The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and U.S. Space Systems Command in July agreed to a framework that lays out roles and responsibilities for working, and enhancing cooperation, with the commercial space sector, and NRO official said on Tuesday.
The Tri-Seal Strategic Framework is a response to space becoming increasingly contested, Pete Muend, director of the NRO’s Commercial Systems Program Office, said during a virtual panel discussion hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
The new framework has three main areas of focus, including providing threat information to the commercial sector, asking commercial entities to give the government information about anomalies, and improving collaboration between the NRO and NGA, he said.
The framework calls for Space Command to “relay” the threats at classified and unclassified levels “on behalf of the interagency and the executive branch” to commercial space providers, Muend said.
As for anomalies detected or observed by commercial satellite companies, the framework ensures “that everybody we have on contract is obligated to tell the government, multiple parties across that government, that if they notice any counter-space activities like jamming, for instance, or anything else in that same vein,” Muend said. “These commercial entities have two hours to notify the government of these anomalies so that the government can investigate the incident to understand if it was “a purposeful event” and act, if necessary, he said.
NRO and NGA will continue work “hand-in-hand” to ensure that remote sensing “collection strategies are well informed by the threat landscape as well,” Muend said.
Muend called the Tri-Seal Strategic Framework a “first step” in strengthening space resiliency adding that more can be done “on the protective and defend side…making sure we really understand what the executive branch is doing, what commercial is doing, and making sure we can all move forward together.”
Having a diverse, hybrid space architecture is one way to strengthen resiliency in space, he said. The hybrid architecture consists of proliferated government classified space assets and commercial assets, he said.
The primary threats in space come from Russia and China, Muend said, but he highlighted the “cyber domain” as another threat vector. NRO has worked with NGA and the National Security Agency to create a cybersecurity strategy to strengthen commercial assets and capabilities while preserving their commercial model, he said.
The strategy has three tiers that go from the minimum “cybersecurity controls typical of a federal government contract,” a middle level of security, and finally higher security capabilities, Muend said.
The U.S. Space Force is still mulling the role of the commercial sector in protecting space assets, Jeremy Leader, deputy director of the Commercial Space Office at Space Systems Command, told the panel.
The command recently hosted some industry days around Civil Augmented Space Reserve to discuss a range of issues including indemnification, war risk insurance, and other things, Leader said. The government is trying to be “as transparent as possible” with its commercial partners, he said.
“I think that’s, again, one of those things that we want to set ourselves apart from China, you know, and be a partner of choice and understand that…it is a partnership,” he said. “We’re not just going to come along and…start taking over stuff whenever it suits our needs, the way you know, an adversary might with their, quote, commercial industry.”
This is all to be determined, he said.