SMi Group’s Military Space Situational Awareness 2020 conference, will be held in London from 29-30 April. The event will explore key situational awareness challenges in an increasingly contested, congested and competitive space. And in lieu of the upcoming event, the SMi Group has released an exclusive interview with conference speaker Mr Paul Szymanski, President of Space Strategies Center.
Paul Szymanski has 46 years’ experience in missile and space control policy, strategy, simulations, surveillance, resilience, threat assessment, long-range strategic planning, and command and control. In addition, he has a comprehensive experience base, having worked with multiple services (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines), civilian agencies (NASA, DARPA, FEMA), and from the Pentagon (Secretary of the Air Force) to systems development (Space and Missile Systems Center - SMC/ASP/XRJ), technology development (Air Force Research Lab) to operational field test (China Lake Naval Test Center).
Here is a Snapshot of the Interview:
With a growing commercialization of space, how do you believe this will impact future space conflicts?
Paul Szymanski: I think that the current use of international telecommunications satellites for controlling armed UAV’s in conflict zones makes the commercial headquarters and ground stations serving these instruments of war part of the kill chain, and thus legitimate targets for adversaries willing to start global conflicts. Use of commercial space assets by the military just makes these systems targets. Maybe this is similar to the use of commercial shipping to deliver war material during WW2, which became targets for submarine attacks. Also, use of commercial space systems by the military would probably necessitate the military defending these commercial space assets. Space weather remains a key issue for holistic domain awareness; where are there opportunity areas to enhance our models with this intelligence?
How do you view the growing number of non-traditional space actors now deploying space systems as changing our fundamental framework for SSA?
Paul Szymanski: Commercial systems certainly can help with improving SSA/SDA for many players. Maybe the United Nations or even the Vatican should establish inexpensive world-wide optical space surveillance sensors to detect “funny” things happening in space and act as honest brokers to prevent or limit space conflicts.
Click here to read/download the full detailed interview.
Paul will also be presenting ‘Top 40 Rules to Fight and Win the Next Space War’ on day two of Military Space Situational Awareness 2020.
Based on his 43 years’ experience in space warfare weapons systems development, and 50 years studying military history, Paul Szymanski has developed general rules that would characterize future space conflicts. Over this time, he has studied outer space warfare theory, principles, policy, doctrine, strategies and tactics. The briefing will summarize some of his findings on this critical topic.
Click here to register for the Military Space Situational Awareness 2020 conference.
