort of what your question suggests then beyond that though and given the breadth of effects that space can generate I convinced that those should be integrated That expertise should really reside at a higher level of command and authority And where time is in as sensitive and the implications for space effects and the allocations of resources can be sort of more Considered and there's an example. I'd like to use to illustrate that point It's a cyber example, but it's operation glowing symphony against ISIS in 2016 most of the details remain classified But from what cybercom has released publicly It would targeted ISIS's media and financing operations Through cyber actions press reports suggest that this was done in conjunction with soft intelligence and targeting analysis I really can't say much more than this but guardians can and have played significant roles at the task force level and above And I think it's at that task force level. It's kind of the sweet spot. I'm pushing it down any further. I don't think would be Beneficient. Yeah, it's an interesting perspective You know as a company the conclusion of the show we like to extract practical takeaways So for general whiting for military practitioners and policymakers thinking about the next decade of competition What is the single most important investment or mindset shift needed to prepare for conflict in the space domain? Yeah, I'll focus on the mindset offer that you gave me there You know we live in a world now in which all Military forces need to be prepared to fight in a battle where they will be Continually tracked from space and perhaps targeted so the battlefield has become transparent and in a fight with a near-peer Our space capabilities will be contested and so we're going to have to you know US space command defeat that Contestation and make sure we can continue to deliver those space capabilities and we're not going to do that just with the forces presented to us The whole joint force is going to have to contribute to that fight You know warfighters and other domains are going to have to think about the implications For them on how they survive in this new world But also how they contribute to the precursor fights that are going to have to happen as we establish space Periodity and the ability to allow the joint force to fight the way again. It is designed to fight with space capabilities And to do that we're going to have to protect and defend them So can I do a follow-up real quick there? You know you talk about from a contested environment general lighting and so Do you believe that the other forces understand you know especially from an electronic warfare kind of perspective when we Same those some of the things that Dr. Kerr has talked about that hey, it is going to be contested You may not have what you need from space because of that contested environment and are they planning for that? Charlie I think the forces that are in the AORs facing Peers near peer threats definitely understand this in fact some of the best Space planning that I've seen where space we're thinking about how space integrates with terrestrial war fighting is is happening in places like Hawaii Where they're having to think about this problem each and every day given how quickly China has developed its counter space Sweet of threats and it's it's space space targeting and tracking system So can we always do better? Yes, but in the forces that are you know most challenged by these problems? Yes, they deeply understand this problem That's great. It's good to hear that. So Dr. Kerr is if I could Finish up with you so for for academics and strategists right setting a regular warfare So what key question about space and the triad do you think we still misunderstand or under explore? That's a great question Charlie and I'll try to offer a very simple succinct answer most of mine haven't been so I'll try to keep it short and sweet It's the really to my mind. It's the question of mistaking the potential for the triad for its realities and what I mean by that is We constantly try to struggle to overcome the informational stovepipes that are designed to protect capabilities from disclosure and in on a related note It's also about clarifying what type of influence space and the triad a space and into the triad is best suited for is it deterring state competitors? Is it for influencing populations? Is it for enabling and combating proxies in the light those to my mind are sort of the two burning questions? But I think we need to answer all right. Well, that's a wrap for today Dr. Kyrus and General Whiting. Thanks for joining us on the regular warfare podcast today Thanks so much for having us on I was great to great to chat with you Charlie and Ben as well as General Whiting Thanks, thanks again. Yeah, thanks for me as well. Appreciate what you guys do and you know always great to connect Thanks again for joining us for the irregular warfare podcast Be sure to subscribe to the regular warfare podcast so you don't miss an episode If you enjoyed today's show, please leave a comment and positive rating on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to the regular warfare podcasts It really helps expose the show to new listeners And one last note while you're hearing this episode are the views of the participants and do not represent those at Princeton, Westbourne or for any agency in the US government Thanks again, and we'll see you next time [Music] [Music] (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)