CSS Speakers Series | Fight for the Final Frontier with Dr. John Klein

Join the Center for Security Studies for a conversation with Dr. John Klein on his new book Fight for the Final Frontier. The book uses the concepts associated with irregular warfare to offer new insights for understanding the nature of strategic competition in space. Today’s most pressing security concerns are best considered using an irregular warfare lens because incidents and points of potential conflict fall outside the definition of armed conflict. While some universal rules of combat apply across all domains, conflict in space up-ends and flips those assumed standards of understanding.
Dr. Klein provides a solution to reckoning with the many malicious, nefarious, and irresponsible behaviors in the space domain by using the irregular warfare framework. This offers a new paradigm through which one can view and study conflict, outside traditional combat, involving state and non-state actors.
About the Speaker
Dr. John J. Klein, callsign “Patsy,” is a Senior Fellow and Strategist at Falcon Research, Inc., and Adjunct Professor at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute and Georgetown University’s Strategic Studies Program. He routinely writes on space strategy, deterrence, and the Law of Armed Conflict. He is the author of the books Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles and Policy (2006), Understanding Space Strategy: The Art of War in Space (2019), and Fight for the Final Frontier: Irregular Warfare in Space (2023), along with a score of other book chapters and articles.
Patsy is also a retired Commander, United States Navy, receiving his commission through the NROTC program at Georgia Tech. He served for 22 years as a Naval Flight Officer, primarily flying in the S-3B Viking carrier-based aircraft. Patsy supported combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. His tours included Executive Officer of Sea Control Squadron Twenty Four and the final Commanding Officer of Sea Control Weapons School.
Patsy holds a master’s in Aeronautical Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, a master’s in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College, and a PhD in Strategic Studies from the University of Reading, England. Patsy is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. He has over 2,700 flight hours in 27 different type aircraft and over 600 carrier arrested landings.