Space Defense Partnerships

APOGEE STAFF

Starting with Australia in 2013, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) has signed deals with more than 30 nations to share information about what’s up there circling the Earth. These space situational awareness (SSA) agreements, written in carefully crafted legal language, typically address space launches, avoiding collisions and objects dropping out of orbit. But the enduring value of an SSA agreement may lie more in the handshake than in the specific provisions of the nine-page document.

Space defense leaders have described these bilateral deals as gateways to a deeper space security relationship with the U.S., acknowledged as the world leader in space. What each new partner brings to the table varies widely. A handful field their own space defense forces and work hand in glove with DOD. The vast majority of SSA partners, on the other hand, are seen as aspirational. “You’re showing what you have and letting us know where it is, or you’re getting ready to launch,” said Glen Grady, SSA data sharing program manager with U.S. Space Command (USSPACECOM). “That’s an indicator to us that someone is getting serious about space.” 

Six nations work most closely with the U.S. on space security, sharing data 24/7 through their Combined Space Operations (CSpO) centers. They are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. One indication of how these relationships have matured: A British Army brigadier is assigned to USSPACECOM as deputy director for policy and strategic partnerships under the U.S. chain of command. 

The CSpO partners have demonstrated some of the highest levels of technological advancement among the nations with which the U.S. has reached SSA agreements, along with other European nations, Japan and, most recently, India. Cooperating with them to expand awareness in space, as Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) attempt to gain superiority there, ranks as a top priority for U.S. space defense leaders. And so does growing the community of nations that may not be high-end space operators, but that see the value of getting a seat at the table. In other words, the pursuit of what security specialists see as soft power.

USSPACECOM and the service branch U.S. Space Force “have been doing a remarkable job moving forward with this,” said Dr. Alfred Oehlers, a professor with the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii, a DOD institution focused on regional and global security. Space defense leaders are sending their personnel overseas and broadening outreach to countries that don’t have spacefaring capabilities, Oehlers told the USSPACECOM magazine Apogee. “Building it down lower is important so that we are inculcating in security forces around the world a broader awareness of the importance of space and the importance of countries to be invested in partaking in the decision-making in space,” Oehlers said. Eventually, the effort may advance beyond hub-and-spoke relations, with the U.S. at the center, and toward a system where many nations are interconnected: “We need to sort of put together a community that empowers itself to move forward, developing its relationships.” One step in this process, he said, should be raising a question: Do you believe in a free and open space? Oehlers said he is stunned during visits to some nations to learn how little priority senior defense leaders place on space defense, particularly the protection of satellites for national security and the vital role they play in day-to-day life by enabling mobile phones, banking, weather forecasts, even farming. “They don’t see themselves in the space narrative,” he said. 

“Space is difficult, with a highly technological threshold. The fact that we’re still looking at a limited number of up-and-coming nations means we probably need to play a far greater role, a much more deliberate and conscious role, in democratizing things a little bit more — offering modalities, opportunities, cooperative agreements, so we give these nations a greater stake going forward,” Oehlers said. Involving more nations in space governance at international forums such as the United Nations promises to serve as a deterrent to go-it-alone authoritarian regimes such as Russia, the PRC and Iran. “They’re trying to turn space into a far more exclusive prerogative that they could exercise sovereignty over. We just can’t let that happen,” he said. In the coming years, he’d like to see the U.S. double the number of SSA agreements with other nations and to build upon them. USSPACECOM says more than 80 nations have a space presence. “SSA is a great start,” Oehlers said. “But SSA to what end? SSA to preserve the safety, security and stability of space.”

Australia serves as an example of how nations can leverage an SSA agreement to strengthen security, in part by developing a national space industry. With help from the U.K. and the U.S., Australia became the third nation to build and launch its own satellite into space in 1967. But it was five decades later that the SSA agreement helped stimulate awareness among military leaders and across the nation about the importance of space defense, said Russell Boyce, chair for Intelligent Space Systems and director of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra Space. The university supports the Australian Defence Force Academy, which develops and conducts satellite missions for the nation’s Defence Space Command. Since the signing of the 2013 SSA agreement, two U.S. space defense installations have been turned over to Australia and placed at Exmouth on the northwestern coast — the C-Band Space Surveillance Radar System and the Space Surveillance Telescope. The agreement with the U.S. also produced a series of space defense communiques, leading to a deeper understanding of space situational awareness among Australian defense leaders “that there must be more to it than just supplying concrete for U.S. sensors to be located on,” Boyce told Apogee. “That led to support for groups like mine and others to be improving the science and technology of space situational awareness, space domain awareness, space traffic management.”

Australia plans to spend about $4.5 billion on space defense over the next decade and is working with foreign contractors such as Lockheed Martin Corp. and Airbus to develop the nation’s space capabilities. UNSW Canberra Space has signed an agreement with U.S.-based Lockheed Martin to bring in the company’s space training modules at no cost to the university. “They see a future where inevitably they will win large space-related contracts in Australia,” Boyce said. “They understand they need to be working with a space-literate customer, and part of their responsibility is to help educate that customer.” Australia will seek other space agreements, too — “international partnerships that are not just seeking to parachute into Australia with a sales catalog,” he said. “The right partnerships and the right partners are those who are willing to join us in efforts in Australia that lead to true growth in skills and capability inside Australia. That brings us to maturity.”

A promising commercial space industry is emerging in Australia, he said, including two companies spun off from UNSW Canberra Space — Infinity Avionics, makers of space sensors and processors, and Skykraft, satellite constellation specialists. Boyce considers Australia’s space capability to be “rather embryonic,” but USSPACECOM has enough faith in its partner that Australia became the third nation — after Canada and the U.K. — to enter into an enhanced space cooperation agreement with the U.S. “Australia has rapidly increased their capabilities. We are, on so many levels, interoperable with them,” said Grady, lead action officer for negotiating the agreement. 

Boyce explained that Australia is agile and able to take risks with projects such as the acclaimed M family of miniature satellites known as CubeSats. The M2 CubeSat can split into separate M2-A and M2-B spacecraft and fly in formation, communicating with each other as well as with ground stations to provide enhanced data with greater detail and less lag time. “We were able to try out some things that were quite wild in their ambition and innovation and we’ve been successful in almost all of them,” he said. Australia also is helping write the international manual on warfighting in the space domain. What’s more, with its location in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia can help plug gaps in space surveillance for its partners while at the same time advancing its own capabilities — for example, by developing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to see through clouds. “If we just relied on international partners,” Oehlers said, “their systems tend to be active over the northern parts of the world and the duty cycle is such that they’re regenerating power while flying over our part of the world and we don’t get a look-in.” 

In April 2022, Sweden signed an SSA agreement, the first step toward what USSPACECOM calls a security cooperation framework. Sweden was then invited to observe the annual Operation Global Sentinel capstone event at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California — as a potential future participant. The eight-day event in July and August 2022 drew 150 participants from 25 nations who demonstrated space security capabilities and used their own equipment when possible as they worked through scenarios in regional teams, Grady said. New SSA partners may receive tours of Vandenberg and Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado before U.S. personnel visit for an in-country space assessment. “Let’s lay down what you’ve got and what you’re trying to do with your space program,” Grady said. The answer may lead to further education, training, help in setting up space sensors or military sales — and, always, greater coalition building. USSPACECOM also executes advanced bilateral deals that allow classified information sharing, and “terms of reference” agreements setting conditions for military-to-military talks.

Most of the current SSA nations are in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, though the U.S. wants to form a security cooperation framework with more nations in South America and Africa, Army Gen. James H. Dickinson, USSPACECOM commander, said during a March 2022 forum hosted by the Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.  

SSA data-sharing agreements also extend to private companies, with more than 130 worldwide, and to seven universities. Space partners fall into three general categories: owner-operator, or those with a satellite in orbit; service providers, who operate with others’ satellites; and launch services. “We want to build a ‘big tent’ coalition,” Grady said. “If we’re not talking to some of these countries, others will and we’d just as soon they follow a U.S. model. Not only because we can talk a lot easier, but because we can start sharing data and work more closely together right now.” 

As an example of where the partnership progression can lead, Boyce cited weeklong wargaming workshops in which the Space Force responds to a security conflict. The force must delegate its non-warfighting duties — the “grunt work” of collision avoidance, risk analysis and maintaining a catalog of some 48,000 objects in space — so trusted space partners are called upon to take them over. The M2 from UNSW Canberra Space has been activated during these simulations. “We’re doing it as a not-for-profit research organization,” Boyce said. “There are for-profit commercial organizations, and then there are military people sitting in the room. And the folks at U.S. Space Force are just sitting back, cheering, ‘Check that out, that was cool!’”

SSA agreements also bring increased opportunities to access space, as demonstrated by a recent Norway-U.S. piggyback launch deal that’s expected to save the DOD more than $900 million and three years of work. Space Norway, owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, agreed to add two U.S. military payloads to a forthcoming Arctic broadband mission launch. The military payloads will enable 24/7 protected satellite communications for U.S. forces operating in the Arctic, Space Force’s Space Systems Command said in an October 2021 news release. The launch is scheduled for 2024 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg. It will be the first U.S. national security payload hosted on an allied spacecraft, according to the news release. Similarly, Japan is scheduled to launch space surveillance payloads for the Space Force as part of Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, a constellation that will improve GPS signals over the region. The Space Force payloads, designed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will track satellites and debris in geosynchronous orbit, about 36,000 kilometers above Earth.

Such combined operations highlight the value of space partnerships and help draw an important distinction between the U.S. and its adversaries. “When they say they will do a partnership, they really mean it,” Oehlers said. Meantime, Russia has turned into an international pariah with its unprovoked war on Ukraine and relies increasingly on Beijing. The PRC is progressing in space defense more quickly than any nation and is seeking space superiority by 2049, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reported in April 2022. But its progress is on the technological side, Oehlers said, with other nations involved chiefly as end users of its products. An effort to establish a PRC-led regional space coalition, the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, has been superseded in many respects by a more active coalition led by Japan — the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum. “So far, in the actual area of space capability, capacity for launch, contributions to the supply chain, exploration — zero international involvement,” Oehlers said of Beijing’s efforts. “Because the PRC wants to move fast. Well, if you want to move fast, invariably, you move alone.”

Russia and the PRC enjoy some support on space-related matters at the U.N. because they distribute loans through programs such as Beijing’s often-usurious One Belt, One Road infrastructure scheme. But they have consistently resisted broad-based moves toward international norms in space behavior, data sharing and a ban on anti-satellite weapons. They objected again in early 2023 at a meeting of the U.N. Open Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats, the news website Breaking Defense reported. This approach is costing Russia and the PRC allies, Oehlers said. “They have been almost relegated to a spoiler category where they’re constantly sniping and griping and undermining the efforts of the U.N.,” he said. “Other nations are beginning to say, ‘Hey, you know what, we have one side talking about open, transparent space regimes that give my country the opportunity to get involved with the space supply chain while you have other countries talking about very closed systems, very exclusive agreements, very, very worrying bilateral arrangements where my country is essentially going to be put into hock.’”

Pushing back against PRC aggression in the Indo-Pacific helps motivate Australia’s investment in space defense, said Boyce of UNSW Canberra Space. In December 2022, the top diplomats and defense leaders from Australia and the U.S. reiterated their opposition to destabilizing actions by the PRC in the South China Sea, such as the militarization of disputed maritime features, dangerous sea and air encounters, and excessive territorial claims inconsistent with international law. “Space is a global commons,” Boyce said. “It will be so easy to screw that global commons up if we’re not careful. The more nations involved in [ensuring] clarity and transparency, and therefore accountability, the less likely it would be that someone would pull the trigger in a less advised way.” Deterring aggression also is a key reason for developing space defense partnerships. “An attack on a satellite constellation with a mix of U.S. and partner capabilities might prompt a response from several countries acting collectively, which may help deter a potential adversary from attacking in the first place,” the Center for Space and Policy Strategy reported in September 2020. The U.S.-based center is part of the nonprofit research and analysis organization The Aerospace Corp. Expanding relationships also is a provision of the U.S. National Defense Strategy issued in October 2022: “Mutually beneficial Alliances and Partnerships are our greatest global strategic advantage — and they are a center of gravity for this strategy.”

The space supply chain is an opportunity to build and strengthen an international coalition of like-minded security partners invested in space, Oehlers said. The expense and know-how required in space defense makes it seem out of reach for many smaller nations, he said, but breaking it down into parts can make it achievable.

The next big advance in space exploration is an unprecedented example of cooperation: Eleven European nations, including Austria, Denmark and Switzerland, are contributing to the service module for the Orion spacecraft to take crews to the moon and beyond through the international Artemis program. The service module has been described as Orion’s spine. When nations have a toehold in the space supply chain, Oehlers said, “you have a stake … and the stronger this whole thing is going to be as we go forward. … Commercial space will find the right sort of players to plug into the supply chain. We only need to encourage this.”  

Apogee is a professional military magazine published by the U.S. Space Command to strengthen U.S. security partnerships in space and provide an international forum to address global space defense challenges. 

Find Apogee online at Apogee-magazine.com