Government response
The Government's formal response to the HCDC's recommendations
and conclusions are set out below, and has been prepared by the
MoD in consultation with the Cabinet Office, DECC, and the Government
Office for Science. Where appropriate, related recommendations
have been grouped together and we have responded with a single
narrative. The HCDC's findings are highlighted in bold, with the
Government response in plain text. For ease of reference, paragraph
numbering follows that in the "Conclusions and Recommendations"
section of the HCDC's report.
The Government welcomes the HCDC's work in this area,
and has considered its conclusions and recommendations carefully.
We would like to emphasise that we take these threats seriously,
and are already addressing them appropriately and proportionately
across Government departments. We would also draw the Committee's
attention to the National Space Security Policy being developed
by the Cabinet Office, which will coherently address all aspects
of the UK's space security interests and will be published later
this year.
Nature of the threat
1. The risks posed by space weather are known
and significant, though there is argument about the likely extent
of their impact: a severe event could potentially have serious
impacts upon UK infrastructure and society more widely. It is
essential that this hazard is sufficiently recognised and addressed
by the Government and relevant civil bodies. (Paragraph 28)
2. We recommend that work proceed as a matter
of urgency to identify how seriously a future Carrington event
would affect the UK infrastructure. It is clear that more modelling
is required to establish the likely effect of a major space weather
event on the National Grid. This should be independently validated
and compared with the results of observations of Grid behaviour
during space weather events. (Paragraph 29)
The risk of severe space weather is fully recognised
by the Government. It has published its initial assessment of
the likelihood and likely impact of a Carrington-magnitude event
in the National Risk Register of civil emergencies.[1]
Government departments have worked extensively with space weather
scientists and engineers, industry, private sector asset owners
and regulators to gain the best available quantitative assessment
of the risk to UK infrastructure.
Depending on the magnitude of the event, the current
assessment is that severe space weather would be expected to have
moderate to significant effects upon a range of technologies and
infrastructure, including communications systems, electronic circuits
and power grids. In some sectors the extent and nature of the
impacts are not yet clear, but further analysis is in hand to
enable infrastructure owners and operators to plan their response
to future events and capability improvements.
In the energy sector, the Government is working closely
with industry through the Energy Emergencies Executive Committee
(E3C) to clarify the potential impacts of severe space weather
on electricity assets and networks and this will inform contingency
planning and mitigation that is appropriate and proportionate.
The E3C has representation from industry, trade associations,
Ofgem, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), consumer groups
and government. The Government believes that the effects of severe
space weather events are more fully understood by extending and
continuously improving on models developed through this forum.
3. On the basis of the evidence received, it seems
likely that at present only those states with a known nuclear
capability would be able to utilise a High Altitude Electromagnetic
Pulse (HEMP) weapon. However, certain states such as Iran could
potentially pose a realistic threat in the future, even if it
does not currently do so, if nuclear non-proliferation efforts
are not successful. Non-state actors could also pose a threat.
While the risk may at present be low, the potential impact of
such a weapon could be devastating and long-lasting for UK infrastructure.
The Government cannot therefore be complacent about this threat
and must keep its assessment of the risk under review. It is therefore
vitally important that the work of hardening UK infrastructure
is begun now and carried out as a matter of urgency. (Paragraph
42)
The Government keeps this risk under constant review.
In the 2010 National Security Strategy, the risk of an attack
on the UK or its Overseas Territories by another state or proxy
using nuclear weapons was judged to be a second tier priority
risk to national security. This reflects an assessment that this
risk, though entailing very serious consequences if it were to
materialise, has a low likelihood of being realised in the 5 to
20 year timeframe. The National Security Risk Assessment, which
assesses these and other risks in support of the National Security
Strategy, will be the means of providing strategic notice about
future threats, enabling mitigation responses and capabilities
to be planned in advance. The NSRA will be updated every two years
and the next update, due during the course of this year, will
update the assessment of the risk of nuclear attack on the UK.
Action to prevent hostile threats, such as high altitude
nuclear explosions and use of non-nuclear Electronic Magnetic
Pulses (EMP) devices, is implemented through a number of coordinated
activities principally aimed at preventing the causes of EMP,
and not EMP itself. These include cross-Government work on Counter
Proliferation, which is led by the Foreign Secretary, and the
nuclear deterrent, which is led by the Defence Secretary. The
last National Security Risk Assessment suggested that the combination
of likelihood and impact of the risks specific to EMP did not
justify separate, duplicative governance mechanisms. Instead,
the range of threats of which EMP is either a by-product or the
principal element are managed coherently by the National Security
Council, chaired by the Prime Minister.
The Government already takes significant action to
prevent a state nuclear attack, including the maintenance of the
nuclear deterrent and actions with international partners to control
the spread of advanced technology and the development of nuclear
weapons. The Government's approach to mitigating these, and other
priority risks to national security, was set out in the National
Security Strategy and the Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Reinforcing the security and resilience of the national infrastructure
most critical to keeping the country running forms part of this
strategy; the Government is acting to enhance cooperation between
public sector bodies and private sector providers of national
infrastructure to improve their resilience to a wide range of
hazards and threats. The Government is sharing its assessments
of the risks of disruption to infrastructure operations arising
from space weather effects, in order to inform priorities for
investment in resilience to these and other threats and hazards.
As regards the risks posed by EMP and space weather
effects on the energy infrastructure sector, priority is being
given to work on space weather impacts and mitigations on electricity
networks. National Grid and DECC are building on the work of the
Space Environment Impacts Evaluation Group and E3C to analyse
the range of impacts of extreme space weather events, with the
Carrington Event being adopted as the reasonable worst case. These
scientific assessments have enabled National Grid to change the
design requirements for its Supergrid transformers, and to increase
its reserve holding of transformers. National Grid is currently
developing improved monitoring tools with the British Geological
Survey (BGS) and installing or reinstalling Geomagnetically Induced
Currents (GIC) monitoring devices into its Strategic Asset Management
program. The next steps will be for National Grid, in association
with BGS and working with E3C, to develop more detailed modelling
of severe space weather events including impacts on generator
transformers. This will extend and strengthen its analysis on
the electricity transmission system completed so far.
As stated previously in the Government's evidence,
Defence standards direct that military equipment must have an
appropriate hardening against nuclear weapon effects, including
EMP. This hardening provides a level of protection against space
weather effects. Critical military infrastructure is designed
to operate independently of nationally-provided utilities, with
many facilities having back-up power generators and bulk fuel
reserves.
All beyond-line-of-sight communications for the MoD
are provided through a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) with Paradigm
Secure Communications Ltd. Under the terms of the PFI, the
military is afforded access to assured and protected communications;
these are derived principally from the Skynet 5 satellite constellation
(and its ground infrastructure), which is hardened to withstand
a reasonable worst case space weather event and a high altitude
electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon. The PFI also
accounts for the provision of commercial SATCOM for military purposes. While
commercial satellites are designed to withstand routine space
weather effects, they would be more susceptible to severe space
weather than their military-grade equivalents, and their ground
stations would be less resilient to artificially-generated EMP
effects and GIC caused by space weather.
4. While existing non-nuclear EMP devices may
be crude and limited, the fact that viable devices could be produced
by non-state actors is a cause for concern. Even localised damage
could have the potential to disrupt activity, especially if combined
with other forms of attack. (Paragraph 47)
The Government is keeping the risk of acquisition
or use of non-nuclear EMP by State or non-state actors under review
in the National Risk Assessment. As stated previously in our evidence,
state development of non-nuclear EMP devices tends to require
advanced engineering, although cruder devices with limited ranges
of effects could be acquired or produced by non-state
actors and maybe combined with other technologies. Indeed,
there is evidence of the proliferation of the technology, which
may have already led to its acquisition by countries and/or non-state
actors of concern to the UK; for example, some open
source information is available on the internet. While the Government
monitors and assesses whether this open source information could
be used to create a viable non-nuclear EMP device, this assessment
is not disclosed in order to limit the opportunity for proliferation
of this technology.
Resilience
5. We are pleased to note the recent intensification
of efforts to forecast space weather. Its effects will not respect
national boundaries, and it is important that the UK continues
to contribute effectively to international efforts to improve
forecasting. (Paragraph 55)
6. The Government must ensure that sufficient
funding and resources are available and that the UK has sufficient
access to up-to-date monitoring information. Monitoring space
weather is a vital tool, both in terms of providing warning periods
for potentially large space weather events, and in terms of understanding
the risks more fully. (Paragraph 56)
The Government welcomes the Committee's
acknowledgement of the progress being made in space weather forecasting.
A new European Union project to forecast space weather began in
2011 and will run until 2014. Led by researchers at British Antarctic
Survey (BAS), the 2.54m SPACECAST project will provide web-based
forecasts so that satellite operators can take action to protect
their satellites from space radiation damage. The UK is currently
also involved in the European Risks from GIC (EURISGIC) Project
(through the British Geological Survey) on the threat posed by
magnetic storms to power distribution networks in Europe.
The signing of a Memorandum of
Understanding between the Met Office and National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in February 2011 has paved
the way for enhanced co-operation and collaboration between a
range of UK and US agencies and organisations in the delivery
of Space Weather alertswhich is now a tried and tested
system. The two governments have announced that they will create
a combined space weather model capable of forecasting terrestrial
weather and also indicating where, when, and for how long space
weather effects will persist. As a result the UK is well-placed
to take a significant step in accelerating the pace of advances
in space weather forecasting ability.
The Met Office involvement in this
work offers a means to exploit its 24/7 operational expertise
to channel the UK expertise into forecast services. It also provides
a route through to the efforts being made by the World Meteorological
Organisation in space weather.
We agree that it is important that
the UK has sufficient access to up-to-date monitoring information,
both to inform any response to a significant space weather event,
and to support routine business continuity. We are currently exploring
funding streams and models by which any operational capability
would work.
In general, space weather data
is shared internationally on an academic free exchange basis,
so access to up-to-the-minute monitoring information is good.
This extends from space based observations made by, for example,
the ACE spacecraft to data from the ground magnetic observatories
participating in the INTERMAGNET programme.
7. It is clear from the evidence we received that
there are both risks and benefits associated with hardening equipment.
Nor is the cost clear. We recommend that the Government and National
Grid work together to assess the cost and effectiveness of available
technologies and if necessary coordinate further research into
this area to establish whether retrospective hardening of equipment
is appropriate, given the assessed level of risk to infrastructure
from space weather and EMP disturbance. We would expect any such
retrospective hardening to be carried out during routine maintenance
of equipment in order to minimise the cost. (Paragraph 64)
As the Committee rightly states, there are both risks
and benefits associated with hardening equipment. The costs are
unpredictable but would be considerable; hardening is only one
of many mitigations available when planning for the variety of
circumstances we must address. It would not be cost-effective
to harden civilian infrastructure unnecessarily. In some larger
and diffuse structures, hardening one part of a system may simply
transfer the vulnerability to another area. The effects of space
weather, HEMP, and non-nuclear EMP can vary widely, as the differing
causes produce different results. Hardening should be undertaken
in a way that is cost-effective and appropriate to both the infrastructure
and the risk in question.
The risks and benefits associated with hardening
equipment are taken fully into account in the work DECC is carrying
out with National Grid, and others in the energy sector, to clarify
the potential impacts of severe space weather on electricity assets
and networks. As a matter of course, this work already embraces
the need to consider mitigation measures from both an operational
procedure perspective and from an asset hardening perspective.
Work is currently underway to develop a detailed analysis of a
severe space weather event to include generator transformers as
well as transmission assets. The findings of this work will help
to determine the need for installing and/or retrofitting asset
hardening technologies, and the extent of further research in
this regard, given the interconnectedness of the electricity networks
and the many configurations they are able to offer.
8. The potential effects of a Carrington size
space weather event or a high-altitude nuclear EMP weapon would
have specific and potentially devastating impacts upon the electrical
grid and other aspects of electronic infrastructure, which play
an absolutely critical role in UK society. It is therefore vital
that the UK electrical grid is as resilient as possible to potential
threats such as these. The various Government departments involved
must work with National Grid to ensure that its backup procedures
and equipment are sufficient to meet the reasonable worst-case
scenario for a severe space weather event. Consideration should
further be given to the practicability and cost of establishing
resilience against the event of a wide-spread loss of transformers,
such as could be created by a HEMP weapon. This might be also
an area in which other relevant Committees of this House might
like to look at in greater detail in the course of their work.
(Paragraph 65)
Given our assessment of the respective risks of HEMP
and extreme space weather, we have chosen to prioritise planning
and capabilities to mitigate the effects of extreme space weather,
while focussing EMP protection on our critical military and national
strategic command structures.
Resilience to the effects of extreme space weather
is being improved in the energy sector through the work DECC is
carrying out with National Grid and others. If, despite this,
there were to be a major electricity supply emergency, both industry
and government would have significant roles to play. So the E3C,
which brings together network operators and public sector bodies,
reviews and takes action to improve emergency preparedness and
response across the electricity and gas sectors. E3C maintains
and updates contingency plans for managing energy emergencies
including the Downstream Gas and Electricity National Emergency
Plan, Electricity Supply Emergency Code and the Fuel Security
Code. These describe the steps industry and government might take
to deal with an electricity supply emergency, and the emergency
powers afforded to the Secretary of State under the Electricity
Act 1989; these include implementing rota disconnections and prioritising
supplies to essential users such as hospitals and transport infrastructure.
Defence may contribute appropriate military aid to
the civil authorities under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA)
in order to augment the civil response in the event of a large-scale
incident. An EMP event might constitute such an incident. General
duties support by the military to the emergency services to help
deal with the knock-on effects of an EMP event can be requested
by any government department.
9. Although our Report concentrates on the military
aspects of these threats, we hope that the evidence we have taken
will also inform and influence discussions between governments
and throughout industry. Such discussions are needed urgently,
to consider the development of agreed standards for protection
and resilience across all infrastructure and supply industries,
and to explore the possible need for legislation to ensure that
these standards are adopted. (Paragraph 66)
The Government agrees with the Committee on the ongoing
need to co-operate between governments and throughout industry,
and welcomes the body of evidence produced by this Inquiry. The
Government is strengthening bilateral cooperation with the United
States on approaches to the most serious resilience risks, including
through shared assessments and, where appropriate, joint programmes.
Similarly, the Government will work to ensure that European Union
civil protection arrangements focus on shared risk assessment
and prevention, and mutual awareness of critical infrastructure
dependencies. The Government holds regular discussions with allies
to consider security, protection and resilience issues.
The Government will work with owners and operators
of national infrastructure, mainly in the private sector, to improve
the security and resilience of infrastructure that is most critical
to the running of the country to a full range of risks and hazards.
The most effective approach to improving resilience of national
infrastructure and supply systems is to share assessments of the
risks rather than to impose new standards. Recent work undertaken
by the Cabinet Office to develop a cross-government policy on
infrastructure resilience concluded that the setting of standards
across the national infrastructure to specific risks was disproportionate,
given the diverse nature and varied importance of individual assets.
Instead, the policy encourages industry and regulators to use
the risk information provided by government to build resilience
on an 'all risks' basis, using a combination of both 'hard' protection
and emergency preparedness. Nonetheless, the policy recognises
that where a particular industry faces a significant specific
risk, site assessments of the most critical elements of the national
infrastructure are required, and this is where government can
usefully provide advice on appropriate standards of resilience.
For the energy sector, DECC continues to work closely
with industry and other government departments. DECC is committed
to continuously improving our understanding of the impact of these
threats and to ensure any measures taken are proportionate to
the risk and have a clear and well justified need case. The findings
of the ongoing work with E3C will help to inform future developments
in this regard.
The MoD and EMP
10. We note the MoD's assurance that the Nuclear
Firing Chain is designed and maintained to assure the UK's ability
[for] deterrent and retaliatory action should the UK be subject
to a nuclear attack. (Paragraph 76)
The Government welcomes the Committee's acknowledgment
of the high degree of protection of the Nuclear Firing Chain.
11. EMP disturbances pose a serious risk, not
only to civil infrastructure, but to military systems and ultimately
national security. There must be a clear line of responsibility
within the MoD; an appearance is given that the MoD is unwilling
to take these threats seriously. The Government must make clear
in its response to this Report exactly where lead responsibility
in relation to EMP disturbances lies within the MoD. (Paragraph
78)
EMP is a cross-cutting issue which must be addressed
in the MoD's policy, intelligence, acquisition and scientific
support structures. As such, EMP issues are addressed by:
- Policy: The Director General
Security Policy leads on space security, nuclear and EMP policy
matters.
- The Operations Directorate is responsible for
co-ordinating any military aid to the civil authorities under
the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.
- Intelligence: Defence Intelligence is responsible
for the all-source assessment of the nuclear EMP threat to the
UK and the required capabilities (nuclear warhead and ballistic
missile technologies) of any states or non-state actors that might
have the intention to threaten the UK with a nuclear EMP attack.
Defence Intelligence is also responsible for the all-source assessment
of the threat capability of non-nuclear EMP devices.
- Acquisition: Defence Equipment and Support is
responsible for the standards for protecting military equipment
against the effects of EMP, and for ensuring that when there is
a requirement for military equipment to meet these standards this
is met during the procurement process. There are a range of standards
that are shared with industry and applied as part of the procurement
process.
- Scientific support: The MoD's Chief Scientific
Adviser (CSA) provides all relevant scientific advice to Ministers
and other Senior Officials. The CSA provides the UK technical
lead in support of the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement with the
United States on nuclear matters and has a key personal role in
the development of the UK's nuclear programme. The CSA leads and
funds a Science and Technology (S&T) Programme that works
closely with industry, academia and our international partners
across the full range of S&T to provide technical advice,
including on EMP. As part of this, Defence Science and Technology
Laboratory (Dstl) provides technical advice on EMP to the MoD,
for example, Dstl sit on and co-chair JOWOG 36 which is a UK-US
working group established under the 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement
with its focus being the exchange of information on the nuclear
hardening and survivability of military systems (excluding nuclear
payloads/warheads) and civil information systems and infrastructure
to meet it overall goal: to better the UK and US ability to assess
nuclear weapon affects.
12. The MoD has access to a great deal of scientific
information regarding nuclear and non-nuclear EMP devices. While
there is an understandable sensitivity to such information, the
MoD must make sure that where security considerations permit,
relevant information is shared with civil infrastructure providers
that may be at risk. (Paragraph 80)
The MoD will share relevant information with civilian
infrastructure providers that may be at risk from EMP, where security
considerations permit this. Military standards have been developed
to inform decisions on appropriate levels of protection, and these
will be available to cleared civilian infrastructure providers.
The MoD's primary focus remains on the protection of military
equipment, although MoD works closely with the Centre for the
Protection of National Infrastructure to support the broader resilience
of UK infrastructure.
13. The reactive posture described by the MoD
appears somewhat complacent. Prior wargaming and planning is required
to assess the likely involvement of MoD resources in dealing with
the consequences of EMP events. (Paragraph 82)
As previously stated in the written evidence, Defence
as a national asset may be called upon to provide assistance to
the civil authorities in the event of a large scale civil emergency
or crisis; an EMP event might constitute such an event. Under
the provisions of Military Aid to the Civil Communities, the MoD
provides some specialist, niche capabilities to the civil authorities
but it does not generally fill capability gaps that are more appropriately
met through the civil authorities' and industry's own business
continuity planning. Defence may, however, provide additional
capacity in the case of unpredicted failures in the civil response,
if the scale of the emergency overwhelms civil capabilities, or
to provide access to specialist Defence assets. The provision
of general duties military support to help deal with the knock-on
effects of an EMP event could be requested by any government department.
This would be facilitated through a standing nationwide network
of Joint Regional Liaison Officers who work routinely with local
resilience fora and others to enable access to military assistance.
The MoD engages routinely with the Cabinet Office
and other Government departments across a range of resilience
preparedness issues and takes part in the national exercise programme
to exercise the cross-Government response to a range of emergencies.
Satellite security
14. Security of satellites is a matter of growing
concern as our reliance upon such systems and the sheer number
of satellites in orbit increase. The Government must consider
the long-term security of satellite technology and ensure that
national interests are protected where we rely on other nations
for data, such as GPS. In the event of very severe space weather,
even hardened satellite technology might be at risk of degradation.
The MoD cannot therefore rule out the loss or degradation of satellite
based-communications systems, and must plan for this eventuality.
(Paragraph 86)
The National Security Strategy assessed the risk
of severe disruption to information received, transmitted or collected
by satellites as a Tier 2 riski.e. one in the second order
of priority taking into account both probability and impact. This
assessment took into consideration both severe space weather hazards
and the possibility of deliberate damage to satellite systems.
The Government accordingly decided, in the Strategic Defence and
Security Review, to establish a National Space Security Policy
(NSSP) to coherently address all aspects of space security. This
will be concluded later this year, and will consider space risks
(including from space weather) and dependencies, and further steps
which might be needed to improve resilience. The NSSP will also
cover our national space security capability requirements, and
how international partnerships underpin many of these.
The MoD has not ruled out the possibility of the
loss or degradation of satellites whilst in orbit, and the associated
loss or degradation of SATCOM. All space infrastructure is at
some risk from space weather and debris. Military space systems
(including GPS) have significant hardening against space environment
effects. It is probable that GPS satellites would survive an extreme
event such as the Carrington event of 1859. Complete loss of GPS
during space weather events would be short-lived (tens of minutes),
although it may be degraded over periods of hours during extreme
events. Furthermore, Defence standards direct that military equipment
must have appropriate hardening against nuclear weapon effects,
including EMP. This hardening provides a level of protection against
space weather effects.
Defence has assured and protected communications
under the terms of a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) with Paradigm
Secure Communications Ltd. These are derived principally
from the Skynet 5 satellite constellation (and its ground infrastructure),
which is hardened to withstand a reasonable worst case space weather
event and HEMP. As far as our next generation capability is concerned,
the Beyond Line Of Sight (BLOS) programme, of which SATCOM forms
a part from 2022, is in Concept Phase: all hardening and resilience
adheres to current requirements. The PFI also accounts for the
provision of commercial SATCOM for military purposes. While
commercial satellites are designed to withstand routine space
weather effects, they would be more susceptible to severe space
weather than their military-grade equivalents, and their ground
stations would be less resilient to artificially-generated EMP
effects and Geomagnetically Induced Currents caused by space weather.
The MoD's Skynet communications services are also available to
other Government Organisations and Departments, and future requirements
across Government Departments are currently being discussed with
a view to developing successor services for all potential Government
users.
To prepare for situations where satellites are unavailable,
the military practice reversion techniques as a matter of routine.
The Armed Forces train to operate in degraded conditions, and
traditional methods such as navigation with maps and compass are
taught at basic training and maintained throughout service by
all service personnel. The Royal Navy exercises in the use of
fallback High Frequency communications and in reversionary navigation
methods as mitigation against hostile or natural interference.
The RAF trains frontline aircrew (from all three services) to
operate under significant Electronic Warfare conditions; this
includes training in live GPS and communications jamming, and
denial of space-dependent mission systems. Dstl operate annual
GPS jamming trials for Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S),
where the effects of GPS jamming on any equipment can be tested.
Responsibility in Government
15. We are very concerned that there appears to
be no one Government Department identified to take immediate lead
responsibility should there be a severe space weather event. It
is not good enough to say that that will depend on where the greatest
impact fell. We support and reiterate the recommendation of the
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that the Government
must urgently identify the Lead Government Department for space
weather events as a matter of priority. We expect the National
Security Council to play a major role in this. (Paragraph 92)
The Government has well practised central response
arrangements that are able to respond quickly to events. This
has been frequently demonstrated, including to a number of events
where there is no predefined lead such as severe winter weather.
Non-preventable, naturally occurring electromagnetic effects caused
by extreme space weather events are among a number of hazards
that can affect national infrastructure assets in the energy and
telecommunications sectors, among others. The Ministerial
lead for the security and resilience of the national infrastructure
sectors lies with the departments with responsibility for oversight
of the sectors themselves. This means that, in the event of a
space weather event that engages the Government and has very widespread
effects, there is likely to be a number of Ministers with lead
responsibilities for infrastructure involved in the response.
In those circumstances, and in accordance with the Government
response mechanism to emergencies set out in the Central Government
Concept of Operations,[2]
the Prime Minister may choose to assign overall lead responsibility
either to a Minister whose infrastructure sector responsibilities
are most heavily engaged, or to a Minister appointed on a personal
basis to ensure an effective cross-sector approach to the emergency.
The Government believes that these arrangements, which are well
tested and ensure the fullest possible engagement of cross-Government
resilience interests as well as clear leadership in a crisis,
are likely to be more effective than nomination in advance of
a lead Minister for severe space weather, whose appointment would
be likely to result in a loss of clarity of responsibility for
the key infrastructure sectors.
Plans to consider sector resilience to space weather
from relevant Government departments are in place, co-ordinated
by the Cabinet Office. These plans aim to set out the Government's
understanding of the resilience of infrastructure to natural hazards,
and a public summary was published in spring 2011.[3]
Conclusion
16. The consequences of EMP events must be addressed
specifically: generic civil contingency plans which address blackouts
and temporary loss of electronic infrastructure caused by a range
of events are not sufficient. Space weather is a global threat
and may affect many regions and countries simultaneously. This
means that there is scope for mutual assistance, but also that
there is no safe place from which it can be assumed that help
will come. It is time that the Government began to approach this
matter with the seriousness it deserves. (Paragraph 97)
The threat from a range of EMP events is already
acknowledged by Government; the threat is also a developing one
and is monitored as such. Given that the nature of these threats
affects many areas of Government, it is appropriate that responsibility
is distributed across Government, and within departments, to the
appropriate areas of expertise.
The Government agrees that a generic approach to
mitigating the impacts of natural events such as severe space
weather has value, but is not sufficient. That is why Government
departments, under Cabinet Office lead, have been consulting extensively
with space weather scientists and engineers, industry, private
sector asset owners and regulators, to assess the specific consequences
of a severe space weather event. A National Space Security Policy
(NSSP) team has also been established under the SDSR commitment
to coherently address all aspects of UK space security. An NSSP
document is due to be published through the NSC later this year
and will look at these risks in a much wider context, including
the governance and resourcing of any new cross-Government space
security structures.
The Government agrees that space weather events are
global phenomena, and has sought to learn the lessons of major
events that have affected a number of countries in recent years.
Planning for a space weather event that affects the UK will not
assume the availability of assistance from neighbouring countries,
but will involve consultation with other countries, in particular
in the EU and US, with similar interests in resilience to such
an event. In these ways, the Government will continue to give
the risks arising from severe space weather the attention that
they merit, and to monitor and re-assess both the likelihood of
a recurrence of a severe space weather event on the scale of the
Carrington event and how such an event might affect modern infrastructure
networks that are essential to the running of the country.
1 www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/national-risk-register Back
2
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/resources/conops-2010.pdf Back
3
www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/infrastructure-resilience Back
|