View Back to the Moon? Understanding Trump’s Space Policy Directive 1 By Todd Harrison, Kaitlyn Johnson PublishedDecember 14, 2017 On December 11, 2017, President Trump amended the 2010 National Space Policy to redirect NASA’s focus to sending Americans back to the Moon.
View Bad Idea: Armed Drones in West Africa By Alice Hunt Friend PublishedDecember 11, 2017 While the use of drones in West Africa is an operational tool, Alice Hunt Friend contends that they will make the U.S. counterterrorism efforts harder to acquire.
View How to Counter a North Korean Missile By Todd Harrison, Tom Karako PublishedDecember 8, 2017 In this episode of The CSIS Podcast, Todd Harrison and Tom Karako discuss the future of U.S. missile defense after North Korea tested its longest-range missile yet, the Hwasong-15.
View Bad Idea: UAVs Aren’t Usable in Contested Environments By Andrew Metrick PublishedDecember 4, 2017 The conventional wisdom is that existing unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are not capable of operating in contested environments. However, new thinking can enable the use of existing UAS to support operations in such environments.
View CBO’s Nuclear Weapons Cost Estimate Is Way Too High; Hint — Bombers By Todd Harrison PublishedNovember 21, 2017 The recent estimate on how much the next generation of nuclear weapons will cost by the relentlessly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office differed from an earlier report by an impressive $800 million.
View Is Congress Creating a Military Space Corps? By Todd Harrison PublishedNovember 8, 2017 The House and Senate’s NDAA compromise has not expressly allowed for a Space Corps to be created, but it has made significant change in the organization of Air Force space assets and crew.
View U.S.-China Competition in Outer Space By Todd Harrison, Zack Cooper, Brian Weeden PublishedNovember 6, 2017 In this podcast, CSIS experts Todd Harrison and Dr. Zack Cooper along with Secure World Foundation’s Dr. Brian Weeden talk about the changes in the space domain since the end of the Cold War and China’s expanding capabilities, describe how the proliferation of space technology has impacted other countries in the Indo-Pacific, and assess the implications for international cooperation in space exploration.
View The Evolution of Space as a Contested Domain By Todd Harrison, Zack Cooper, Kaitlyn Johnson, Thomas G. Roberts PublishedOctober 10, 2017 From the dawn of the first space age, Americans understood the many benefits that could come from the peaceful uses of space and the great harm that could result from hostile uses of space.
View Bringing the Air Force into its Centennial By Heather Wilson PublishedOctober 5, 2017 Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson spoke at CSIS on October 5, 2017, outlining the service’s priorities for its major acquisition efforts over the next three decades.
View Escalation and Deterrence in the Second Space Age By Todd Harrison, Zack Cooper, Kaitlyn Johnson, Thomas G. Roberts PublishedOctober 3, 2017 The second space age is more diverse, disruptive, disordered, and dangerous than the first. This report discusses the threats to U.S. space systems, deterrence theory in the space domain, and findings from a space crisis exercise.