THE NORAD EXPERIENCE: Implications for International Space Surveillance Data Sharing
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THE NORAD EXPERIENCE: Implications for International Space Surveillance Data Sharing Full Report James C. Bennett Published 1 August 2010 Prepared for the Secure World Foundation This report was prepared by James Bennett under contract to Secure World Foundation. The contents within reflect the author's personal views and research and not necessarily those of Secure World Foundation. SECURE WORLD FOUNDATION The NORAD Experience | 2 Contents 1. Summary .................................................................................................................................... 5 2. History of NORAD .................................................................................................................. 10 2.1. The Airspace Situational Awareness Problem in the Mid-20th Century 10 2.1.1. The Formational Influences of NORAD's Founders 10 2.1.2. Airspace Situational Awareness Before and in World War II 11 2.2. The Postwar Period in the North American Context 15 2.2.1. A Clean Sheet of Paper: The Military Cooperation Committee and the Air Interceptor and Warning Plan of 1946 15 2.2.2. Legacies of Suspicion: Overcoming Historical Barriers to Close U.S.-Canada Cooperation 19 2.3. Response to Crisis: From Air Warning Plan to NORAD 29 2.3.1. From Theoretical to Perceived Threat: LASHUP and PERMANENT 29 2.3.2. The Canadian Gap 31 2.3.3. Extending Awareness - The Mid-Canada Line and the Distant Early Warning Line 33 2.3.4. The Obstacle of Divided Command 36 2.4. Formational History of NORAD: Lessons Learned 38 3. The Operational Experience of NORAD .............................................................................. 41 3.1. NORAD Adapts 41 3.1.1. The Shift from Bomber to Missile Attack as Primary Threat 41 3.1.2. Differences Between the United States and Canada in Concepts of Deterrence 42 3.1.3. NORAD's Space Role and Canadian Concerns 43 3.1.4. Advent of Stealthy Cruise Missiles 44 3.1.5. Changes in U.S. Command Structures 45 3.1.6. The Anti-Terrorist/Homeland Security Role 45 3.2. COSMOS 954: Preview of Future SSA Issues? 47 4. The Bi-national Factor ........................................................................................................... 50 4.1. Two Relevant Points from Operational Experience 50 4.1.1. The Advantages of a Minimalist Charter 50 4.1.2. Focus on data collection and analysis, not actions based on data 50 4.2. Notes on the Organizational Culture and Experience of a bi-national Organization 51 5. Lessons Learned Applicable To International SSA Data Sharing ..................................... 55 SECURE WORLD FOUNDATION The NORAD Experience | 3 5.1. What Can Be Learned from the NORAD Experience 55 5.1.1. Where NORAD's Lessons Are Not Directly Transferable 57 5.2. Some Approaches to International SSA Data sharing and Relevant Issues 59 5.3. Topics for Further Investigation 64 Appendix 1. Similarities in Interviewee Viewpoints .................................................................................. 66 2. Differences in Interviewee Viewpoint ................................................................................... 69 3. General Conclusion from the Interviews .............................................................................. 70 SECURE WORLD FOUNDATION The NORAD Experience | 4 1. Summary The purpose of this project is to examine the experience of bi-national collaboration in North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) as a source of lessons learned for the present-day problem of creating a workable international collaborative system for space situational awareness (SSA). SSA in general includes a variety of elements to support military, civil and commercial activities, including space object tracking, characterization, prediction, and space weather. For the foreseeable future, such collaboration would be focused on data sharing among space operators and national or joint multinational SSA sensing systems (such as that being discussed among European nations), and primarily to support safety and civil uses. NORAD today is a customer of certain SSA products produced by other U.S. military entities, which are used to support its primary responsibility of providing an aerospace warning of attacks on North America. Under past organizational structures, it was more directly involved in SSA analysis, and its experiences, particularly in incidents such as the uncontrolled entry of the Soviet COSMOS-954 nuclear-powered reconnaissance satellite. are worth examining. Discussion in space circles of the need for better, more generally accessible SSA solutions have grown since the early 2000s. A series of incidents in the past few years, most notably the Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) system test of January 11, 2007, and the collision on February 10, 2009 between the defunct Russian reconnaissance satellite COSMOS-2251 and the operational communications satellite Iridium 33, have served as a series of wake-up calls in this area. NORAD's role as a bi-national organization, particularly one historically involved in SSA functions, suggests that its experiences could be an important source of lessons learned that can be applied to the evolution of an international solution. NORAD's bi-national nature offers the possibility that at least some of the issues that will be faced in an international organization have been faced and resolved in NORAD's history. Several important distinctions must be drawn at the beginning of any such discussion. One is to distinguish between SSA data sharing in general, in which distinct systems share or trade the data they acquire with each other, resulting in a mutual improvement, and the concept of a widely-inclusive international organization that operates its own data acquisition and analysis center. The former is done today on a very limited basis: the U.S. and Russian militaries trade their catalogues of space objects annually, and some information in the catalogues is withheld out of security concerns. There is no serious proposal under consideration at present for the latter. What is being discussed today is an ongoing, perhaps real-time interchange among many international players that could provide the initial steps towards a widely-inclusive system. Two other sets of distinctions should be kept in mind. The first is the difference between SSA data for military use and SSA data for civil use, which is analogous to the distinction between the data civil air traffic control systems need and use, and that which military warning systems need and use. All that is required in the way of data for civil SSA is a database of object locations, a point of contact for each, and information about the space environment (weather, atmosphere, etc). Military SSA requires that you not only know where an object is but also what it does, as SECURE WORLD FOUNDATION The NORAD Experience | 5 well as its strengths and weaknesses, capabilities and intent. The second major distinction is that of military versus civil space objects. Gaining assent to share SSA data on highly sensitive military or intelligence payloads will be difficult to obtain, and is likely to pose a major roadblock to SSA data sharing. This is further complicated because nations with strong SSA sensing and analysis capabilities may find important allies requesting they not release data on those allies' sensitive systems ("black payloads"); this already is the case with the United States' release of its catalogue. However, there is no compelling need to require the sharing of information on sensitive objects for civil SSA, and similar situations have been successfully dealt with in the context of NORAD. States which choose to operate sensitive satellites and not share data on their location are free to do so, but assume the implicit responsibility to ensure that those satellites do not collide with or pose a threat to other satellites. Thus, it is probable that international SSA data sharing will be confined to voluntary sharing of data on non-sensitive civil and commercial systems for the foreseeable future. There is a great deal of low-hanging fruit in civil international SSA data sharing to be gained, and attempting to expand the scope of discussions beyond that area seems likely to jeopardize the tangible and readily realizable benefits thereof. Finally, it must be noted that "NORAD" is often used in non-expert discussion to denote the entire U.S.-Canada air warning and defense system and space warning system, or even the entire U.S.-Canadian joint military relationship. This is inaccurate. NORAD is specifically only a bi- national headquarters and command in which U.S. and Canadian forces participate. While supporting the NORAD mission, the actual combatant, operational, tactical, and administrative command and control of sensor and air defense assets is exercised by other commands, such as Air Force Space Command. When this analysis uses the term "NORAD," it refers only to the command organization; when the term "the NORAD system" is used, it refers to that headquarters and also the larger set of U.S. and Canadian set of capabilities that support it functionally for air warning and defense of the continent, and those space analytical functions performed under NORAD's auspices. This term also is used retroactively (and thus somewhat anachronistically) to refer to the system when it was under construction, before NORAD per se was formed and named in 1957. The ballistic missile defense capabilities currently deployed in Alaska and California, are run solely by the United States