View Featured From Earth to Uchū: The Evolution of Japan’s Space Security Policy and a Blueprint for Strengthening the U.S.-Japan Space Security Partnership By Kari A. Bingen, Makena Young PublishedAugust 23, 2024 As Japan reckons with an increasingly tense security dynamic driven by growing Chinese and North Korean military activity and defense budgets, space capabilities are becoming integral to Japan’s national security. The U.S.-Japan security alliance continues to be at the core of both countries’ approaches to security and stability in the Indo-Pacific, with both seeking to…
View Is There a Path to Counter Russia’s Space Weapons? By Clayton Swope, Makena Young PublishedJune 28, 2024 Why would Russia, the first nation to put a satellite and human into orbit, want to develop space weapons that could make parts of space unusable for up to a year? At first glance, it may be difficult to decipher Russian motivations. In 1939, British prime minister Winston Churchill famously observed that Russian decisionmaking was…
View Featured Space Threat Assessment 2024 By Clayton Swope, Kari A. Bingen, Makena Young, Madeleine Chang, Stephanie Songer, Jeremy Tammelleo PublishedApril 17, 2024 Welcome to the seventh edition of Space Threat Assessment by the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). For the last six years, CSIS has used open-source information to produce an annual assessment of threats to U.S. national security space systems posed by foreign government capabilities. Each report in this series catalogs yearly trends, uses, and advancements of…
View The Pitfalls of Labeling Whole Space Missions as Inherently Governmental By Clayton Swope PublishedMarch 12, 2024 The Department of Defense (DOD) will soon release two strategies aimed at harnessing commercial space capabilities for national security needs. Defense officials have said that the strategy to be released by the U.S. Space Force will categorize certain space missions as “inherently governmental,” with mission criticality influencing which missions fall into this group. While well meaning, this approach does…
View No Place to Hide: A Look into China’s Geosynchronous Surveillance Capabilities By Clayton Swope PublishedJanuary 19, 2024 China launched a remote-sensing satellite called Yaogan-41 into geostationary orbit (GEO) on December 15, 2023. Analysts expect the satellite to settle into a position that would allow continuous surveillance of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as Taiwan and Mainland China. Paired with data from other Chinese surveillance satellites, Yaogan-41 could provide China an unprecedented ability…
View Does the FY24 Budget Request Reflect Defense Priorities? By Kari A. Bingen PublishedMay 30, 2023 This commentary was originally published by the National Security Space Association on May 30, 2023, as part of a compilation of views on the U.S. Space Force budget from national security space experts. While this is the fourth budget request for the U.S. Space Force, it is the first since the release of the Biden administration’s National…
View Space Threat Assessment 2023 By Kari A. Bingen, Kaitlyn Johnson, Makena Young, John W. "Jay" Raymond PublishedApril 14, 2023 This resource for policymakers and the public leverages open-source information to assess key developments in foreign counterspace weapons. Drawing on six years of collected data and analyses, this series describes trends in the development, testing, and use of counterspace weapons and enables readers to develop a deeper understanding of threats to U.S. national security interests in space. The past year was dominated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where space capabilities, including commercial satellites, played a highly visible and compelling role in Ukraine’s resistance to the invasion. Thus, this year’s featured analysis provides an in-depth look at Russia’s battlefield employment of counterspace weapons.
View U.S. Space-Based Nuclear Command and Control: A Guide By Marie Villarreal Dean PublishedJanuary 13, 2023 The United States has long depended on a vast array of complex sensing and communications infrastructure to receive…
View U.S. Space Force Primer By Kari A. Bingen, Kaitlyn Johnson, John Dylan Bustillo, Marie Villarreal Dean PublishedDecember 22, 2022 The U.S. Space Force, the newest branch of the U.S. military, is growing in complexity and mission. This primer presents a short history of the Space Force, as well as key details and internal organization.
View Low Orbit, High Stakes: All-in on the LEO Broadband Competition By Makena Young, Akhil Thadani PublishedDecember 14, 2022 Commercial LEO broadband efforts are providing access to the internet from space. With the potential to bridge the ‘Digital Divide’ and a worldwide market, competition between companies is heating up
