The Role of SSA in Supporting Norms of Behavior to Enhance Space Security

Friday, April 27, 2018

SWF Director of Program Planning Dr. Brian Weeden gave a presentation at the 2018 Military Space Situational Awareness Conference, held in London, UK, April 25-26 2018, on the role of space situational awareness (SSA) in space security. Dr. Weeden's presentation discussed how the normalization of the space domain is creating more challenges for space security and why the space domain needs to pulls lessons from other domains in developing norms of behavior that can help discriminate between normal and threatening behavior. These include potential "no go" zones around important satellites, legal agreements on how militaries interact with each other in space, and rules of engagement for responses to threatening actions. Dr. Weeden emphasized that improving SSA for all actors in space is fundamental for all of these solutions, and thus enhancing space security.