Frank J. Kuzminski – “NATO Space Critical Infrastructure” from Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield  (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 2)

Every day, malicious actors target emerging technologies and medical resilience or seek to wreak havoc in the wake of disasters brought on by climate change, energy insecurity, and supply-chain disruptions. Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow’s Battlefield is a handbook on how to strengthen critical infrastructure resilience in an era of emerging threats. The counterterrorism research produced for this volume is in alignment with NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept, which details how NATO Allies can transform and maintain their advantage despite new threats for the next two decades. The topics are rooted in NATO’s Seven Baseline requirements, which set the standard for enhancing resilience in every aspect of critical infrastructure and civil society.

Chapter 3 in this handbook addresses space. Space systems provide critical capabilities to enable NATO’s core missions of deterrence and defense, including secure satellite communications (SATCOM), positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT), early warning, environmental assessment, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). However, the proliferation of counter-space technologies renders these systems vulnerable to interference and attack. NATO members must harden their space systems from attacks by state and non-state actors to ensure the resilience of NATO operations in the era of strategic competition.

Click here to read the book.

Click here to watch the webinar.



Keywords: critical infrastructure, NATO, satellites, space, ASAT, ISR, cyber
Episode  Transcript: "Space Critical  Infrastructure" from Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow's Battlefield (NATO COE-DAT Handbook 2)
Stephanie Crider (Host)

You're listening to Conversations on Strategy.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army, War College, or any other agency of the US government.

I'm here with Frank Kuzminski, today, US Army officer and strategist, and author of “NATO Space Critical Infrastructure” from Countering Terrorism on Tomorrow's Battlefield: Critical Infrastructure Security and Resiliency. Thanks for making time for this today, Frank.

Frank Kuzminski

Thank you for having me.

Host

Space is a relatively new operational domain. Since 2019, you note in your chapter. Through the lens of those core missions of deterrence and defense, what do our listeners need to know about space?

Kuzminski

Space is relatively new in terms of the overall history of the alliance. And that really stems from the NATO ministerial meeting in December 2019, where they declared space as an operational domain. And then, more importantly, in June 2021, NATO issued a communique after the NATO summit that the mutual defense provisions of Article 5, which treats an attack on one as an attack against all, would apply to the space domain as well. And they specifically mentioned that any attack to, from, or within space could be as harmful as a conventional attack, and therefore warrant an Article 5 response.

And that's important because space really touches nearly every aspect of daily life in modern society, (including) commercial activities, economic activity, information, communications, and especially national security and defense. And so today, more than ever, NATO as an alliance, depends more than ever on space-critical infrastructure for its core missions of deterrence and defense.

Host

Let's talk a little bit more about space critical infrastructure. Can you give us an overview?

Kuzminski

So, space critical infrastructure comprises the physical systems, the orbital platforms, and the data transmission networks and the people that work across the four segments of a space system to provide the space domain capabilities that we rely on. There is this space segment, which consists of the satellites, spacecraft, and technical payloads that occupy the different orbits.