U.S. Space Policy, With Nina Armagno and Jane Harman

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is U.S. Space Policy.

V.O.:
Ten, nine, ignition sequence start, six, five, four.

LINDSAY:
With me to discuss the increasing importance of space as an area of commercial opportunity in strategic vulnerability for the United States are Nina Armagno and Jane Harman. Nina served in the U.S. Military for thirty-five years, first in the U.S. Air Force and then in the U.S. Space Force after its creation in December 2019. She was the first Lieutenant General commissioned in the U.S. Space Force and served as its first director of staff.
Her other posts while on active duty included being Director of space programs for the assistant secretary of the Air Force. Nina has received a Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the General Jerome F. O'Malley Distinguished Space Leadership Award, and the Daughters of the American Revolution Patriot Award among other distinctions.
Jane served nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives where she represented California's thirty-sixth congressional district. Among other positions in the U.S. House, she was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee after 9/11. Jane left the House in 2011 to become president and CEO of the Wilson Center, and she became President Emerita in 2021. Jane chaired the 2024 Commission on the National Defense Strategy, and is the author of Insanity Defense: Why Our Failure to Confront Hard National Security Problems Makes Us Less Safe.
Nina and Jane are the co-chairs of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on U.S. Space Policy, which last month released a report titled Securing Space: A Plan for U.S. Action.
Nina and Jane, thank you for joining me.

HARMAN:
Thank you.

ARMAGNO:
Great to be here.

LINDSAY:
Jane, I'd like to begin with you, and I really would appreciate if you give me sort of a forty-thousand foot view of the conclusions that you reached in the task force report on U.S. policy on space.

HARMAN:
Well, first of all, let me say that it was a pleasure serving with Nina who brings all the technical expertise. You'll see that in this broadcast, but at any rate, I'm just a recovering politician, policy walk, but the title of our task force was Space Management Policy, and all of those pieces matter. First of all, space, you've just described it, has both opportunities and vulnerabilities. Management is a huge challenge in space, and policy is what we were trying to shape as members of the Council on Foreign Relations.
So the forty-thousand foot view, which I don't think is high enough when you think about space, but nonetheless let's go there, is that the U.S. is totally dependent on space, we're dependent on space commercially, we're dependent on space militarily, and whether or not we can manage our roles in space will determine whether our leadership will survive.

LINDSAY:
I want to talk, if I may, Nina, a little bit about what we mean by space and the task force talked about space generally, but there was also a lot of attention paid to LEO, low Earth orbit, and the role of satellites, and perhaps you could give us a bit of a primer when we're talking about satellites in space and what exactly is low Earth orbit.

ARMAGNO:
Yes, I can absolutely do that. And we did start with the concept of low Earth orbit, mostly because we see so much activity in low Earth orbit. Low Earth orbit is roughly defined as about twelve-hundred miles above the Earth's surface. It is the home of the International Space Station, it is the home of our intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance systems, many of them, it's the home of military satellites as well, and many commercial, in fact, more and more commercial as you see SpaceX's mega constellation named Starlink, as you see Amazon getting ready to launch their Kuiper mega constellation that's going into low Earth orbit too.
So there's a lot of activity in low Earth orbit with just really an exponential number of satellites more recently, and our report can show you, there's a really nice graphic in our report that shows you, that we are, you know, exponentially growing in that particular orbit.

LINDSAY:
Nina, could I just actually draw a little bit more out on the issue of what's happening in low Earth orbit because I had a few questions. One is we are obviously seeing explosion of satellites in LEO, as you note, and when you talk about mega constellations, these are, in the case of Amazon's Kuiper project, some three-thousand satellites that'll be coordinated with each other. But the first question I have is why are so many satellites going up into low Earth orbit as opposed to being in geosynchronous orbit, which is, what, about twenty two-thousand two-hundred miles away. I know when you're in geosynchronous orbit, the satellite essentially just hovers over one spot in the Earth. That's not the case, as I understand it with satellites. Can you help me just understand what the satellites are doing in low Earth orbit and why there are so many?

ARMAGNO:
Low Earth orbit is easier to reach, it's easier to launch into low Earth orbit. Smaller rockets can launch into low Earth orbit. Satellites can be smaller in low Earth orbit because they don't have to deal with the radiation from the Van Allen belts. Low Earth orbit is easier to use as well from the ground. Signals, the communication signals or any kind of a signal that's coming from that satellite doesn't have to travel the long distances.
And the interesting part of LEO is that those satellites are traveling at about seventeen-thousand miles per hour. I mean, it's almost unimaginable how fast they are orbiting in low Earth orbit.
You did mention geostationary orbit. The difference there is at about twenty-three-thousand miles above the Earth's surface. Those satellites in that orbit, it is a stationary orbit where the satellite can stare at the same point of the Earth all the time, and that is perfect for more strategic capabilities like strategic communications of our nuclear forces. Missile warning satellites are in that orbit because they're constantly staring at the same point on the Earth. A good place for some of our intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance as well.
But GEO is harder to get to. Definitely takes a much larger rocket in order for the satellites to operate in that orbit. They are larger, they have larger power requirements. Their systems have to be much more bespoke, if you will, and so that orbit has traditionally been the orbit of governments and nations for strategic purposes. Low Earth orbit has become the orbit of commercial companies and commercial practices.

LINDSAY:
I want to get to the issue that you mentioned, Nina, about management. First I want to ask you, Jane, about the issue of who else is in space. I mean, I grew up in an era in which it was the Soviet Union and the United States, and pretty much no one else. My sense is, Jane, that it's different today.

HARMAN:
It's completely different. I was elected to Congress in another century. I think all of us on this-

LINDSAY:
Well, I was born in that century, so that's okay with me.

HARMAN:
We were born in that century, just saying, but it was 1992, and the district I represented, which you mentioned, the thirty-sixth district of California includes the aerospace center of California. It even did then. But why I'm telling this story is the aerospace center of California was a few major primes making gigantic satellites.

LINDSAY:
By primes, you mean major defense companies?

HARMAN:
Yes, which were used for basically defense purposes, as Nina has described. There was very little commercial activity in space. The entire space system exploded, I mean, literally exploded in about 2019 as we document in this report. It was pretty flat-lined with these giant satellites until then, and now the plethora of commercial and military and hybrid satellites is gigantic. And which countries are making them? Everybody's making them. It's not that hard. Nina will correct me, but I think it's not that hard except for me to make a satellite. And the big players are obvious, U.S., Russia, and China, but there are lots of other players. And managing this, just even focusing on it commercially, trying to prevent collisions in space is a huge task, and it's one that we try to address in our report.

LINDSAY:
Well, Nina, let me ask you about this issue of collisions in space because I don't think people are normally thinking about which satellites are where, but obviously if you have a satellite in low Earth orbit traveling at seventeen-thousand miles per hour, which means it's going to loop the earth every ninety minutes or so.

ARMAGNO:
Yes, yes. Good math there.

LINDSAY:
Well, I'm just a good reader. I read what you wrote. I just wanted to show I'm a good student in that respect. But what are the rules of the road to make sure that satellites don't run into each other? Do we have an international organization that sort of sets out flight paths for satellites?

ARMAGNO:
No. The short answer is no, we do not have an international organization, and that is one of the seven recommendations we make is to essentially get after that problem.

LINDSAY:
How is it decided if we don't actually have someone who allocates space to using space?

ARMAGNO:
Well, first it actually kind of starts with the mission that you want to accomplish in space, and the International Telecommunications Union has a very significant and respected role, respected by all countries, all users in the space domain, and that bandwidth is allocated by the ITU. And so some of that dictates, you know, exactly where in low Earth orbit that you insert.
But the collision and the exact places that you insert in orbit are actually monitored by each country. So the United States doesn't, you know, coordinate with China or Russia on where to place their satellites. The ITU does it almost de facto because of the bandwidth issuance and the license to operate in those specific spots. But countries do not collaborate. In fact, the United States of America probably leads space traffic management today. In fact, they do lead. They're the only ones that are providing collision avoidance information to the world.
And it's not just the United States. It's actually a squadron in the United States Space Force. Prior to that, it was a squadron in the United States Air Force. They just had an organizational shift there, but they've been doing this job for years. And that job is to publish where every satellite is via a space surveillance tracking system. Now it's termed space domain awareness. That is publicly available on spacetrack.org. You could go there right now and look at where all satellites are currently located.
For launch, that same squadron and NASA contributes, and now some commercial companies contribute their data as well, but that squadron is the one that does collision avoidance for rocket launches, meaning essentially a corridor to space has to be approved before a rocket can launch, but approved by who? Approved by the FAA in the United States. The FAA doesn't control China or Russia, and so that's what we mean-

LINDSAY:
So it sounds like the wild, wild west to some extent.

ARMAGNO:
It's absolutely the wild, wild west.

LINDSAY:
Jane, let me ask you about this issue of collisions in space. Most of us are familiar with driving cars. There are collisions all the time. They're very sad, but things go on. But my sense is if we're talking about collisions in space, it's a very different result.

HARMAN:
Yeah, it's incredibly serious. A very small piece of debris can essentially explode a satellite.
And Nina was talking about getting to space. Once satellites are in space, there's another set of problems, which you can call space debris or space junk. And one of the things we identify in our report is that there are forty-thousand, literally forty-thousand items that could be categorized this way, and this stuff is floating around, satellites degrade, satellites explode, et cetera, et cetera. I don't assume countries send junk into space, but satellites in space cause junk. And then there's another issue of anti-satellite weapons and so forth, which I'm sure we're going to get to, but the point is the vulnerability of satellites in space is huge, both military and commercial satellites.

LINDSAY:
So here I have to ask you, Nina, to explain the Kessler effect, what is it?

ARMAGNO:
Essentially, it is that debris begets more debris to the point where the entire domain is destroyed. And it was a theory. Of course, it hasn't been proven, thank goodness, but it is a theory that there's a cascading effect where debris simply causes more and more debris.
And if you think about looking up from Earth at a spot in LEO and there's a catastrophe of some kind, a breakup, an explosion, those pieces of debris can be run into or they can run into other objects in space, and it just, it's a cascading effect.
What's worrisome is in low Earth orbit, there may be no recovery from that, and so the entire domain, in theory, could be destroyed.

LINDSAY:
So this essentially is a global commons that could be ruined forever?

ARMAGNO:
Absolutely, it is. That's the theory.

LINDSAY:
And that's in part because the debris is traveling, I presume, at seventeen-thousand miles an hour, and if it runs into you, there's a tremendous amount of force or energy that is released by the collision.
But I note that sometimes orbits may decay for satellites, and they may crash that way. I think there was something in April of 2024 where a Russian satellite, I think was basically a dead satellite came within ten meters or about thirty-three feet of a U.S. satellite.

ARMAGNO:
Oh, yeah. And the International Space Station is not immune from debris, and luckily they've been able to maneuver, and I hate to say it, but the ISS routinely maneuvers out of the way of debris.

LINDSAY:
And I think a lot of satellites don't maneuver, do they?

ARMAGNO:
Some can't. Debris can't maneuver. I mean, the definition of debris meaning junk, it's no longer operational, it can no longer be controlled.

LINDSAY:
But we also have satellites that are put up and no one designed maneuverability into them.

ARMAGNO:
Well, not the maneuverability that we know that we need today and moving into the future, no. There is some degree of maneuverability designed into the entire design life of a satellite, but it's really-

LINDSAY:
They're not designed to jump out of the way.

ARMAGNO:
It's not designed to jump out of the way. It's designed to stay in the proper orbit.

LINDSAY:
Jane, I have to ask, you alluded to another source of space debris and that is anti-satellite tests, and we've seen them from China, we have seen them from Russia deliberately targeting satellites in space to show that they have the capacity to take satellites out, but that also leads to a lot of debris. Do we have a moratorium on those satellite attacks going forward or not?

HARMAN:
Not to my knowledge. The U.S. has not conducted them, I don't believe, and I don't think there's any plan to conduct them, but they are hugely dangerous. These countries took out their own satellites, not other people's satellites, but it obviously sent a warning to the whole ecosystem that they're capable of doing this, and it's very worrisome.
I mean, the point of our report is that this is, as you said, the wild west. It doesn't have the sets of regulation that other environments do. Think airplanes, think ground transportation, think a whole range of other things, even nuclear weapons, although those regimes are pretty much atrophied, but there is no such thing as a true worldwide space management policy. And we point that out in our report.

LINDSAY:
Nina, I believe there were stories about the Russians putting a nuclear weapon into space.

ARMAGNO:
There was a story of the possibility of Russia putting a nuclear weapon into space. To our knowledge, Russia does not have a nuclear weapon in space, but they have certainly threatened to do so. Russia will tell you publicly what they're going to do. When Putin speaks publicly, there's a lot there. Of course, then they work covertly and behind the scenes on the things they're actually doing. But the United States certainly is taking that nuclear threat as a credible threat.

LINDSAY:
Jane, a question that pops into my head as we talk about anti-satellite test is that some people would say, why wouldn't we have mutually assured destruction operating here? That is the Russians or the Chinese wouldn't attack American satellites precisely because of the Kessler effect. They would essentially not just hurt the United States, but they would render a large chunk of low Earth orbit unusable, and the Chinese in particular, even more so than the Russians, are going after the commercial opportunities that are in space and particularly in low Earth orbit. So is this a problem that will just solve itself because everybody will realize that they stand to lose by trying to shoot down satellites?

HARMAN:
Well, again, back at another century, the mutually assured destruction doctrine worked pretty well, especially with respect to nuclear weapons. Now, there's a question whether rationality would prevail. I mean, the things that we're seeing in the world everywhere aren't always rational, and I worry that deterrence should work, but I'm not sure it will work. And again, the results would be catastrophic. Just think commercially, how dependent all of us are with GPS and cell phones and everything we do in this life or certainly everything I do in this life on space, and if a nuclear weapon in space would certainly wipe out a huge amount, if not all of space communications, but even something much less than a nuclear weapon could do that.

LINDSAY:
Well, Nina, let me ask you a different question about space debris, and that is what is the potential for creating cleanup crews that could clean up space? I've heard talk about space robots that would go out and snatch debris. I guess they would maneuver somehow and go at the same speed and then clutch and pocket these pieces of debris. Is that something realistic or is that the stuff of the science fiction novels that I like to read?

ARMAGNO:
The science community has been working on space debris removal for years. As you might imagine, it's not easy, but what you read about a robotic effort is, you know, certainly something that should be looked into. I've also read about kind of like a giant solar sail or Mylar tarp type of object that could trap debris. And so I know that, you know, many scientific organizations in the United States are looking at this problem closely.

LINDSAY:
You don't expect that technology to be ready in the very near future.

ARMAGNO:
Well, right, and in fact, our report doesn't even lean on that technology. Our report talks about countries coming together to work on the problem of debris together, with rules that can be put in place that, for example, this could be a rule, satellites that launch, one of the criteria is that they are deorbitable, they can be controlled and will be controlled. The rule is it will be controlled to a safe orbit at the end of its mission life.

LINDSAY:
I want to get to the report's recommendations, but before I do, I just want to make one last query about the potential for cleaning up space junk. I've heard some people say we should be leery of technology that would clean up space debris because any robot or tarp out in space cleaning up debris could also take out other satellites. And so you would then create a situation in which you couldn't be sure at any moment that your adversary wasn't going to take down your satellite system. Is that far-fetched or is that actually a real concern?

ARMAGNO:
It is definitely a concern. I would say the United States would be concerned if China owned the robot and probably vice versa, they would be concerned if we owned the robot and ran it for debris removal, yes.

HARMAN:
If I could just put something out there. We talk about space as a global commons, and problems of managing space junk and international rescue missions are a common problem. So thought experiment, let's just imagine the world would come together on some of these things. We think that's doable. We're not sure that the U.S., China, and Russia would agree on military roles in space, but we think they could agree on these other issues, and our thought was start there and work up, and then maybe, just maybe over time trust could be built, and maybe, just maybe we could come to agreements that there would be no military weapon use, no nuclear weapon use in space, which presumably has always been the goal, but it certainly has not been achieved.

LINDSAY:
What other steps would you recommend, Jane, that the United States take in terms of moving forward with its space policy?

HARMAN:
Well, we have a list of brilliant recommendations, which I'm sure everyone will want to read, but for one, we start with make space a national priority. We don't feel that space in recent years has been the priority it has to be given its role in both commercial and military, its spheres. And so after our Sputnik wake up in 1957, we kind of went back to sleep. We did set up a space council in the White House under the first Trump administration. It was Mike Pence who was very interested in this, but that space council wasn't particularly active in the Biden administration. We want it to be reactivated. We want a place for space in the National Security Council so that it's always factored in when the government is figuring out what are its priorities.

LINDSAY:
And what specifically would you want to see the Trump administration do besides having a dedicated office in the White House to prioritize space policy? Are there specific tangible actions you believe the Trump administration should take?

ARMAGNO:
Absolutely. We recommend that in the first year, the Trump administration have a space summit where all space capabilities, a kind of whole of government look across all space capabilities and all of our agencies be evaluated, be assessed for vulnerabilities, conduct basically a capability gap type of review, and then put efforts in place to shore up those vulnerabilities.
We had discussions about declaring certain key space systems to be critical infrastructure. The Department of Homeland Security with some of our nation's cyber systems has declared those systems critical infrastructure, and with that presumably becomes protections and potentially more budget, but certainly a focus that these items are essential to our way of life.

HARMAN:
If I might just add there, Ken Calvert, a congressman Ken Calvert and congressman Ted Lieu are the co-chairs of the House Aerospace Caucus, have introduced legislation declaring space as critical infrastructure, and this is a great move by Congress on a bipartisan basis, imagine that, from two Californians. Ted is my successor, so of course, he's excellent in the role, but my point is that this step, which we have taken in other areas, which are crucial but not more crucial than space, would be a very good thing that the Trump administration could get behind.

LINDSAY:
Well, Nina, I have to ask you since you are a product of the United States Air Force and U.S. Space Force, is the U.S. military adequately capitalized, and particularly is Space Force adequately capitalized and funded to handle the mission that you see the service having to confront?

ARMAGNO:
I can tell you from being there from the first days of establishing the Space Force that the Space Force is not funded adequately.
And I want to be careful because, you know, whenever you're dealing with this question, you don't want to say money will solve all of our problems, especially with such a complicated system as the Department of Defense. But all services have what we call legacy programs, and those legacy programs essentially need to go away, and the entire Department of Defense needs to relook at the budget in terms of the future fight that we could potentially have. I mean, warfare has changed. Modern warfare includes space and cyber, yet our budgets still go through an arcane process and reflect almost the last war, if you will, and our budgets need to be adjusted. And the space forces, of course, in my mind, should be at the top of the list.

HARMAN:
Well, if I just might add, I chaired this commission on National Defense Strategy, which critiqued our existing National Defense Strategy. Surprise, surprise, found it woefully inadequate. It came out before Russia's invasion of Ukraine and before the huge issues in the Middle East, but nonetheless, it doesn't address what Nina's talking about, it doesn't address how to shed legacy systems strategy, not our report. Our report did address this, how to shed legacy systems and adapt new systems, which are in many cases software-based.
One of our other recommendations is we need to integrate the commercial sector with our space sector. The commercial sector does a good job of using software, and a lot of our defense assets are hardware-based, which again, are designed to fight the last war. If you're talking about money, do we need more money for defense? Yes, but we need to spend it on the right things, and we need to pay for it. There's a huge issue that I think is totally valid about our debt deficit, and our budget should be organized in a way that is sensible and funds priorities for the United States without taking us over a cliff into hemorrhaging debt.

LINDSAY:
We could do a whole other episode just on that question, Jane, but I want to take us back to the task force report and maybe close on the question of what specifically should the United States be doing on space vis-a-vis China? China is a peer competitor. We're very concerned as a country about the challenge that China poses, not just in its own neighborhood, but increasingly globally, and now going up to outer space. China's going to be present in space, and it has the technology to do so. So how should that reality inform our policy given that we have great concerns about where Xi Jinping is taking the Chinese people?

HARMAN:
Well, if you're asking me, Nina will add much more detail. Our specific recommendation is sharpen policy on China and seek strategic engagement on hotline issues. So the answer is we have to do both. We have to view China as a military competitor, which it is, and not be charmed to think that will go away, but we also have to see China as our ally on things that we have just discussed, like space debris management and search and rescue missions. Those are things we should be working with China on, and if we can build a level of trust, just maybe space will be the magic breakthrough that changes our relationship with China.
But I don't think that's happening in my lifetime. I think China has a different view of world order, and I think we have to view China in a very clear-eyed way, and our report suggests that.

LINDSAY:
Nina, I'll give you a chance at the question.

ARMAGNO:
Definitely going into any kind of China policy with eyes wide open, as Jane mentioned, we're not going to be naive about this, we're not going to increase our vulnerabilities, but there is almost no communication with China. There is zero operational communication with China. We have no type of hotline, no nuclear hotline like we do with Russia, no operational hotline like we established over Syria several years ago with Russia. We have emails that get sent and not answered, phones that ring off the hook from an operational perspective here.
And so our report simply says, "Hey, let's establish a hotline." You have to communicate, and what that will do is not only ease operations, but potentially ease tensions and definitely avoid miscalculation.

LINDSAY:
On that score, Nina, I will note that successive U.S. administrations have sought to do just this, but Beijing has been disinclined to want to open up broader, but more stable lines of communication.

ARMAGNO:
We definitely have heard those stories as well, but nonetheless, this was important for us in our report to document the need for that type of emergency communication with China.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up this episode of The President's Inbox. My guests have been Nina Armagno and Jane Harman. They are the co-chairs of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Space Policy. You can read a copy of their report, Securing Space: A Plan for U.S. Action at cfr.org. Nina and Jane, thank you very much for joining me.

HARMAN:
Thank you.

ARMAGNO:
Thank you.

LINDSAY:
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