The renamed French Air and Space Force is in the middle of a major mission expansion following the creation of France’s Space Command in the summer of 2019. One country that may not fall into this category, however, is France, which already has a strong space presence through its space agency CNES and programs such as the SPOT Earth-observation constellation. “But it is not really signaling massive shifts in sort of capability and acquisitions or programs.” “There could well be all sorts of changes that come 20 years from now,” Bowen says. Even though the cost of space access is falling, the capital-intensive nature of space activity means that for many of the smaller allies, programs will be of limited scope. to focus on the space domain is unlikely to result in significant new defense programs, Bowen expects. “If there’s a more space-centric structure within the American Pentagon, then your military service, as a dependent ally of the United States needs to be able to communicate with the Space Force as well,” Bowen says.įurthermore, the creation of new military structures outside the U.S. to give a bit more coherence on space activity.” Instead, he suggests, their primary role will be to ensure that they can maintain points of contact with the U.S. Space Force, putting “the military use of space on the political map and on mainstream media attention in a way that it hasn’t before,” Bleddyn Bowen, a lecturer in international relations and an expert in space warfare, space policy and international relations in outer space at the University of Leicester in England, tells Aviation Week.Īlthough many of the countries that have formed space commands have hailed the decision as game-changing, Bowen suggests the creation of these military formations is, at least for now, about “rearranging the deck chairs of various defense ministries. Perhaps the biggest reason for these new command structures, though, is Washington’s decision to form the U.S. A 2017 UK government report into potential disruption of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) suggested that the cost to the UK economy of a five-day disruption to GNSS signals could cost as much as £5.2 billion ($7.2 billion) and that economic reliance is likely to increase as populations become more dependent on satellite-based communication services such as a those provided by SpaceX’s Starlink or OneWeb. Now more than ever, countries are dependent on space for essential military and economic functions. Most of these countries were already actively making use of the space domain for communications, research and observation, but the formation of these new command structures reflects the growing importance that space is playing in warfare, particularly in the era of “great power” competition. Australia will join this growing list with the formation of a space division in early 2022. In 2019, NATO declared space as its fifth operational domain, and in the past year alone, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK have set up military command structures focused on space operations. France wants to develop space-based directed-energy weapons in the 2030s.Some forces may develop niche satellite capabilities.But today, militaries of many more countries are reaching for the stars. and Soviet intelligence-gathering and ballistic missile warning capabilities that few other nations could match or fund. During the Cold War, the space domain was dominated by U.S.
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