When it comes to outer space, Russia is both a partner and an adversary for the U.S., a duality made clear by two very different keynotes at Thursday\u2019s CyberSat 2019 conference.<\/p>\n
NASA<\/strong> CIO Renne Wynn cheerily highlighted the ways the two nations cooperate in space \u2014 Russia has a module on the International Space Station (ISS) and provides the launch capabilities that keep ISS supplied. But Defense Intelligence Agency<\/strong> (DIA) Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley grimly noted that Russian military theory sees space supremacy as the key to victory in military conflicts on the ground, at sea and in the air.<\/p>\n \u201cRussia understands that the ability to degrade or deny U.S. space capabilities will offer forces an advantage not just in space itself but in traditional war-fighting environments,\u201d he said. \u201cTheir military thinkers believe that the ability to achieve space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n That understanding, he explained, underpinned a 2015 military reorganization Moscow undertook to put space, aerospace and air defense into a single entity. Russian officials said that move was \u201cprompted by a shift in the center of gravity (of military power) towards the aerospace sphere,\u201d Ashley added.<\/p>\n That shift is driven in part by the increasing reliance of the U.S. and other militaries on commercial satellite capabilities, meaning that non-military satellites would be targeted in any conflict, he said.<\/p>\n Russia was developing ground-based mobile missiles \u201cwith the capability to destroy satellites in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO)\u201d which would become operational \u201cwithin the next few years,\u201d he said. He added that they were also working on directed energy weapons \u201cintended to target satellites and their sensors.\u201d<\/p>\n Russia was also developing \u201corbital technologies with inherent dual use capabilities,\u201d such as a satellite that could maneuver to inspect and repair other satellites on orbit. \u201cCertainly it\u2019s easy to imagine the dual use capabilities\u201d of such technology, he said.<\/p>\n But DIA\u2019s role was to ensure policymakers didn\u2019t have to use their imaginations, Ashley said. \u201cIt\u2019s our responsibility to provide an understanding of what they\u2019re investing in, what they\u2019re capable of, (and) what they intend to use those capabilities for: How they will fight us.\u201d<\/p>\n Moscow believes that developing counter-space weapons will help \u201cdeter \u2026 space-based adversaries\u201d and, if that deterrence failed, would offer \u201cflexible escalation options\u201d to Russia\u2019s leaders, Ashley said.<\/p>\n But those same leaders, Wynn said, were committed to peacefully exploring space with the U.S. as a partner.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Russian approach to space exploration is a place where our countries continue to thrive in terms of a relationship,\u201d she said. \u201cSpace is a place where geopolitics seems to get left behind because our innate desire as humans to explore \u2026 takes over,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Two years ago, \u201cduring a very tense point in our relations,\u201d Wynn said she visited Russia, and despite the prevailing tensions, got the red carpet treatment \u2014 even as diplomats and other U.S. officials were being frozen out. \u201cBecause I was representing NASA and space exploration, I was treated differently than other federal government employees,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause space is viewed \u2026as a place where we stay together.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time, she acknowledged, those joint operations \u2014 like the launches of NASA space assets from Russia\u2019s Baikanor Cosmodrome \u2014 presented cybersecurity risks that had to be mitigated.<\/p>\n \u201cMy IT is in Baikanor,\u201d she said, noting that NASA used a Russian data center there. \u201cOur data are moving in and out of that country and riding their stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to understand your network topology, where your data are going and you just put in mitigations to ensure that if they pick up anything in transport, you strip it off in transport,\u201d she said, adding that the mitigations included \u201cgates, monitoring and other things\u201d she couldn\u2019t discuss in an unclassified setting.<\/p>\n Some observers at the event were unimpressed by Wynn\u2019s comments. Bob Gourley, a technologist and entrepreneur who was previously the CTO of DIA, dinged his former agency, saying they should be doing more to help NASA secure their IT systems against foreign state hackers and cyberspies. \u201cWho is briefing (NASA) on the cyber threats?\u201d he asked, \u201cSomeone needs to be providing intelligence support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When it comes to outer space, Russia is both a partner and an adversary for the U.S., a duality made clear by two very different keynotes at Thursday\u2019s CyberSat 2019 conference. NASA CIO Renne Wynn cheerily highlighted the ways the two nations cooperate in space \u2014 Russia has a module on the International Space Station […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61146,"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":[],"class_list":["post-61144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61144"}],"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=61144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}