Review - S 3511 Reported in Senate – Satellite Cybersecurity

Last month, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee published their Report for S 3511, Satellite Cybersecurity Act. The Committee met on March 30^th, 2022 and adopted substitute language and one additional amendment before ordering the bill reported favorably. The new version of the bill modifies some of the reporting requirements and makes changes to the satellite cybersecurity recommendations process. Subsequent technical changes were made to the bill “by mutual agreement of the Chairman and Ranking Member” (Committee Report, pg 4).

Moving Forward

While there was (not unexpectedly) strong bipartisan support for this bill in Committee for this bill, the bill is not likely to be considered by the Senate leadership to be important enough to be considered under regular order on the floor of the Senate. The time and effort to go through the debate and amendment process would interfere with the agenda of the Senate as we go into the last four months of the session. There is a remote chance that the bill could be considered under the unanimous consent process, but that has a high potential for being blocked for political reasons having nothing to do with the bill. This bill is much more likely to be added to a major bill (such as the upcoming NDAA) as part of the substitute language or as a floor amendment.

For more details about the changes made to the language of the bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-3511-reported-in-senate - subscription required.