Nathan Hodge
Security

Social Networking Enabled Rogue Sat Shootdown

"Operation Burnt Frost," last year’s shootdown of a rogue spy satellite, was a marvelous advertisement for the capabilities of the U.S. military’s Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system — and the Pentagon milked it for all the P.R. it was worth. But according to Lucas Steinhauser, the deputy chief of U.S. Strategic Command’s Knowledge Transfer Office, […]

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"Operation Burnt Frost," last year's shootdown of a rogue spy satellite, was a marvelous advertisement for the capabilities of the U.S. military's Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system -- and the Pentagon milked it for all the P.R. it was worth.

But according to Lucas Steinhauser, the deputy chief of U.S. Strategic Command's Knowledge Transfer Office, the mission was also a triumph of social networking. According to a recently anthologized article in *The Collaborator, *an internal STRATCOM newsletter that is posted on Intellipedia and distributed on SKIWeb, social networking tools enabled planners to find the right people with the right expertise as the satellite hurtled toward re-entry. In very short order, the team was able to reach out to a NASA engineer who was able to conduct specialized modeling necessary to understand satellite's trajectory -- and gauge the likelihood of a successful shootdown.

"Leveraging our nation's expertise through individual social networks was a huge determining factor in the success of Operation BURNT FROST," wrote Steinhauser.

In a separate piece in The Collaborator, Maj. Michael Shewfelt explained how social networks helped planners navigate around the national security bureaucracy during the operation.

Coordinating products with different agencies and organizations was difficult. Each organization had different procedures, security domains, and organizational structures.
We soon learned that the executive officers and our network of contacts were invaluable. They could quickly retrieve or obtain the latest information directly from the generating source. Many times a senior officer would ask for the latest briefing received. We would call the flag's executive officer and he or she would track the briefing down to an un-forwarded email attachment still in a senior officer's email inbox.

This account of the satellite reflects the military's reluctant embrace of information-sharing (versus information hoarding). STRATCOM has been a bit ahead of the curve here:
Under the leadership of Gen. James Cartwright, now the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the command adopted a lot of the collaborative office tools that are already commonplace in the commercial world.

[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]

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