The Quad (US, Japan, India, Australia Security Dialogue) : Updates and Discussions

Following up with bits from multiple sources that were released AFTER the September summit, first is a piece from The Diplomat:

The Quad Commits to Regulating Space

Growing space security threats are proving to be a challenge for existing global governance measures, but consensus on new rules is proving difficult.
By Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
October 01, 2021​

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...Outer space governance found significant attention, with the joint statement stating that the grouping will explore ways to collaborate as well as share data for a range of peaceful purposes, including tracking changing climate patterns, natural disaster response and preparedness, and sustainable uses of oceans and marine resources. The group also agreed they would work on developing norms, guidelines, rules, and principles that would ensure the sustainable use of outer space.

China’s military space prowess is the key reason for this focus. Ensuring a safe, secure, and sustainable outer space has become critical in the face of growing space competition among a number of space players. On the one hand, it is triggering new competitive dynamics, especially in the context of global governance debates; but on the other, the competitive dynamic in space is pushing for new collaborative partnerships with a focus on a number of technological and normative aspects.

These new competitive dynamics are evident in the development of counterspace capabilities including kinetic anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons and electronic and cyber warfare capabilities by a number of countries. China, in particular, has made impressive strides in outer space, including its pursuit of counterspace technologies. While the risks from China’s military space program may be directed primarily at the United States, countries like India and Japan cannot afford to ignore the consequences for their national security.

Countries like India and Japan have important stakes in ensuring uninterrupted access to space given the social, economic, and security stakes involved. This would require reviewing the existing international rules governing outer space as well as writing new rules of the road. A second requirement for a stable and secure access to outer space is developing appropriate technological countermeasures that would act as a deterrent in the face of growing counterspace capabilities.


Read the full piece at The Diplomat:


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Considering this article from Foreign Policy is behind a paywall, I'm only reproducing a small portion of the full piece (most of it already visible in the preview):

India’s Space Program Inches Closer to America and the Quad

In another strategic shift, Modi has opened space activities to private companies and new allies.

By C. Raja Mohan, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the director of the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies.
OCTOBER 13, 2021, 1:28 PM


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...Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to privatize one of his country’s most zealously guarded governmental monopolies: the space sector. In a major speech at the inauguration of the Indian Space Association, a new industry grouping this week, Modi called for a new approach, where, he said, the private sector is free to innovate and the government becomes an enabler.

The announcement was a significant step in Modi’s efforts to pull private resources into India’s space sector, which has rapidly fallen behind global peers as space competition heats up in telecommunications, resource exploration, planetary expeditions, and defence. What’s more, Modi’s reorientation of India’s space policy is yet another indication of the profound shift in New Delhi’s geostrategic orientation.

Modi’s government has been exploring common ground on space security issues bilaterally with the United States and also plans to work with India’s partners in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—Australia, Japan, and the United States—to leverage their collective space capabilities. For now, these would include areas like monitoring climate change, managing disasters, and mapping precious natural resources from space. For the first time, New Delhi is also ready to work with Washington and its allies on setting new global norms to manage space, including rules for commercial competition and the use of space for defence.

India’s new space policy began to take shape in June 2020, when Modi announced the first steps to open up India’s space sector to private capital. The new policy mandated that space assets and technologies developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation and other government agencies be accessible to the private sector. New Delhi also announced the creation of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (INSPACe) and appointed a former private sector executive to head it.

India’s liberalized space sector at home has been coupled with greater engagement with India’s partners in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (known as the Quad) on space security, abandoning India’s traditional go-it-alone approach. Bilateral U.S.-Indian conversations on space security cooperation that began under the Trump administration now appear to be close to some concrete steps. When Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden met in Washington last month, the two sides agreed to finalize an agreement on space situational awareness by the end of this year. The agreement is about monitoring and exchanging information on the rapidly growing cloud of objects in near-Earth space, including satellites, disused objects known as “space junk,” and natural bodies. The objective is to keep space navigable as the world’s commercial and military stakes rise.

At the Quad meeting that took place on the same day as the Modi-Biden summit, the four leaders agreed to “consult on rules, norms, guidelines and principles for ensuring the sustainable use of outer space.” Cooperating closely with Washington and the Quad on space is a significant shift in India’s orientation as its traditional inclination has been to address space issues through the United Nations and from the perspective of the global south.

As outer space becomes a geopolitically contested arena, India’s cooperation with its Quad partners in setting new rules could emerge as an important turning point in India’s approach to the global commons. In the 1960s and 1970s, India actively shaped international negotiations on space. Inspiring internationalism drove India toward defining outer space as the “province of mankind.”

Today, however, India might be moving toward a more practical approach to emerging space issues—including regulation of activity on the moon and exploitation of space resources—while retaining the essence of internationalism that defines the current regime on outer space. That, in turn, will demand more intensive Indian cooperation with like-minded countries, not only in the Quad but beyond. In all likelihood, New Delhi’s political cooperation with Washington will soon be reinforced by strong U.S. company participation in growing India’s space capabilities and commerce.

Full piece available at:

 
Keeping all the above developments & growing technological and strategic convergence in mind, this is purely something that I'm proposing of my own accord...

With the QUAD nations cooperating in the three critical domains of Space, Technology & Climate Change - here's something that falls right in between that Venn Diagram:

The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) Satellite Program

A first-of-its-kind Dual Band SweepSAR technology made jointly by the United States & India.

🇺🇲 🇮🇳

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An earlier iteration of the design

Currently under construction at a shared development cost of $1.5 billion, the NISAR is one of (if not the) most expensive Earth-Observation satellites ever built.

NISAR is the first satellite mission to collect radar data in two microwave bandwidth regions, called the L-band and the S-band, to measure changes in our planet's surface less than a centimeter across (>0.01m).
This allows the mission to observe a wide range of Earth processes, from the flow rates of glaciers and ice sheets to the dynamics of earthquakes and volcanoes.

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Current (and final) iteration of the design

The NISAR obtains this data using a revolutionary new radar imaging technique (as far as space applications are concerned) called SweepSAR, in the words of the official website:​

"...NISAR’s large deployable antenna will be used in a unique operating mode known as SweepSAR to provide wide area coverage and fine spatial resolution at the same time. When it transmits microwaves, the radar’s signal feed is stationary, producing a narrow beam of microwave energy. But when it receives the returning signal echoes, the radar feed sweeps its beam across the antenna’s reflector, thus giving SweepSAR its name.

Because the radar cannot receive echoes when it is transmitting, there would be gaps in the swath if the radar’s pulse rate were fixed. NISAR has the ability to vary the pulse rate of the transmitted signal in order to move the gaps around over time. The data can then be processed to gapless imagery by interpolating across the gaps.

SweepSAR is a novel radar technique and NISAR will be its first space-based use.
The L-band and S-band radars are designed to work independently or together. SweepSAR was designed, conceived and refined jointly by JPL and German Space Agency (DLR) engineers during the early mission study phase..."


The work share for the project is broadly divided as the L-band TRM (Transmit-Receive Module) package, the Radar Instrument Structure (the housing for the radar electronics of both bands), GPS & the 12-meter Radar Reflector Antenna being supplied by the American side, and the S-band TRM package, the Star-tracking navigation system, Solar Arrays & the Spacecraft itself (based on ISRO's I-3K Satellite Bus), along with the launch services being provided by the Indian side.

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The satellite is currently under construction, earlier this year a shipment of S-band radar electronics from India was received at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.


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After the radar electronics' intergration is completed probably next year, the module will be shipped to India, where ISRO's Space Applications Centre (SAC) will integrate the payload module with the I-3K Satellite Bus, and perform various integrity tests. The NISAR satellite expected to be launched onboard an Indian GSLV Mk-II rocket in 2023 (planned), from ISRO's launch pads in Southern India.

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GSLV Mk-II F10 on the Launch Pad

The NISAR is uniquely designed to study the effects of Climate Change like never before. Considering the QUAD member-states of Japan & Australia are among the countries most likely to be effected by climate change, should the scope of the NISAR program be expanded to include them?

I'd say yes. I'd suggest a "NISAR+" or "QUADSat" series of 2-3 more of these satellites as a key joint program to further build cooperation & to create common solutions for common problems, leveraging the substantial space application capabilities of JAXA and also allowing the Australian Space Agency to work on advanced programs that can directly have a positive effect on the sustainability of their continent-nation.

 
QUAD need to be further strengthen by inclusion of France and UK. It will be a formidable force with the inclusion of these 2 countries.
I doubt France will be interested given their comments to the EU regarding NATO taking a position against China. But the UK sure, it doesn't really make sense to have the Quad (US, Japan, India, Australia) and AUKUS (US, UK, Australia), two separate organisations essentially there for the same purpose, and the UK is the only member of AUKUS not already in the Quad.
 
I doubt France will be interested given their comments to the EU regarding NATO taking a position against China. But the UK sure, it doesn't really make sense to have the Quad (US, Japan, India, Australia) and AUKUS (US, UK, Australia), two separate organisations essentially there for the same purpose, and the UK is the only member of AUKUS not already in the Quad.

I think France has expressed its willingness to join QUAD.
 
More countries the better, including some from the ASEAN, even SoKo.

France has the capability to play active role in terms of supplying high tech weapons which can match the weapons of US. The most important of all is that France is a reliable country unlike US.
 
I think France has expressed its willingness to join QUAD.
France is not interested in security in that region.


PARIS, June 10 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday NATO still needs to make clear its strategic priorities, nearly a year after he said the trans-Atlantic alliance was "brain dead".

"We need to know who our enemies are and where," Macron told a news conference. NATO needs to work out a strategy regarding Russia, while China should not be the alliance's priority, he added.
NATO needs a Russia strategy that is "demanding, intractable even, when Russia launches incursions, cyber attacks or intimidates, but which also makes it possible to take into account the geography of Europe", Macron said.

NATO allies meet for a summit in Brussels next week.


Reuters revealed in late May that a $20 billion plan to give NATO more flexibility in facing challenges such as the rise of China and climate change had hit stiff resistance from France, which is concerned the move could undermine its own defence priorities.
 
QUAD need to be further strengthen by inclusion of France and UK. It will be a formidable force with the inclusion of these 2 countries.
 
Would be interesting if the British try to shove the tempest down japanese and Aussie throats through the AUKUS
It seems unlikely that France can dupe them into buying a Rafale at this point.
 
Would be interesting if the British try to shove the tempest down japanese and Aussie throats through the AUKUS

The possibility was there had the Japanese not had their own program in the same class.

The Australians are set with the F-35 for the next 40 years. Plus they are sure to buy American anyway. The USN NGAD is more likely to replace the Super Hornet.
 
It seems unlikely that France can dupe them into buying a Rafale at this point.
Japs already have the F 2 to fulfill that role. But it would be quite ideal for the 5 eyes to work on the tempest along with japan. Japan is a very underrated leader in sensors and electronics. I low-key want the Brits and Japanese to jointly work on the tempest. They have similar geographical positioning with similar air doctrines (I presume) and environment. A joint development with 5 eyes,Japan and Team tempest(Brits,italy,spain and Sweden) would be ideal for the British to actually meet the requirements for their overambitious plane. Although it could get delayed like the jsf. U.k and Japan can share the I.P while the canZaus can be tier 2 partners.
The possibility was there had the Japanese not had their own program in the same class.

The Australians are set with the F-35 for the next 40 years. Plus they are sure to buy American anyway. The USN NGAD is more likely to replace the Super Hornet.
I don't think NGAD will be exported like the f22
 
Japs already have the F 2 to fulfill that role. But it would be quite ideal for the 5 eyes to work on the tempest along with japan. Japan is a very underrated leader in sensors and electronics. I low-key want the Brits and Japanese to jointly work on the tempest. They have similar geographical positioning with similar air doctrines (I presume) and environment. A joint development with 5 eyes,Japan and Team tempest(Brits,italy,spain and Sweden) would be ideal for the British to actually meet the requirements for their overambitious plane. Although it could get delayed like the jsf. U.k and Japan can share the I.P while the canZaus can be tier 2 partners.

I don't think NGAD will be exported like the f22
The Japanese would make a valuable contribution ('Japs' is now considered derogatory BTW) but I have concerns that too many cooks spoil the broth also.

The UK was offered the F-22 and the F-117.
 
I don't think NGAD will be exported like the f22

There are two NGADs, USAF and USN. The USN version will definitely be up for exports.

As for the USAF version, they can always make an export version. It's not like the jump from the F-15 to the F-22. With the F-22, they needed to keep the airframe design and performance a secret, namely stealth and supercruise. That no longer matters, which was why the modernised F-22 was considered for export. Anything secretive about the NGAD will be exotic electronics and the peak performance of the radar and other sensors, which can be denied or software limited. The airframe and engine will not have to be limited.