By Murielle Delaporte

When the French minister of the armed forces, Florence Parly, visited the heart of space technology in Toulouse last September, she stressed how much space has become over the past years a key domain for national security.

She noted that the Russian satellite Luch-Olymp had recently been engaged in not such a friendly action against Italian satellite Athena-Fidus, upon which French war against terrorism in Sub Saharan Africa relies in part.

“Yes, we are at risk.

Our communications, our military manoeuvers as well as our daily life are jeopardized if we do not react,” she said.

She also confirmed  that a working group had been tasked to prepare a new space strategy for France with a clear mandate : “ne vous interdisez rien!” which can be translated as “The sky is the limit.”

September is the month when the first of three third generation very high resolution optical observation satellites was delivered.

After six weeks of preparation in Kourou European Spaceport in French Guyana, it was successfully launched on a Soyuz launcher on December 19^th.

This marks the beginning of a renewal of capabilities for France, and Europe as a whole, initiated in 2010, but which had been delayed by lack of investments and lack of a sense of urgency.

Indeed the military Earth observation “CSO ” satellites (CSO stands for  “Composante spatiale optique : are part of the MUSIS (Multinational Space-based Imaging System) program and are meant to replace Helios satellites.

As a reminder, Helios I was a product of a cooperation between France, Italy and Spain with a 2007 agreement granting access to imagery to the European Union (EU).

The second generation Helios II was enlarged to Belgium and Greece, while a similar agreement was signed in 2008 with the EU.

In addition, bilateral exchange  access agreements were signed between France and Italy – Helios II vs the Italian radar satellite Cosmo-Skymed (CSK) – and between France and Germany – Helios II vs the German radar satellite SAR-Lupe.

As far as CSO satellites are concerned, bilateral agreements have been signed in 2015 with Germany (SARha is to succeed to SAR-Lupe) and Sweden, as well as with Belgium and soon with Italy (CSG is to succeed CSK).

New European commitments and investments in 2015 – especially from Germany – allowed the planning for more than one CSO satellite. The goal is of course to boost a “Defense Space Europe” (“Europe spatiale de la defense”) and not only European space capabilities, the same way a true Defense of Europe is currently being revived in part as a response to President Trump’s push for a better burden-sharing in NATO.

A renewed sense of the need for sovereignty, autonomy and a resilient industrial base not seen in Europe since the end of the Cold War is indeed acting as a catalyzer so that the “best of Europe working together”, as Nicolas Chamussy, Executive vice-president of Space Systems of Airbus Defence & Space, refers to it, can thrive.

In the case of CSO, the French procurement agency DGA (Direction générale de l’armement) runs the program along with CNES, while Airbus Defence & Space, Thales Alenia Space, Thales Services, OHB (Orbitale Hochtechnologie Bremen), Capgemini and Arianespace are involved on the industrial side of things.

As Helios II was used for the needs of  “EUROFOR Chad” and as coordinated satellite-based targeting capabilities were at the heart of last April’s joint operation between the United States, the United Kingdom and France against Syria over its suspected chemical weapons attack, the need to bring European space capabilities up to date to be able to keep conducting military operations has been highlighted.

Increased accuracy and reduced revisiting time are enhanced with the recent CSO’s launching.

The fear of being left out from an ongoing space rivalries involving Russia, China and the United States as well as the necessity to protect what has become a key to today’s way of life – connecting to a phone, a computer, or running a GPS require the helps of 10 to 40 satellites per person every day in France alone! – have therefore lead the Macron government to accelerate the funding of a true XXI^thcentury space policy.

Already doubled between 2008 and 2014 with 600 million Euros, the procurement budget for space is to reach 3.6 billion Euros in the next 2019-2025 Program Law.

Three more intelligence satellites are planned for 2020 and two more telecommunication satellites should be launched between 2020 and 2022.

The new French space strategy is focused on ways to enhance the resilience of French and European space assets and play in the same domain as the big powers, since any military strategy, and any future asset (whether Scorpion for the French Army or SCAF for the French Air Force) is fully dependable on space-based connectivity.

For the French Chief of staff of the Air Force, who took office last summer, that strategy is threefold:

• Reinforce the French space detection capacity
• Being able to identify and characterize a potential threat (i.e. improve SSA or Space Situational Awareness capabilities in particular through a space-based direct monitoring of space)
• Propose solutions to avoid or respond to such threats.

In the opening speech of the 12th RACAM conference – a yearly meeting between French civilian and military aviation authorities – last October, General Philippe Lavigne referred to British Field Marshal Montgomery’s famous quote “if we lose the war in the air, we lose the war and we lose it quickly” to stress the importance of reinforcing the resilience of European space capabilities.

Enhancing the resilience of European space capabilities is indeed essential at two levels:
– first, in terms of sovereignty of the « Old Continent »;
– and second, as a crucial contribution to NATO’s future ability to resist increasing aggressive behaviors from adversaries in space and to monitor the growing activity of an ever larger number of players both public and private.

The featured photo shows a French CSO-1 reconnaissance satellite launching on a Russian-built Soyuz rocket on December 19, 2018.

*** A version of this article was first published by Breaking Defense on January 3, 2019.

Soyuz at the Guiana Space Centre is described by Wikipedia as follows:

Soyuz at the Guiana Space Centre (also known as Soyuz at CSG or Arianespace Soyuz) is an ongoing ESAprogramme for operating Soyuz-ST launch vehicles from Guiana Space Centre (CSG), providing medium-size launch capability for Arianespace to accompany the light Vega and heavy-lift Ariane 5. 

The Soyuz vehicle is supplied by the Russian Federal Space Agency with TsSKB-Progress and NPO Lavochkin, while additional components are supplied by Airbus,  Thales Group and RUAG.

The Arianespace Soyuz project was announced by the ESA in 2002. Cooperation with Russia began in two areas: construction of a launch site for Soyuz in CSG and development of the Soyuz launch vehicle modified for the Guiana Space Centre. A Programme Declaration was signed in 2003 and funding along with final approval was granted on 4 February 2005.

Initial excavation for the Ensemble de Lancement Soyouz (ELS; Soyuz Launch Complex) began in 2005, construction started in 2007, and the launch complex was completed in early 2011, allowing Arianespace to offer launch services on the modified Soyuz ST-B to its clients.

Two early flights, VS02 and VS04, and a recent flight, VS17, used the Soyuz ST-A variant.

Since 2011, Arianespace has ordered a total of 23 Soyuz rockets, enough to cover its needs until 2019 at a pace of three to four launches per year.

By Ed Timperlake

There is a great US Navy quip about a surface combatant : “Captain we are underway with no way on.”

This saying is essentially reporting that the ship is trying to go forward but it is stopped by currents or other forces and drifting.

In a very insightful article recently published by USNI and written by Megan Eckstein, she perfectly captures a Navy leadership dynamic that tells friend or foe that the US Navy  certainly has “way on” into 21st Century war.

Navy Homing in on Requirement for Next Large Combatant; Industry Talks Start This Week

The insights presented by Rear Adm. Ron Boxall (OPNAV N96) and supported by CNO Admiral John Richardson with solid  industry dynamic  support is a real signal to all that in the grand historical tradition forward from the Navy’s first “6 Frigates” to this day and into the future, the fighting Navy is designing scalable forces at sea that can win today and tomorrow anywhere and anytime in any Ocean.

First of all, Admiral Boxall underscore: “The future surface combatant will not be called a destroyer.

“The Admiral wants to get away from viewing the future ship as a one-for-one replacement for today’s Arleigh Burke class, and the narrative of “large surface combatant” and “small surface combatant” forces the Navy to think about designing and operating the two in tandem.”

Second, he emphasized that “Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson has demanded flexibility and adaptability from the future large surface combatant, and the Flight III design cannot deliver.”

Welcome to US Navy “Kill Web” thinking, where no platform fighting alone in the air, on the surface and sub-service forces all together going into the future.

“We shouldn’t look at ship to ship; we should look at the force.

“And I would argue that I think we can get more bang for the buck out of our force out of these lethal small frigates I’m very excited about,” Admiral Boxall said.

The dynamic of ship design has been in an historically different cycle time from that of combat aircraft design trends.

The driver in aviation R&D was simply a quicker airframe technology action reaction cycle.

Now with a 21st Century technology sensor/shooter and payload utility functions driving Kill Webs, ship and aircraft design improvements are converging.

The learning curve to improve sensors, system capability and weapons carried quickly compared to building another airframe may be a new American way of industrial surging.

The American arsenal of democracy may be shifting from an industrial production line to a clean room and a computer lab as key shapers of competitive advantage.

The F-35B in the Perspective of Aviation History

The dynamic of shifting to technological improvements in both aviation airframe design as with ship hull design must be undertaken with a vision for growth into unknown capturing battle tipping dynamic sensor/shooter improvements over time.

The crossover point in melding N96, surface focus with N98 Aviation is the late Col. John Boyd USAF fighter pilot in meeting  today’s Surface Navy

To understand Payload utility with full honor to John Boyd, it can be noted that Observe/Orient (OO) is essentially target acquisition, and Decide/Act (DA) is target engagement.

Thus there is a very simple formula, better and better TA and TE =more effective employment of all payloads available to the battle commander.

It is the process of understanding the huge complexities in such a simple formula that is the challenge.

Effective employment of a Payload utility (Pu) function in combat can be seen as the end point of many human decisions aided by technology.

It is an attempt to bring together with a unifying central focus for analysis a coherent interconnected vision capturing both a shift in looking at legacy systems and a way ahead in modernization programs.

Modernization and mobilization must both exist in harmony, because numbers also do count.

Shaping a Way Ahead to Prepare for 21st Century Conflicts: Payload-Utility Capabilities and the Kill Web

The CNO and Admiral Boxall well understand the Payload utility dynamic for the next round of shipbuilding.

Thinking about building a scalable interconnected fleet of many air and sea assets to fight and win is captured perfectly in the USNI article.

Every peer-competitor that can become an enemy of America and the American Navy must understand the lasting words of the great Navy theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, of whom John Keegan called “the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century.

“Mahan made a seminal point about fighting a war that rings true to this day, and specifically note the emphasis on “offensively and aggressively”:

“War, once declared, must be waged offensively, aggressively.

“The enemy must not be fended off, but smitten down.

“You may then spare him every exaction, relinquish every gain, but ’til then he must be struck incessantly and remorselessly.”

Ed Timperlake is a graduate of the US Naval Academy and served as a USMC fighter pilot and became CO of VMFA-321.

We regularly review USNI books in our book review section of defense.info.

https://defense.info/category/book-review/

The featured photo is of the potential new frigate for the US Navy.

Credit: USNI

On April 11, 2018, the Williams Foundation will hold its latest seminar on shaping 21st deterrence capabilities.

The seminar will be held in Canberra, Australia from 8:00 AM – 3:30 PM at theNational Gallery of Australia, ACT.

The seminar will focus on a key but neglected element of the strategic shift from the landward to deterrence of peer competitors, how to sustain a force through an extended period of crisis?

Since 2013 the Sir Richard Williams Foundation seminars have focused on building an integrated fifth generation force.  Recent seminars have evolved from the acquisition of new platforms to the process of shaping and better understanding the environment in which that integrated force will prepare and operate.

In doing so they have, among other things, highlighted the challenges of making the strategic shift from counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to higher tempo and higher intensity operations involving peer competitors.

Within this context, the seminar in August 2018 focused on the importance of a joint approach to building an independent and potent regional strike capability.  The topic broadened to begin an examination of new ways and means of enhancing sovereign options as part of an evolving deterrent strategy.

The August 2018 seminar began a process of looking at the evolution of Australian defence capabilities through an increasingly sovereign lens and concluded there are some important choices to be made if we are to maintain our capability edge and influence in the region.

Allies are crucial to the Australian concept of defence; however, the emerging strategic circumstances demand it is vital that Australia reconsiders the ways and means of enhancing Australian sovereignty to better contribute to our relationships and ensure a more sophisticated and independent defence of Australian interests.

During the 2019 seminars, the Sir Richard Williams Foundation will develop this theme and address more broadly the question of how to look at the evolution of the Australian Defence Force from the perspective of the sovereign lens and setting the conditions for future success.

Aim of the Seminar

The first seminar will examine the question from an historical standpoint and focus on the importance and challenges of sustaining an Australian Defence Force that can autonomously contribute to the pursuit of Australia’s national interests in an increasingly challenging environment.

A key element of Australian thinking is to focus on the importance of Australia’s natural strategic strengths and reconsider Australian territory and geography, as well as the near region, as an integral part of our deterrence posture.

This entails building the infrastructure and partnerships necessary to enable more effective mobility so that Australian and partner territory can be used as a chessboard on which we are able to move Australian forces, and upon which allied forces could operate in times of crisis as part of a broader coalition engagement and sustainment strategy.

Enhanced Australian industrial sovereignty and sustainability is a core requirement of a secure and sustained force in times of crisis, where the normal functioning of the global supply chain will be deliberately targeted and disrupted.

This will require an integrated strategy for preparedness, operations and sustainment of the force enabled by appropriate industry policy to ensure the delivery of a sovereign defence capability.

Seminar Outline

This industrial policy must be closely aligned with defence policy, concepts and doctrine and will require a new approach and attitude to partnerships and an increased emphasis on the combat support and combat service support functions of the fifth-generation force.

This will further develop the Australian maneuver approach to warfighting but set in a much broader context than simply the force elements.

The seminar will address the evolving Australian approach to building new capabilities and systems with an expanded role for Australian industry as part of a broader alliance structure.

A contemporary example is how Army is building its unmanned aircraft capability through an innovative partnering strategy with industry.

Similarly, the seminar will address how Defence can be a better steward of its major platforms by partnering with industry.

One such sector worthy of consideration by Australia is in emerging technologies and how these might disrupt traditional concepts of supply chains and enhance Australia’s sovereign capabilities.

The development of an Australian-based research, design, manufacture, test and sustainment capability is a realistic aspiration and provides sovereign capability which contributes significantly within a broader alliance structure.

In particular, Australia can play a significant role in the development and production of 21st century missiles and at the same time support the needs of core allies who could leverage evolving Australian science and technology, test and experimentation ranges, and advanced manufacturing capabilities within a sophisticated and diverse global supply chain.

Above all, this will add diversity, complexity and resilience to the Australian defence and security posture and provide additional choice in the selection of the most appropriate ways and means of delivering a balanced suite of defensive and offensive independent strike capabilities.

The featured photo shows Chairman, Sir Richard Williams Foundation, Air Marshal Geoff Brown AO, (Ret’d) talking with Chief of Air Staff, Royal Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier KCB, CBE, DFC, ADC, MA, RAF, at breakfast prior to the Sir Richard Williams Foundation – The Requirements of High Intensity Warfare Seminar at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, March 2018.

As part of the Royal Australian Air Force biennial 2018 Air Power Conference a seminar was held by the Sir Richard Williams Foundation at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. The seminar was on ‘Requirements of High Intensity Warfare’ where delegates drawn from national and international Air Forces and other military organisations, Government, and Industry corporations were in attendance.