Michael Sinclair
Federal Executive Fellow – The Brookings Institution
Captain – U.S. Coast Guard
These two cubesats were intended to serve as the avant-garde of enhance telecommunications coverage in the Arctic, a domain that has always been important but is of increasing strategic significance today because it is at the intersection of great power competition and global climate change. In short-change, a warm climate results in greater access ; greater entree results in greater maritime traffic, including by Russia and China. The Chinese, in particular, are constantly pressing to exploit resources the populace over, be it living marine or hydrocarbon-based. Likewise, greater traffic means more need for increase administration presence to ensure safe, rules-based operations within the Arctic .
The Coast Guard is statutorily charged with serving as the United States ’ Arctic government presence. This means the Coast Guard increasingly requires the ability to communicate over-the-horizon — therefore, Polar Scout. And while the Coast Guard lost linkage to Yukon and Kodiak curtly after establish, the mere fact that the military service had the vision to go boldly to the heavens to meet that motivation should be a precursor of things to come .
The key questions
Space issues are a hot topic in 2020. indeed, we are at the beginning of a second great quad long time, one that is shaping up to be turbo-charged by the commercial market and the apparently ceaseless, exponentially increasing office of computer processing. The United States is pursuing the Artemis Accords, the Space Force is getting off the ground, NASA is looking towards Mars ( but first to the moonlight ! To stay ! ), and commercial outer space pursuits are booming. The Coast Guard has already gotten in the game, but it must continue to badly consider space as it develops budgets and strategies for the future.
To succeed as an information-age military serve and total-domain administration means in the twenty-first century, the Coast Guard should view space through three lenses. First, how can the service best capitalize on brassy, quick access to outer space to facilitate its missions, as it had already started to do sol with the Polar Scout launches ? Second, how do commercial space efforts interact with the maritime industry and nautical domain ; and to what extent, if any, does the Coast Guard need to adjust or modify its extensive suite of operate on authorities and regulations to ensure that any risk to the safety and security of the maritime is adequately addressed ? And third gear, how can the Coast Guard, as part of the joint effect, assist the Space Force in executing the latter ’ s own responsibilities ?
Capitalizing on cheap access
The Coast Guard should lean hard into the increased, low-cost access to space that commercial space opportunities provide. This will require both a focus staff and budget commitment, but every established position established and every spend dollar will pay dividends in terms of enhance mission effectiveness and efficiency savings. closely every one of the Coast Guard ’ s 11 statutory missions can be good facilitated by better access to space-based capabilities, whether they ’ rhenium organic Coast Guard capabilities or capabilities provided by a collaborator department or representation. For exemplar, versatile types of space-based surveillance can assist with many Coast Guard missions. These missions include nautical law enforcement ( specifically drug interdiction ), news, buoy apt, vessel dealings management, and icebreaking .
thus, the Coast Guard should develop a space-focused course of study agency to integrate outer space considerations throughout its across-the-board deputation set. As a start, this office should ensure that Coast Guard assets still in development — specifically the Polar Security Cutter ( PSC ), any follow-on icebreakers, and the Offshore Patrol Cutter — account for the space, weight, and power requirements to ensure access to secure satellite uplink/downlink data. This is particularly important with deference to the PSC and any extra icebreakers, considering where they are intended to operate. Focusing here could allow these vessels to serve as information-age ocean station sentinels in a manner quite like to that bequest Coast Guard mission, but updated with a advanced wrench to account for the value of orbital “ real estate of the realm ” at the poles.
finally, while the Coast Guard Academy should absolutely be commended for its campaign and inaugural in helping to facilitate outer space operations for the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard should review and assess whether it is best served by having its sole continental U.S. planetary satellite connect in New London, Connecticut, staffed primarily by cadets. It may be better served by adding extra stations, partnering with its sister-services, or amply committing to the concept, with an appropriately funded and give support staff that would ideally report to the Coast Guard ’ s new quad course of study office described above .
Maritime intersections
following, the Coast Guard should immediately undertake a cross-program, deep review of how commercial space interacts with the nautical industry and within the nautical environment. It should develop a Space Operations Strategic Outlook, akin to its holocene intersection with respect to the Maritime Transportation System, Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing, and specifically its forward leaning Cyber Strategy. While the Coast Guard has long supported safe and guarantee space operations where those operations intersect with the maritime world ( and there are surely pockets of excellence, like Coast Guard Sector Jacksonville ), as commercial space proliferates, there is a more acute indigence to establish space competencies across the stallion Coast Guard .
For model, at least one commercial outer space company is actively refining its ability to recover its reclaimable rockets and pieces thereof at sea. This same company ’ mho main trial facility besides happens to be close to a major commercial transport channel and the intracoastal watercourse. This leads to questions as to whether the Coast Guard has sufficient authority, regulative tools, capacity, and capability to best identify and wield any risk to maritime operations or the marine environment posed by the company ’ sulfur test operations. Further, NASA ’ s most holocene human space trajectory mission used commercial distance and was recovered at sea — with a bit of drama, because spectator vessels were operating besides airless to the convalescence zone. here, as a helpful start, the current version of the 2019 Coast Guard Authorization Act, H.R. 3409 — which the House of Representatives has passed — includes some statutory terminology ( Section 311 ) that would extend Coast Guard Captain of the Port Authority out past its default option 12 nautical-mile range to facilitate condom and dependable space operations at sea. Extending this assurance is just one man of the puzzle. Doing the assessment and developing a space-focused strategic expectation would help bring these issues into focus and clarify how the Coast Guard intends to address them. It will besides inform and educate the populace and the commercial space community of the challenges and opportunities that exist at the intersection of the space and nautical domains.
The Coast Guard and Space Force
finally, the Coast Guard should partner with the newly formed Space Force, to provide competencies that may be utilitarian to the Space Force in the space sphere. For exercise, space search and rescue comes to mind. Despite the ongoing argument over the nature of the Space Force and when/if it will be stationing its members in space, it is clear that commercial outer space entities fully intend a rapid increase in human space escape. It seems reasonable to believe that if the Space Force were to establish a full-time homo presence in sphere, it should have the capability to render aid to straiten quad farers if needed. This is, of course, besides coherent with the Outer Space Treaty and the Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, both of which the United States is party to. But presently, there is no specific domestic authorizing codified that would allow for a U.S. government means to actually conduct such operations. The Coast Guard ’ sulfur wide research and rescue assurance ( 14 U.S.C. 521 ) and the affirmative legal duty of mariners to render aid to each early when in straiten codified in U.S. law ( 46 U.S.C. 2304 ) both would provide excellent models for developing a domestic law basis for space-based search and rescue operations. It would benefit the Space Force to have the Coast Guard aid with this and similar analysis — and, if necessity, legislative drafting aid across the stallion space administration kingdom. additionally, the Coast Guard should consider what personnel support it can provide to U.S. Space Command on detail, so that Space Command becomes more familiar with Coast Guard distance equities and so the Coast Guard can begin to build its own space competence .
Always ready
It is fair to say that “ out space ” and the “ Coast Guard ” are two terms that on their face, do not seem to have much in coarse. indeed, many people are shocked when they learn about the Coast Guard ’ s broad responsibilities here on Earth. But, in the modern space historic period of the twenty-first century, relatively cheap, ready access to space is a once-in-a-civilization game record changer. We are at the begin of it right now, sol nowadays is the time for the Coast Guard — and in truth any politics agency with an functional mission set — to seriously consider how space changes their game. Fully account for where the Coast Guard can factor space into its future planning is necessary to ensure that the service remains Semper Paratus to meet the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities space provides .
The views expressed are the generator ’ s alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Coast Guard, U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government .