LAS VEGAS—The Space Force’s neighborhood watch-style initiative to share information with the private sector about threats to space assets will eventually grow to include classified intelligence, the general in charge said last week.
“Ultimately, the idea is, let’s do it at the classified level,” said Lt. Gen. Philip A. Garrant, who runs Space Systems Command, the Space Force’s main acquisition organization. SSC oversees Front Door, the service’s single point of contact for the space industry, and Front Door launched the Orbital Watch program in April to share threat intelligence with space asset owners and operators.
Initially, Orbital Watch briefings are including only general declassified threat intelligence products on a quarterly basis. But at last week’s ASCEND space industry event, Garrant noted that some companies in the sector have executives and even offices that are cleared to handle classified material. He predicted that eventually Orbital Watch will be able to brief companies on specific threats they face, even when the need to protect intelligence sources and methods means the warnings can’t be declassified.
“If we have a relationship with a company that enables classified information sharing, we can do very specific threat sharing with a specific company about a risk that we’re aware of for that company,” Garrant told reporters at a media roundtable.
“That’s the vision,” he added, “It’s going to take a little bit to get there.”
In its current Phase One state, Garrant explained, Orbital Watch is disseminating unclassified threat information derived from U.S. intelligence agencies. “We can push it to anyone,” he said, since it has been cleared for public release.
That access to intelligence products, albeit only unclassified or declassified ones, is one way Orbital Watch can offer a value proposition distinct from private sector efforts like the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
After a Russian cyberattack against the Viasat network at the launch of the Ukraine war in 2022, the Space ISAC facilitated a classified briefing organized by then-Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Dr. Stacey Dixon. The agencies briefing included the FBI and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center. A “significant number” of temporary clearances, known as “one time read-ons,” were issued to space company senior executives normally not cleared to receive classified intelligence, Space-ISAC said later that year.
Garrant said that in Phase Two, Orbital Watch will include a portal where vetted companies can share their own threat information to the U.S. government for anonymous dissemination across the sector—a model borrowed from the cybersecurity industry.
He added the program is very conscious of the possibility that bad actors might seek to inject fake or misleading threat information through such a portal and will be carefully vetting space companies, including those from allied nations, before they would be granted access.
“We’re being very deliberate about Phase Two,” Garrant said, ”You could imagine there could be a bad actor out there pretending to be a commercial space company. The last thing we want to do is to be pushing them info, even unclassified info, or worse, we set up a two-way relationship with them. So that’s a really important part, that vetting and understanding who we’re talking to and the type of information that we’re sharing with them.”
An Orbital Watch “Tiger Team” is starting six months of work this August to get to Phase Two by consulting with stakeholders, said Front Door Director Victor Vigliotti.
“We need to ensure that we have a lot of stakeholders in the room, across the intelligence community, across the Department of Defense,” as planning begins, Vigliotti said.
