Space – ISR

Thoughts on Intelligence, Surveillance,

and Reconnaissance for/from Space for

Cyber Professionals

Lt Col Kris “IKE” Kelly, USAF

25 AF Space – ISR Coordinator

Senior Duty Officer – 625 Ops Center

• “Re-”Creation of USSPACECOM

• USSPACECOM is in 2019 T10, Part I, Ch6, para 169

• Creation of Space Force (admit it, you’re jealous)

2

Why talk about this now?

• Intelligence

• Why it matters

• Adversary Intent

• Threat Warning

• Decision Advantage & Situational/Domain Awareness

(in part)

• Surveillance

• Watch it

• Reconnaissance

• Find it

3

ISR - Terms

Theme: Competing in SpaceSpace is a Warfighting Domain (see USC T10)

• Congested and Contested

• Remote Sensing, Communications, Precision Timing

and Navigation (PNT)

• Space Domain Awareness

• Space Weapons (not just Buck Rogers and Star Trek anymore)

• Cyber and Electronic threats to Space

• Outlook

• Thoughts and Questions

4

Overview

Permissive Congested and Contested

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Space is a Warfighting Domain

• Contested

• Adversary Counter-Space

• Degraded

• Environmental (e.g. Space WX)

• Hundreds of thousands of objects

• Some work, some don’t

• Ops Limitations

• Launch timelines

• Maneuver decisions

• On orbit MX? Not now, but…

• Hubble, ~$205M/service mission

6

• Remote Sensing

• Communications

• Precision Timing &

Navigation

• Counter-Space

Space DOMAIN Awareness

7

Weapons

8

Cyber and Electronic Threats

9

Outlook

10

• Beyond Earth’s Orbit, the other “High Ground”

• Adversary integration of Space into Military Ops

• Dual Use and Obfuscation

• The next Advanced Space Capabilities

• 3D printing, self protection, AI, to name a few

Thoughts and Questions

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• Big Data Challenges and Opportunities

• PAI, Proprietary, DoD, others

• AFSPC and NRO (Army, Navy?)

• Visualization tools, AI

• Cyber threats and defense

• Defense Contractors

• Commercial sector, (launch and recovery)

• Space-ISR

• Analytics

• DoD (OSD, USAF, IC, others) evaluating best options

• Federated, dedicated, local, distributed?

• USAF: AFSPC to 25 AF (ACC) balance

• Culture: Space Ops vs ISR

• Expertise, what is an expert and where are they?