Establishing a governance for cyber operations in outer space: Exploring challenges faced by space and cyber commands

During the past decade, major spacefaring nations have updated their space governance, establishing space forces and space commands now designed to address the evolving threat landscape in outer space. In parallel, the threat landscape has also evolved in cyberspace with a skyrocketing number of attacks coming from an increasingly diversified pool of actors, requiring governance changes authorizing the establishment of cyber forces and cyber commands. Both space and cyberspace are now increasingly recognized as warfighting domains and armed forces are conducting, or training to conduct, cyber-enabled space operations, which remain a new set of operations for which governance, operational modes, processes, and doctrines have to be adopted. The paper will aim at providing an overview of the governance of cyber-enabled operations in space and cyber commands and the challenges that these new missions face from the organizational perspective. First, the paper will provide case studies on the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, looking particularly into the governance, mandates and responsibilities regarding cyber operations. Then, the paper will analyze challenges and shortcomings associated with the establishment of responsibilities for cyber operations in Space and Cyber Commands. Finally, the paper will provide an overview of evolving governance issues and questions that will influence the roles such space cyber operations will assume in dynamically changing battlefield settings. • In France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the entity responsible for the cyberdefense of space systems depends on the nature of the targeted system. • In the three analyzed European countries, cyber commands are responsible for the cyberdefense of space systems, while in the United States, the Space Force is. • The distribution of cyberdefense responsibilities is not always clear for space and cyber commands’ staff. • Cyber adversaries can exploit organizational confusion just as effectively as technical vulnerabilities. • Coordination and incident response mechanisms regarding cyber incidents on commercial satellites used by armed forces create new governance challenges.