Space, Security & ICT Infrastructure

Interview with Bleddyn Bowen, Author of Original Sin - Power, Technology and War in Outer Space

SRCH.SMPL Regarding Satellite Communications & Infrastructure, who is spending and what are the private sector ramifications, challenges and regulatory issues?

Bleddyn? The space economy is dependent on the public sector. ?

People confuse private ownership of assets with a private economy.? It is not a private economy.? The space economy would grind to a halt if government stops spending on it. ?

There’s not enough private sector demand for space services of all kinds to keep the entire industry going. ? That’s true even in the United States, which has the biggest private sector in space.? In one way or another they’re all really chasing government contracts.? The businesses or sectors that have the biggest private sector value chains are telecoms or Satellite TV and increasingly other forms of communications such as broadband.? Even then, getting actual data on how much private revenue is to be had is not that easy to find. ?

SpaceX wants to chase US government contracts to sell their services to the Pentagon and that was the aim from the start.? Starlink system wants to sell comms bandwidth to the Pentagon.? That’s their base customer and how you build the rest of the systems.?

It’s not some new era of commercial activity in space. ? It was about breaking the monopoly of ULA (United Launch Alliance - a joint venture between Lockheed and Boeing) on launch contracts for the U.S Government. ? That’s the monopoly SpaceX destroyed with the Falcon reusable rocket, but of course they want to be the new monopoly.? The US government doesn’t want to be in a monopoly situation again and so they are actually providing contracts to keep ULA going even though they’re more expensive than the SpaceX. ?

It’s difficult to talk about a proper private economy in Space.? Private actors are chasing government spending.

SRCH.SMPL? Given the sensitivities that exist around who has ownership of and access to data collected from orbit (military & commercial) - What percentage of data is for military, classified or national purposes?

Bleddyn I don’t know.? In terms of who has access, that’ll be in the legislation? or in the project parameters or terms of use set by governments or private contractors etc. ? It will be for an agency of some sort and there will be inter-agency agreements if there’s a lot of different parts of the government estate needing data for different things on a regular institutionalized basis. ?

In the United States weather satellites are a good example.? A lot of them are military satellites but NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) have working agreements with the US Space Force or the Pentagon Meteorological Department to access that data and visa versa.? The Pentagon accesses a lot of ostensibly civilian satellites. ?

The data itself, I really have no idea.? You could think about the producers of the data vs the consumers or how much of the data comes from various places in terms of the size of the data, but you’d need a data scientist to figure that out.?

Most of the information is public in one way or another.? ?

What you’re getting now is an increased commercial provision compared to 30 years ago with companies like Planet, MAXAR and Iceeye with their synthetic aperture radar imagery.? They’re examples of more and more data becoming available through commercial systems, but they’re entering an area where most developed or advanced States have a lot of military or civilian government imagery in place already.? The French have had SPOT (Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre) for many years and what you’re getting from the commercial sector now, at least in the West is a change from reconnaissance or periodic revisits to the same place to surveillance because your getting almost constant imagery, but not real-time video.?

The refresh or revisit rate from the constellations are much higher today.? Rather than coverage of the same place every 12hrs you can get LEO imagery on a location every few hours now.? The commercial actors want to sell this stuff to government (civil or military) and because of the security sensitivity nature of this sort of thing, if it’s really useful the government will share it with whatever government agency it thinks needs it.? It doesn’t matter if it comes from a civilian satellite or a military satellite and whether the users are civilian or military either.?

The people or the information will cut across departments if they want it to.? The civil-military distinction is really blurred in practice. ?

The European Union had problems with this working on the Copernicus system.? It used to be called GMES (The Global Monitoring for the Environment and Security).? The European Space Agency, the E.U and some member States had a massive falling out over the word “security”, because that was trying to make that data useful for government and military national security purposes rather than just what civilians call ‘earth observation’ (which can be used for imagery intelligence as well).? It’s now called Copernicus and the data will go to EU governments and then they can share it with who they want.? The data travels every which way, but either way governments are the biggest customers of all that sort of data. ?

SRCH.SMPL We frequently see the sales pitch for “New Space” including SatComms & selling data downstream for consumer use.? Plus, you’ve got the infra-structure side, edge computing, cloud storage, broadband and the sci-fi stuff like asteroid mining etc.?

What are the most promising and viable commercial interests from LEO, sensing, increased launches and decreased cost to launch?? Where are the likely applications that we will see or notice?

Bleddyn I’m not a business person so investments are not something I really think about.? I don’t see any big changes.? The areas where there’s the biggest private demand is in wireless communications and imagery, those are where you’ll find the most commercial or private buyers. ?

I’m really not totally sold on how much of a market there is for imagery. ?

In terms of communications and bandwidth, yes, everyone wants better internet or even just Sat-phones wherever you are in the world.? Iridium has already proven that model (with a constellation of 66 satellites in low earth orbit).? If you see anyone with a satellite phone there’s a good chance its an Iridium phone.? Inmarsat is another example with maritime shipping communications as well as military bandwidth.? All these companies are designed for military and government clients in The West. ?

There is private demand for that and if you get to the point where you’re able to get 4G or 5G quality from SatPhones on a normal smartphone without the need for additional infrastructure then there could be business in that.? That’s the opportunity that Elon Musk is going for with StarLink. ?

Telecoms is really the biggest demand for private sectors. ?

The launch market is an area no-one ever makes money out of.? I think SpaceX has got a fixed-price contract and is cutting as much costs as possible in order to maximize profit for their launch services.? Launch is just so expensive!?

You talked about infrastructure earlier, launches are sovereign infrastructure. ?

Europe doesn’t want to be dependent on the United States for launch despite the fact they’re having problems now with Ariane 6.? Given time, investment and enough reforms Ariane’s probably their best option.? They’ll get back with another launcher in due course, but they’re having to rely on SpaceX or maybe India or the Japanese (not the Russians or the Chinese) and maybe South Korea.? Whose launcher program is coming along now the Americans have lifted restrictions, but launch programs are so political and security driven in terms of national access to space & sovereign capabilities. ?

Launch only works for a company with guaranteed business from a State Authority.? You get a fat paycheck for ensuring access to space.? That’s where Ariane’s past has been for many years with Ariane 5, but it seems like everyone’s stumbled upon replacements to Ariane 5 now. ? ? ?

SRCH.SMPL So, it’s of National Strategic interest and? importance to maintain launch capacity?

Bleddyn Not for every Nation.? Not all the G7 have their own independent State access to it. Others are happy to pay for it or to form political alliances.? ?

In Europe, it’s a collective European endeavor or some would say France. ?

Yes, Japan, Europe,? United States, South Korea, Russia, China, Israel.? Those are the big blocs or countries with particular industrial security interests which means that they’re happy to spend the money to develop their own launch programs or support private industry to develop launches.? The amount of money made in launch is not huge. ?

Bryce does a really good annual report on commercial revenues.? You can define commercial very loosely, but the real money is in downstream applications and telecoms bandwidth, not in launch. ?

SRCH.SMPL So why am I seeing Rwanda, UAE, Thailand and others announcing planned Satellite launches?? What’s the imperative to spend all of this budget when there’s probably no private sector to grow and develop in the next 10years and it’s a black-hole in terms of constant investment?? What’s the major reason apart from defense and security? ?

Bleddyn? Rockets go whoosh!? They make politicians feel powerful, like they’re doing something.? Many are attracted to that.? Just look at the UK government Ministers and how they like to talk about UK Launch, they don’t like to put the money into it, but they love to talk about it. ?

“Oh, nice big missile.? Isn’t it great?? Galactic Britain!”.? ?

There’s an element of political vanity & prestige, also these things get captured by people who don’t really understand what the space economy is.? When you talk to people about the space industry, they think of rockets and won’t think about telecoms and downstream applications because it’s technical and boring. ?

Satellite phones aren’t very exciting.? Rockets? ? Oh yeah! ?

There can be industrial interests pushing those things as well, regardless of if it’s the right policy for that country.? I’m not so familiar with the likes of Rwanda, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s parts of the military or parts of various industries who just really want the government bungs on this.? Like, “Yes, we can build this for you” and industry is like that everywhere.? Of course it’s in their nature, especially the industrial military complex.? If a government will splash the cash on something, they’re not going to say “do we really need to build this?? Because “we can build this if you give us the money”. ?

You mentioned India, which is an example where there is a concerted, sustainable national project to build the essential technologies in space, similar to China and Japan.? I cover this in Original Sin . ?

They invested in those technologies for strategic purposes as well as the military and security stuff, but it’s about technological and industrial self-reliance.? Or at least, reducing their dependance on the technological leaders of the time. ?

With India’s scale of investment in education during the latter years of the British Raj you had a large technical skills base in India to actually start doing this properly. ?

With a country like Rwanda, which is not the biggest country, you think so many graduates and skilled people could be sucked up by your rocket program that could be better spent on other things than the space sector.? They’re really complicated things to do and you need loads of experts of different kinds to build a functioning rocket, because all these experts are focussing on one particular part of the engines sometimes.? For India it was part of a larger project of never becoming dependent on the most important technologies from outside countries ever again, because that would lead to colonization again. ?

It wasn’t just about the rocket for them, they wanted to build these satellites for socio-economic development reasons as well as the security and defense reasons.? Indira Ghandi, who was Prime Minister when they set up ISRO (?Indian Space Research Organisation) had already decided they would build a nuclear bomb, so they needed to have missiles to launch them when did have the bomb.? And, of course a space program only helps develop ballistic missiles.? With India loads of interests came together and they kept funding it for national security and economic reasons. ?

SRCH.SMPL? I was in Tanegashima in 2023 and saw the failed rocket launch and it struck me after taking a tour of the JAXA space centre with my family and seeing the computer room where they calculate the trajectories etc., the level of sophistication just to successfully launch any rocket.? So, it made me think of the North Korea situation in a different light.? It really is a cutting edge technology.?

Bleddyn In our field we call it the Taepodong Shock.? 1998 was the first fly-over of Japan by a North Korean ballistic missile and it is what really pushed Japan to start militarizing its space industry.? It really solidified with Shinzo Abe’s constitutional reforms and the 2008 Basic Space Law which formally authorized the Japanese State to build military space systems - earth observation or imagery intelligence for the military as opposed to just for civilian usage.? Up until then the Japanese military forces had used American space intelligence systems.? Now Japan wanted its own stuff, so they could have a better view of North Korea throwing missiles at it. ? They couldn’t do anything about it, but they could have a better view of it. ?

SRCH.SMPL Where does your interest in warfare and space come from?? Why this combination and why is it worthy of study? ?

Bleddyn At Aberystwyth University I got into Strategic Studies or War Studies and when you do that you can’t ignore the U.S military and it’s various wars in the post-Cold War era and its use of space technology.? You learn about precision guided munitions, SatComs, GPS, overhead intelligence etc. as part of learning about the Gulf wars and the interventions of the 2000s. That is what got me into space technology.?

I’d always enjoyed space stuff as a kid, watching Horizon documentaries growing up.? I had a casual interest in space physics, but was terrible at it at school.? When I got into Modern Warfare Studies I realized all this stuff is actually in space doing all these important things but nobody’s really talking about it. ?

I’d always enjoyed Naval Warfare and Sea Power Studies and thought, space is just another dimension and geography that is used for military power and industrial self-interest but there was very little information on it.? I was really interested in what countries were doing in space and got fascinated by it.? By the time I could set my own topics I just basically put “in space” at the end of the topic. ?

In my Masters I did a module on European security and integration and I just put “in space” at the end and did European integration & Space Security as an essay.?

SRCH.SMPL? Is maritime law the closest analogy and system of governance for space that we have? ?

Bleddyn? In terms of strategic analogies, yes.? In that it is a geographic place and a medium where people can’t live there, but we transport information or effects or materials through it. ?

In space it’s mostly information and data that passes through space.? We’re not doing logistics through space.? The data and the lines of communications between the satellites and the routes along which the satellites travel is not a million miles away from the lines of communications in terms of sea-power and maritime strategy. ?

In terms of the law, maritime law does not extend to space.? You can try and think of useful precedents that have been set in terms of how should two ships on a collision course communicate with each other locally; and what are the standard procedures?? You could use that as a template for rules of way in space.? For example if 2 satellites are on a collision course, what’s the equivalent of both sides turning right in space?? You can have the precedents to shape things, but they will have to be different because the geographic environment is very different in space.? The legal technical specifications would have to be very different, but in principle you could look at international seas as a template.? There’s a lot of maritime law that relates to territorial seas which don’t apply because they’re sovereign and you can’t really do that in the volume of space. ?

SRCH.SMPL How about Airspace?

Bleddyn? Airspace is a sovereign area above the territory of that State.? International airspace is different, so again you can look at precedents there.?

In space you don’t really have any territorial proximity in terms of legal jurisdictions and nobody’s agreed where airspace ends and space begins. ?

Practically, airspace finishes where air-breathing engines can’t go any higher, but there’s about 80km between that and the lowest point at which satellites can maintain orbital flight, 100km up.? That’s effectively where any space regime or any legal regime would be in effect.? The Karman line is practically where space begins, but there isn’t an actual international agreement on that.? Orbit begins at 100km when you’re at the right speed, if you’re any lower they’ll be too much air slowing you down.?

What works in space would have to be sovereignty based on the platforms, which is how the regime works.? The launching State is sovereign over the object it has launched in space,? but it is not in a sovereign volume of space.? It’s more like terra nullis or ‘nobody’s land’ but you do have ownership over the object.? That’s what the space treaty spells out. ?

SRCH.SMPL Given data and communications are the main things moving through space and are things of interest, what is contested & what are the major threats that impede this? ?

Bleddyn? If you're providing really important services for a State, be that civilian or military and there’s a war on or there’s some major conflict of some kind, you’re going to be targeted.? The same happens everywhere else. ?

In the Ukraine war civilian shipping has been sunk by the Russians in the Black Sea. ?

Using Starlink for example, of course the Russians are trying to jam it, why wouldn’t they?? Legally there’s nothing that would really stop it as Russia would say it is necessary for their? self-defense; and that by supplying military relevant services Starlink makes itself a target.? Even if there were legal prohibitions I don’t think the Russia would care.? When you’re in a state of war, pieces of paper don’t matter so much. ?

If you’re a company in the military-industrial complex and make money out of military services and there’s a war on, you’re going to get shot at, harassed or sabotaged & targeted in one way or another and that’s part of doing business. ?

The business of war is not just another business. ?

These are some of the most supreme issues that governments will kill and suffer deaths for. ? In politics & war you won’t get higher stakes.? Especially if the State thinks its survival is at stake. ?

There’s lot’s of opportunity for making money in the military industrial complex but if there’s a massive war on or a political situation means that the government needs your services urgently and you’re the only company that can do it; if you don’t, out of stubbornness or fear, then you could be replaced by someone else.? A competitor will try or the government can try other measures to force a company to ‘play ball’. ?

Companies that flagrantly violate government National Security and Foreign Policy interests usually have laws to ensure compliance for citizens and companies registered within them.? You are often not allowed to have a separate foreign policy as a private citizen.? ? ?

SRCH.SMPL For instance, Ericsson and Nokia are more trusted than the likes of a Huawei?

Bleddyn They have a long history with Western intelligence agencies. ?

SRCH.SMPL You’re essentially saying, that to operate these assets you can be brought to heel?

Bleddyn Or, these countries have the power to seize your assets and arrest you, because people have to live somewhere. ?

If you are a major supplier of critical infrastructure or essential military services you probably have to be registered in that State to do it.? Which means you have people and assets in that State.? That government and that State has to have the political will to bring people to heel if there are problems. ?

Most times companies in those situations are more than happy to provide the services, if it’s paid for.? I think Elon Musk’s tantrums have given perhaps a false impression.? Musk is the exception rather than the rule with him saying “I’m not very comfortable with military stuff”.? His company is a major part of the the American military industrial complex. ?

Where did this sudden concern about using your technologies come from? ?

Most companies in the space industry are not like that and most corporate leaders are not like that.? If you get into the business, you know the business you’re in.? When you become so useful to the government you don’t want to piss off your biggest customer. ?

SRCH.SMPL. Any view on the Japanese space program?? Where does it sit internationally?? Are there any specific natural strengths or assets?? What does the global picture look like?

Bleddyn picks up Original Sin.? Japan is among the top 6 most capable powers in space, in terms of a rough ranking.?

Satellite deployment doesn’t tell you everything but it does show the scale of industry in terms of satellite registrations, launches & building in a country like Japan. Many other countries around the world will have single digit figures of maybe a dozen or two dozen satellites.? Japan does have one of the world’s largest satellite industries, but it is dwarfed by China and the United States. ?

India is catching up to the Russians.? The Russians will carry on fielding a a lot of different kinds of systems, but they’re going to be increasingly outdated.? Whereas Japan and India are going to carry on modernising and putting up better stuff and they have the industry and the means to expand if they want.? ? ?

Japan has its own launcher systems, so despite the problems they’ve had they’ve got that core capacity.? If they have lots more satellites coming online that they want to launch, they’ll have to pay for it, but they could develop a greater launch program to launch more, more frequently & more reliably.? It is really costly to do that and it is a matter of asking “is this a national priority for Japan?” because you’d have to put in a lot of resources that Japan doesn’t really have;? or there are opportunity costs in doing so. ?

Satcoms, Imagery and navigation systems are areas where Japan has lots of strengths in. ?

It’s got the QZSS, which is an augmenter of GPS.? What it does is enhance the civilian GPS signal in Japan and the islands, but especially in the urbanised parts of Japan to make sure GPS still works at street level when you’ve got massive high-rise buildings and narrow streets. The normal GPS signal is quite weak and doesn’t quite get to ground level in Japanese cities, so QZSS was put into Geostationary orbit to enhance the signal of GPS.? That’s the same as India’s Gaganyaan system as well.? It’s not a separate navigation system it’s an augmenter, but if you can do that you’ve already started building the necessary industries to develop your own navigation systems.?

India’s already done that with NavIC.? It’s a regional navigation system which is not as accurate as GPS, Beidou or Galileo.? It’s a rudimentary system that still can be useful, especially when used in conjunction with other navigation systems.? It’s the sort of thing you build on the way to your own global navigation system with the best precision.? You can’t just build state-of-the art GPS just like that, it takes decades.? Europe built EGNASS, the European Enhancer Augmenter of GPS before they built Galileo.? It was launched in the late 90s-early 2000s. ?

India and Japan are significant in that they do have space based navigation technologies and industries.? They’re not at the level of Europe, China, US and Russia.? They’re not necessarily going to build there own equivalents to GPS, but they could if they wanted to over the next 30-40 yrs.? I think India might, but I don’t think Japan will. Maybe because Japan is happily dependent on the US for military purposes especially. ?

SRCH.SMPL Every day there’s more pictures, more cat videos, more cloud storage needed; jacked-up apps that require more processing power and it’s all going in one direction.? Which means there’s a greater cost should systems go down with increasing load and single-points of failure, so you need contingencies and back-ups etc. This clearly makes Satcoms and data from satellites more valuable and greater military targets. ?

Bleddyn Yes, that’s strategy and ways of war 101.? Earth orbit is militarily and economically really valuable, so countries have anti-satellite capabilities (ASAT) to potentially threaten those systems. ?

SRCH.SMPL Which leads to a cat and mouse situation? ?

Bleddyn? Most of that stuff is in the electronic warfare and cyber dimensions really.? In terms of the kinetic anti-satellite ramming vehicles and interceptors only a few States have those but they’re not deployed en masse. ?

China has kinetic ASAT weapons launched from the land which shoot up into space.? Last I heard they have a couple of dozen of those deployed, but you need a lot more.? If they managed to get all of those to hit GPS then that could be a bad day but but you’d need a 3 to 1 ratio for the GPS constellation.? ?

If, in another year or so China was found to have deployed 120 of those interceptors in various places, that would be an interesting statement!

You need that level of redundancy and reserves to have a credible capability.? But as we’ve seen in Ukraine, hacking into the control systems of satellites or the connections or blowing up the modems, the effect is the same. ?

With electronic warfare you just jam the radios!? ?

With Starlink’s constellation there’s too many satellites for you to launch missiles at, you just need to be very good at your electronic warfare. ?

That’s what the Russians are doing and we don’t know with what levels of success, because it is a cat and mouse game and it’s so security sensitive there’s very little information out there. ?

These are some of the most tightly guarded technical tradecraft secrets in any advanced military. ?

It’s the non-kinetic methods of space warfare that are already happening and that you’d see lots of? if a shooting war started between two big space powers. ?

The kinetic stuff can be useful in some areas because there are satellite constellations with low numbers of satellites where you could take out 5-6 of these satellites and the other side is going to have a very bad day.? That would be an extremely dangerous situation to be in, not far off nuclear escalation possibly. ?

You could also use nuclear weapons in space. ?

The worst thing the North Koreans could do in the space environment is to launch a nuclear bomb and detonate it in orbit somewhere.? They’ve got little to lose by doing that.? Everyone else has a lot to lose by them doing that. ?

SRCH.SMPL. Have you added “with A.I” to any of your papers?

Bleddyn. I have a paper out with a colleague now about the role of AI in command decisions. ?

What we do say about AI is that it's useful in analytics, where loads of raw data needs basic pattern recognition and presentation to a human.? AI in terms of filtering through loads of raw imagery is great.? Its not really AI in space, but AI in data and analytics, which is what it’s really good at!

The same with electronic warfare.? You can? get AI to analyse radio-patterns, do direction finding, things like that. ? By identifying various jamming patterns and telling you if there’s? tell-tale signs of somebody jamming you to look out for. ? But this is not unique to space.? I don’t know what there is to say about AI that is unique to space.? Where it is useful is in IT and data analytics. ?

SRCH.SMPL. What about Scientific discovery - the Star Trek stuff?? The unexpected discovery of new materials and phenomena.? Useful stuff that trickles down to end users in daily use and application.? It’s often the case that when you no longer notice a technology that’s when it’s reached widespread adoption. ?

Bleddyn. When it’s in common use it’s a banal thing. ?

This is David Edgerton’s argument in The Shock of the Old and the starting point for me in Original Sin where I say? people get distracted by the spectacular stuff in space.? The exotic, the things that are just around the corner. ?

People obsess about helium 3 on the moon for those nuclear fusion reactors we can’t build yet.? They’re not looking at the satellites in space that have been there for decades doing the mundane things in the background.? That’s what David Edgerton argues.? It’s about old technologies in common use or that have been? adapted,? redesigned, readapted by different people in different communities.?

Technologies travel. ?

In my field of International Relations people people put me in the emerging technologies box sometimes.? I tell them, no, GPS is 50 years old, not in it’s finished state but the first demonstrator went up in 1977! ?

The basic principles of the technology are the same, there’s just better versions of it.? Constellations, the basic thing as a working technology was there in the 1970s.? These things are old.? Imagery satellites are really old.? What we’ve got now is just better versions of it.? ?

The car is over a century old and we’ve got different and better versions of them now.? These are things that are in common constant usage and the feedback loop factors into newer generations and matured versions of these technologies. ?

In terms of new innovations there’s too much emphasis on innovation for its own sake rather than what has been successful & commonly adopted?? You never know what that’s going to be until it happens really. ?

SRCH.SMPL.? In terms of education, funding, skills etc. what are the big problems the space industry is facing? ?

Bleddyn. Not enough skilled people! ?

There’s a STEM (Science Technology Engineering & Maths) graduate crunch in this country (United Kingdom).? There’s so many different areas in the high technology industries that want STEM graduates - the same people usually.? There’s a hard limit on how many people there are.?

Where do you send those people to work if you have a National Program? ?

Even India, with as many graduates as they’re creating in those fields, space is competing with many other high technology sectors for people, so are government departments. ?