Long March 5-B launch, May 5, 2020. (People’s Republic of China State Information Council)
COLORADO SPRINGS: The House Armed Services Committee’s draft policy bill calls for the head of the Space Force to review all classification of space systems “to determine if any programs should be reclassified or declassified.”
The chairman’s mark of the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), obtained by Breaking Defense, is the latest in a growing chorus arguing that the classification of the vast majority of information regarding national security space impedes cooperation with allies and partners, and limits the public’s understanding of the threat environment.
It comes on the heels of an exclusive Breaking Defense report that senior military leaders are considering declassifying an existing, currently-classified space weapon. The long-running effort to bring the system in from the cold, which would require White House approval, reportedly has been led Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. That said, for months now, DoD Space Force and Space Command leaders have been speaking out on the issue.
One of the strongest arguments yet in favor of declassification was made here at the Space Symposium by a panel on Navy space. Rear Adm. Eric Ruttenberg, vice chief engineer for Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, noted that the other admirals on his panel use data from space systems that often is classified as TS/Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI), “Yet the fleet and our Marine forces typically operate at the secret level or on SIPRNet. How do we close that security level gap and provide that capability to the warfighter?,” he asked rhetorically.
Rear Adm. Bernacchi, Space Command
“You know in space, everything’s classified,” Rear Adm. Michael Bernacchi, director of strategy, plans and policy for Space Command, responded. “So, on a submarine, everybody knows we have torpedoes. Okay, that’s not a secret. Obviously we have some highly classified systems on a submarine. But the enemy understands that we have advanced torpedos that will kill them. In space, I can’t say anything.”
“We have to get to a happy medium,” he said.
Space Command, Bernacchi added, is “working on some actual mechanisms to get through the declassification or lower classification of some very specific systems right now, because you cannot go TS/SCI on every ship fire control system when you’re going to do something. It’s just not practical.”
His call is particularly notable because it comes from a bubblehead, as submariners are known, a group in the military who rarely call for anything to be declassified.
The HASC chairman’s mark says the review by Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond “would need to be conducted in coordination with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, and any other heads of elements of the Department of Defense as appropriate.”
