Addressing Challenges to U.S. Space Security in the Global Commons

Dana Johnson, Senior Advisor in the Bureau of Verification, Compliance and Implementation at the State Department, outlined measures for addressing challenges to U. S. space security in the “global commons” in a speech to the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) last week.

Dr. Johnson is a veteran space and national security analyst who recently moved to the State Department from Northrop Grumman’s Analysis Center. Previously she was at the RAND Corporation. In her new capacity, she will be working on space, missile defense, and START verification issues.

In her AETC talk, she quoted Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flourney as defining global commons as parts of the world “beyond the control of any state…that constitute the fabric or connective tissue of the international system.”

Noting that the Obama Administraton has a review of U.S. national space policy underway, Dr. Johnson said that a key element of the review is how to protect “critical government and commercial space infrastructures against ‘all hazards'” natural and intentional. Other aspects of the review are “more effective space acquisition” and the “roles of sectoral and national-level strategies in advancing U.S. national interests in space,” she said.

She listed four policy approaches to address challenges to U.S. space security in the global commons:

• “continued adherence to long-standing space policy principles,
• improved protection of critical government and commercial space infrastructures,
• expanded international space cooperation, and
• improved space situational awareness through increased transparency and confidence-building measures”