breakingdefense | Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks has signed off on a new classification policy for space programs that discourages the use of Special Access Program status (SAPs) that dramatically limits clearances to handful of US officials — in hopes of opening still-secret programs to more stakeholders, including US allies and industry partners, according to a senior official.
“What the classification memo does, generally, is it overwrites — it really completely rewrites — a legacy document that had its roots 20 years ago, and it’s just no longer applicable to the current environment that involves national security space,” DoD Assistant Secretary for Space Policy John Plumb told reporters today.
While the specifics of the policy, signed off by Hicks “at the end of 2023,” are themselves classified, Plumb explained that a key issue has been the overuse of SAPs that not only have limited the ability to share with allies and industry, but even among different organizations within the Defense Department.
“So, anything we can bring from a SAP level to a Top Secret level for example, brings massive value to the warfighter, massive value to the department, and frankly, my hope is over time [it] will also allow us to share more information with allies and partners that they might not currently be able to share.”
Plumb explained that from now on DoD will be “assigning minimum classifications to a various number of things, which will then allow the services to examine their own programs and determine ‘should this really be SAP-ed any more?’ And the general point that I have made clear is policy is not a reason, it’s not the only reason, to hide something in a SAP program. There have to be technical aspects to it.”
National security space leaders within the Pentagon and outside experts for years have been pushing to lower the sky-high classification levels traditionally applied to all things military space. This has included a call for declassifying information about DoD’s plans for conducting warfighting in space — but this new policy document does not do that, Plumb said.
“Inside the beltway, people always ask me about how can I make things unclassified? And that is not actually a thing I’m all that concerned about. I’m concerned about reducing the classification of things where they are over-classified to the point that it hampers our ability to get work done or hamper the ability of the warfighter to do their mission,” he said.
Plumb acknowledged that it will take time for the new approach to work its way down through the bureaucracy and be accepted, but said at the same time there are “many folks looking forward to getting started on it.”
He further noted that he will be “briefing some close allies and partners on these changes” in future.
The new classification policy is in essence a first step in an overarching effort by Plumb’s office to craft a new “DoD International Space Cooperation Strategy,” designed to support the ability of the US, allies and partners to more seamlessly undertake collective military space operations.
Plumb noted that already the Pentagon expanded the “Combined Space Operations Initiative (CSpO)” from seven members — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States — to 10. At the CSpO’s last meeting in early December, DoD announced that Italy, Japan and Norway had now been admitted.
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