The DownLink Podcast

Most of the world's space agencies and companies are winding down their cooperation with Russia, while other major space-faring nations are making agreements. Laura Winter speaks with the Secure World Foundation’s Washington, D.C. Office Director Victoria Samson, who explains what this may mean for future international cooperation in creating a stable space environment.

Too bold? Or not bold enough? The U.S. Secretary of the Air Force revealed how the Biden Administration intends to shape the U.S. Space Force’s mission and future this week at Space Symposium. Laura Winter hosts a discussion with Peter Garretson, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, coauthor of Scramble for the Skies The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space, and the host of AFPC's Space Strategy Podcast; Christopher Stone who is a senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and the author of Reversing the Tao: A Framework for Credible Space Deterrence; and Makena Young is an associate fellow with the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The Biden Administration’s FY 2023 budget request dropped this last week, with $24.5 billion for the U.S. Space Force. Laura Winter hosts a discussion with Charles Beames, who before becoming, the chairman of the board for York Space Systems and the SmallSat Alliance, was a Pentagon insider responsible for all space and intelligence acquisitions; Peter Garretson, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, coauthor of "Scramble for the Skies The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space", and the host of AFPC's "Space Strategy Podcast"; Christopher Stone who is a senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, and the author of "Reversing the Tao: A Framework for Credible Space Deterrence".

While Russia’s state-owned space corporation Roscosmos is hunting for customers, there’s anecdotal evidence that some in the commercial space industry outside of the country are seeing a bump in sales related to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Laura Winter speaks with Matt Desch, the CEO of the U.S.-headquartered mobile satellite communications company Iridium, and with Hans Steiner the CTO of the European satellite signal monitoring and geolocation service provider Atos as well as the company’s Director of Global Sales Eias Daka.

It almost slipped under the radar… The U.S. Space Force Space Training And Readiness Command, or STARCOM, released its planning doctrine, the foundation of how to plan the execution and leveraging of spacepower. This is the first space warfighting doctrine in roughly 18 months since the new branch released its inaugural doctrine, "Space Power". Laura Winter’s guest is Christopher Stone, a senior fellow for space studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Stone breaks it down, showing where he believes this fundamental guidance succeeds and where some re-engineering is required.

Resistance against the Russian war in Ukraine comes in many forms, such as just remaining at work and refusing to leave. In this episode, Laura Winter speaks with two former heads of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, Volodymyr Usov and Lyubomyr Sabadosh, and their colleague Liliya Shevchuk, the director of the country’s Space Initiatives Center. But first, Winter speaks with Homer Hickam, a retired NASA aerospace engineer and a New York Times best-selling book author, who wrote a Washington Post opinion piece, published on March 9, with the headline “Our space partnership with Russia can’t go on.”

How is the space sector reacting to Russia’s war in Ukraine and mitigating against an uptick in cyber threats to space systems? Laura Winter speaks with Dan Dumbacher, Executive Director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, or AIAA; and with Frank Backes, Senior Vice president of Kratos Federal Space and Board Chair of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or Space ISAC; Sam Visner, Technical Fellow at the Mitre Corporation and Vice Chair of the Space ISAC; and the organization’s Executive Director Erin Miller.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has kicked off financial and technical sanctions targetting Russian space programs, a threatening Twitter storm from the head of Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos, and de-coupling or cooperative scientific space programs. Laura Winter speaks with Malcolm Davis, a senior policy analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute focusing on space policy, security, strategy, and capability development; and with Pavel Luzin, a U.S.-Russia relations, international security, and space expert and lecturer in Russia.

Balloons as big as a football stadium provide the Department of Defense with suborbital services, such as payload hosting and persistent ultra-high quality and high definition earth observation data. Is it enough for a business? Is this a little-known opportunity? Laura Winter speaks with Ryan Hartman, CEO of World View.

If you think sanctions to counter Russian aggression have not and will not make a difference, look at what is Russia’s clearest exemplification of its global power status, its space programs. Laura Winter speaks with space and international security expert, lecturer, and author Pavel Luzin, and Air Force Brig. Gen. (ret.) Bruce McClintock, of the Rand Corporation’s Space Enterprise Initiative, about the effects of sanctions on Russia’s space ambitions now, and the possibility of more.

The United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence released its much-anticipated inaugural space policy paper “Defence Space Strategy: Operationalising the Space Domain”. The U.K., the No. 1 ally of the United States, is a member of the European Space Agency and a signatory to the U.S. -led Artemis Accords. To understand Britain’s space security ambitions, Laura Winter speaks with Bleddyn Bowen, a space warfare expert at the University of Leicester, and the author of the book, “War In Space: Strategy, Spacepower, Geopolitics”, and with Juliana Suess, the Royal United Services Institute space security policy lead.

When the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday outlined what forces the Russian military has amassed along Ukraine’s eastern borders, it included electronic warfare. EW is arguably Russia’s answer to the U.S.’s satellite-based communications, command, and control as well as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance superiority. Leading Russian military analysts have observed that the West undervalues and misunderstands Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities. Laura Winter speaks with Michael Kofman, the Research Program Director for the Center for Naval Analyses’s Russia Studies Program, and frequent author of articles on Russia and its military for War on the Rocks.

In this episode, Laura Winter speaks with Dan Ceperley, the co-founder and CEO of LeoLabs, a Silicon Valley space-start-up that’s attracted $100 million in venture capital, as well as contracts from the Department of Defense. Ceperley reveals his “ah-ha” moment that transformed him into an entrepreneur and explains the business case for tracking the satellites and space trash on orbit - as a paid service.

Should the United States use space nuclear thermal propulsion for its key on-orbit assets? It’s not just simply to stuff of Star Trek. In fact the idea has been around since before we landed on the moon. The Russians, the Chinese and the U.S. are pursuing it for deep space operations. Laura Winter speaks with Christopher Stone, who is a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center, and the author of a paper outlining why he thinks it’s time for nuclear powered satellites and other spacecraft for space maneuver warfare.

Welcome to the New Year!... And to federal budget purgatory… The National Defense Authorization Act for the financial year 2022 is law, but the U.S. Senate hasn’t passed a budget to pay for it. Lawmakers know this is not how you run a railroad, so this coming Wednesday the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense is holding a hearing about the impact. In this episode Laura Winter asks, who should be testifying and what questions need to be answered, from Mir Sadat, a former National Security Council director for defense and space policy, an Atlantic Council fellow, and a scholar with West Point’s Modern War Institute; Peter Garretson, a book author, and podcaster, a senior defense studies fellow Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, as well as the editor of one of the most important space reports out there, State Of The Space Industrial Base; and Christopher Stone, a Senior Fellow for Space Studies for the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Advantage Research Center, and the author of the upcoming policy paper Maneuver Warfare in Space: The Strategic Mandate for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion.

In this year-end episode of The DownLink, Laura Winter unravels a space threat story through three key interviews with Donald Kessler, the now-retired NASA astrophysicist who first theorized what is now known as the “Kessler Syndrome”; Brian Weeden a space policy analyst and advocate from the Secure World Foundation; and Robin Dickey, a space policy and strategy analyst with the Aerospace Corporation. But first, Laura first gives us her top three 2021 data points with effects that she believes will punch through into 2022 and beyond.

Last month Russia tested an anti-satellite weapons system, ostensibly as a warning to anyone that may wish to assist Ukraine, the U.S., or NATO. So while it’s clear that military satellites could be targeted, what’s the risk to commercial satellite operators that provide services to the DoD? To get the answers, Laura Winter speaks with David Koplow, former Special Counsel for Arms Control to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense and the Scott K. Ginsburg Professor of Law at Georgetown University; Chris Kunstadter, Global Head of Space at AXA XL; and Kaitlyn Johnson, Deputy Director and Fellow, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Aerospace Security Project.

This week on The DownLink, Laura Winter speaks with Iridium Communications, Inc. CEO Matt Desch to discuss what he hopes will remain a rare story - the hypersonic bust-up of his company’s satellite in orbit. Many who serve the defense policy-making ecosystem, here in the United States and within multinational organizations are coming to better appreciate the fragile nature of the near-earth space environment. Nevertheless, debris and junk orbiting the earth at hypersonic speeds feels somewhat academic, even with last month’s Russian anti-satellite missile test. Putting the Russia-Ukraine crisis to the side, but not completely out of view, Desch tells the story of the Iridium-33 and gives us his take on what policy-makers, leaders, and space operators need to do to preserve our freedom of action - a.k.a the ability to project power over the horizon - in low earth orbit.

This week U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris convened the Biden Administration’s inaugural National Space Council meeting. It had three agenda items: STEM education, to create the future space-based workforce; using space-based assets and the data they produce to combat climate change; and space-based security, which at present has precious few rules or norms governing behavior. Also, this week, the U.S. Department of Defense shared that it had completed its Global Posture Review, but didn’t include space in its report, which has raised more than a few eyebrows. To unpack the week's events, Laura Winter speaks with Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation, Daniel Dumbacher, the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Sarah Mineiro, a true space and defense policy nerd, who is an adjunct fellow with the Center for a New American Security.

In this episode of The DownLink podcast, Laura Winter is shedding light on satellite communications over the optical part of the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s called laser communication or optical wireless communication. DARPA, the Space Development Agency, the United States Space Force are already working with the commercial sector to develop and deploy laser satellite communication. What makes this recently recognized technology so special is that by all accounts it’s near impossible to jam, spoof, intercept, or even detect. Laura speaks with Bridgecom CEO Barry Matsumori, who is a veteran of Qualcomm, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic, about how optical wireless works to defeat adversaries. In the episode’s second half she speaks with a laser communications pioneer, David Czajkowski, the co-founder and CEO of Space Micro. Space Micro has been in the news this week because Venture Space Holdings announced earlier this week that it is acquiring a majority stake in Czajkowski’s company.

This week’s episode take a closer look at Monday’s Russian anti-satellite missile test and the debris field it caused, which forced the seven astronauts and cosmonauts on board the International Space Station to take cover. Jamie Shea, who after three decades with NATO, and having served as that organization’s Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges, says he does not believe the ASAT test is a coincidence, but part of an effort to keep the Allies on the back foot as tensions rise on Eastern Europe’s border with Russia. Daniel Dumbacher, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’s Executive Director and U.K. Amb. Aidan Liddle discuss their efforts to codify norms of behavior and what’s at stake if governments do not agree to a set of rules for space.

This week on The DownLinK, we’re looking at U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s four-day trip to Paris. She had a number of events, but what we’re interested in is her discussion with French President Emanuel Macron, very specifically the portion of their chat at the Élysée that covered cooperation in space. There were three key developments. To unpack these developments, Laura Winter spoke to Xavier Pasco, director of the Foundation for Strategic Research; Dimitrios Stroikos, from the London School of Economics; and Todd Harrison, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They are space and defense experts from both sides of the Atlantic.

This episode is about infrastructure, a subject, no doubt, that you have probably been hearing a whole lot about these past few days, especially if you are in the United States. That’s because the U.S. Congress is getting set to vote on two multi-trillion-dollar bills, one of which is called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The success of that feat depends on whether the lawmakers can actually reach an agreement. What’s kind of funny though, is that there is another infrastructure debate going on in this town, and it’s about space infrastructure - that’s both the assets on orbit and on the ground. Laura Winter explores the question of whether the Department of Homeland Security should designate space systems a critical infrastructure sector with Ron Keen a cybersecurity expert with the Department of Homeland Security’s National Risk Management Center; Samuel Visner, a technical fellow at the Mitre Corporation, which bills him as its in-house global thought leader in national security, cybersecurity, and space systems security; and John Doyon, the executive vice president of the Intelligence National Security Alliance. Visner also spoke at this week’s Aspen Security Forum and is a key author of a white paper titled “Designating the U.S. Space Sector as Critical Infrastructure,” which INSA published this week.

The U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley not only confirmed that the U.S. intelligence community, and therefore the Department of Defense and the U.S. administration believe that China test-launched a new hypersonic weapons system sometime in late July, he said it was close to a Sputnik moment. To understand better what Gen.Milley is saying, I spoke with one of the most knowledgeable hypersonics and hypersonic weapons systems experts and aeronautics engineers, the former DoD’s former Director of Defense, Research and Engineering, Mark Lewis. He’s now the Executive Director, Emerging Technologies Institute at the National Defense Industrial Association. Later Sarah Mineiro from the Center for a New American Security and Kaitlyn Johnson from the Center for Strategic and International Studies discuss their take on Milley’s statements, and what the U.S. Space Force is doing to coordinate with the defense and space industries and to also work with Congress on getting the funding to meet current and future threats and challenges.

What the heck did China send up into orbit? The Financial Times says China launched a hypersonic glide vehicle carrying a fractional orbital bombardment system into orbit in the July-August time-frame and shocked the U.S. intelligence community. If true, this development could make it much easier for the peer competitor to threaten the U.S. homeland. Everyone can agree that China launched a rocket, but beyond that, it gets murky, very fast, like faster than five times the speed of sound. Laura Winter interviews space policy, emerging technologies, and China military modernization expert Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and Todd Harrison, Director of the Center for Security and International Studies Aerospace Security Project.

This is the first episode… Or just episode zero in podcasting parlance. Episode zero is usually used just for sending out an RSS ping to all of the podcast platforms, like Soundcloud, to let those platforms know there are more episodes on the way. It can be long or short, but episode zero doesn’t get much love and attention. If you are a bit nerdy like me, I actually listen to them. So for this episode-zero - Transmission #000 - I’d like to get some ideas and some questions about space, the space business, and how it all relates to defense, up on the mental white-board for you. I got some help from Jeff Hill, the chairman of Satellite, one of the largest - if not the largest - must-attend annual space industry conferences here in the United States. I hope you enjoy the conversation. And thank you for listening, Laura P.S.: You can find Jeff Hill’s podcast “On Orbit” here: https://soundcloud.com/user-903466448