{"id":45513,"date":"2024-01-25T19:35:54","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T11:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/secret-military-space-programs-can-be-a-little-less-secret-pentagon-says\/"},"modified":"2024-01-25T19:35:54","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T11:35:54","slug":"secret-military-space-programs-can-be-a-little-less-secret-pentagon-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/secret-military-space-programs-can-be-a-little-less-secret-pentagon-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret military space programs can be a little less secret, Pentagon says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed a memo to overhaul a decades-old policy on how the Pentagon keeps sensitive military space programs secret. However, don\u2019t expect defense officials to openly discuss everything they\u2019re doing to counter China and Russia in orbit.<\/p>\n

John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, revealed the policy change in a roundtable with reporters on January 17. For many years, across multiple administrations, Pentagon officials have lamented their inability to share information with other countries and commercial partners. Inherently, they argued, this stranglehold on information limits the military\u2019s capacity to connect with allies, deter adversaries, and respond to threats in space.<\/p>\n

In his statement last week, Plumb said this new policy \u201cremoves legacy classification barriers that have inhibited our ability to collaborate across the US government and also with allies on issues related to space.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Plumb was careful to point out that the memo from Hicks calls for \u201cdeclassification, not unclassification\u201d of military space programs. \u201cSo think of it as reducing classification.\u201d Effectively, this means the Pentagon can make sensitive information available to people with lower security clearances. More eyes on a problem usually mean better solutions.<\/p>\n

New policy for a new century<\/h2>\n

Some of the Pentagon\u2019s most secret space technologies are part of Special Access Programs (SAPs), where information is highly compartmentalized, and only a few officials know all facets of the program. With SAPs, it\u2019s difficult or impossible to share information with allies and partners, and sometimes officials run into roadblocks even discussing the programs with different parts of the Defense Department.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, the department does overclassify,\u201d Hicks told reporters in November.<\/p>\n

Generally, it\u2019s easier to assign a classification level to a document or program than it is to change the classification level. \u201cThe originator of a document, usually a foreign policy or national security staff member, decides if it needs to be classified,\u201d wrote Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the CIA and a former adviser to four presidents. \u201cIn almost all cases this is a simple decision. Has its predecessor\u2019s been classified? If so, classify.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government has periodic reviews to determine whether something still needs to be classified, but most of the time, secret documents take decades to be reviewed. If they are released at all, they generally have value only as part of the historical record.<\/p>\n

The declassification memo signed by Hicks is, itself, classified, Plumb said. Hicks signed it at the end of last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the classification memo does generally is it \u2026 really completely rewrites a legacy document that had its roots 20 years ago,\u201d Plumb said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s just no longer applicable to the current environment that involves national security space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon has identified China as the paramount national security threat to the United States. Much of what the Pentagon is doing in space is geared toward maintaining the US military\u2019s competitive advantage against China or responding to China in cases where Chinese capabilities may threaten US assets in orbit.<\/p>\n

This overarching focus on China touches on all military space programs and the NRO\u2019s fleet of spy satellites. The military is launching new constellations of satellites designed to detect and track hypersonic missiles, demonstrating their ability to quickly get a satellite into orbit, and is interested in using commercial space capabilities from US industry, ranging from in-space refueling to broadband communications.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cOur network of allies and partners is an asymmetric advantage and a force multiplier that neither China nor Russia could ever hope to match,\u201d Plumb said.<\/p>\n

Officials have said the threat environment requires the military to be more agile. It\u2019s more vital to collaborate with allies and commercial partners.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks arrives to a classified all-Senate briefing on artificial intelligence at the US Capitol Building on July 11, 2023.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cSo anything we can bring from a SAP level to a top-secret level, for example, (brings) massive value to the warfighter, massive value to the department,\u201d Plumb said. \u201cAnd frankly, my hope is over time it will also allow us to share more information with allies and partners (who we might not) be able to share that information with at the SAP level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plumb said the Pentagon\u2019s leadership is assigning \u201cminimum classifications\u201d to certain programs, then allowing the military service to examine their own programs and determine whether they should remain Special Access Programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe general point that I have made clear is policy is not a reason, is not the only reason, to hide something in a SAP program,\u201d Plumb said. \u201cThere have to be technical aspects to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The military has traditionally held space programs at a higher classification level, but the Space Force\u2019s leaders have encouraged their teams to think more tactically about space operations. This means the Space Force needs to entrust more real-time operational decisions to junior officers who may not hold a top-level security clearance.<\/p>\n

The new classification policy apparently doesn\u2019t open the door to releasing more information to the public. The military and intelligence agencies, such as the National Reconnaissance Office, have in recent years disclosed previously classified information about some of their secret surveillance satellites that operated from the 1950s into the 1990s.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

The Space Force and the NRO still closely guard details about the satellites they currently have in orbit. From the perspective of those outside the military or the defense industry, that\u2019s not likely to change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is not actually a thing I\u2019m all that concerned about,\u201d Plumb said. \u201cI\u2019m concerned about\u2026 reducing the classification of things where they are overclassified to the point that it hampers our ability to get work done or hamper the ability of the warfighter to do their mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Space Force and the NRO have a growing number of contracts with companies operating satellites for commercial remote sensing, maritime surveillance, and radio frequency detection. The data supplied by these companies are unclassified, so military officials can share their products more widely than they could disseminate imagery from a government spy satellite.<\/p>\n

Recent conflicts in Israel and Ukraine have amplified the importance of commercial satellite data to the military.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue with Israel and Hamas, and with Ukraine, the ability to provide threat information to them from our commercial providers\u2026 allows them to make their operations better,\u201d said Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, a senior commander at US Space Command, in remarks last month.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also value to information-sharing in deterrence, he said.<\/p>\n

In 2021, the trade publication Breaking Defense reported the Pentagon was close to revealing information about a super-secret space weapon and providing a real-world demonstration of its capabilities to potential adversaries like China and Russia. But the report of an impending information dump never materialized.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Schiess said last month that commercial space reconnaissance capabilities contracted by the military provide their own measure of deterrence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we can take information that comes out (from commercial satellites) and show that we\u2019ve seen something that\u2019s happened on orbit, and that we don\u2019t have to go through the classification levels to be able do it, is incredibly powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last year, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed a memo to overhaul a decades-old policy on how the Pentagon keeps sensitive military space programs secret. However, don\u2019t expect defense officials to openly discuss everything they\u2019re doing to counter China and Russia in orbit. John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, revealed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9740,257,562,332],"class_list":["post-45513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-classified-information","tag-military-space","tag-pentagon","tag-space-force"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45513"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}