THERESA HITCHENS
US Space Force Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, meets with Guardian students for lunch, Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, Mar. 14, 2023. (US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Zachary)
WASHINGTON — The Space Force is concentrating fully half of its intelligence-gathering activities on China to keep tabs on Beijing’s rapid evolution as a space power to reckon with, according to the service’s senior intelligence officer.
“From an intelligence perspective … about half of what we do is focused on China. About 25 percent of what we do is focused on Russia, and a lot of that has to do because of the current conflict [i.e., in Ukraine],” Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon, Space Force deputy chief of space operations for intelligence, told the Space Force Association yesterday.
“And about 25 percent of what we do is focused on what we call the rest of world, or the commercial sector — not spying on the commercial sector, but just understanding the commercial sector from an intelligence perspective.”
Gagnon said that there are now “1,500-plus space intelligence professionals” in the Space Force, and that the service is already seeing benefits, particularly with regards to educating the Defense Department writ large about the growing threats to US space systems.
The Space Force’s key intelligence operation is the National Space Intelligence Center (NSIC), also known as Delta 18 under Space Operations Command, which was stood up in June 2022, at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio.
“NSIC … does an excellent job of understanding kind of that that broader portfolio China, Russia, rest of world plus commercial so that we can not be surprised,” Gagnon noted.
Referencing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s focus on China as the US military’s key peer adversary, Gagnon explained that the Chinese government in particular bears persistent monitoring because of the pace at which it has been improving its space capabilities across the board.
“About three or four years ago, the … PRC was just getting to 400 satellites. Today, they’re about to punch through 800,” he said.
China’s “space weaponry” arsenal “includes missiles that launch from the Earth that go up and destroy satellites, it includes lasers, it includes jammers, it includes a whole magazine of diversity for that,” Gagnon said. “But it also includes a lot of assets in space to see further, sense better and connect their version of JADC2 [Joint All Domain Command and Control] to for a future fight that extends further and further away from their shoreline. In order to do that, they continue to put up a large number of satellites.”
In 2022 alone, he said, the Chinese government put up “almost 200 satellites, over 100 of them were remote sensing satellites, like intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. So, over half of what they’re doing in their pace and growth is remote sensing to fuel their joint force.”
Gagnon said one of the big challenges for Space Force intelligence gathering in the future will be keeping up with “the pace at which our adversaries progress,” because the service can’t just keep adding analysts to its force structure. Which points to the power of the growing commercial remote sensing industry in helping the service stay on top of what’s going on both on Earth and, increasingly, in the heavens.
“From my perspective, you know, making sure that commercial industry is brought to bear is very important,” Gagnon said, noting that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) “are doing a fantastic job of leveraging commercial remote sensing for the US government by taking in requests.”
He explained that there are about 200 commercial remote sensing satellites providing “products and services” via those two Intelligence Community agencies that “are being brought to bear for the entire Department of Defense [and] the US government.”
Those companies now include some that are providing “satellite to satellite imagery,” Gagnon noted, a capability that he said he is “very excited about … because I want to make sure that other people satellites are what they say and that they’re not nefarious.”
For example, remote sensing behemoth Maxar already is supplying electro-optical images of other satellites to the NRO under its commercial remote sensing contract granted last May.
No comments:
Post a Comment