NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Expanding and strengthening U.S. military ties with space-capable nations will be key to staying ahead in the global competition for space dominance, officials said Tuesday.
“Space warfare is a complex and difficult type of warfare in general, and not a type of warfare that one country can do by themselves. And so we know that we need partners to be able to help us to do the things that we need to do, to be able to cover all the space terrain and the challenges that we have,” Col. Frank Brooks, the Air Force’s deputy director for space international affairs, said Tuesday during a panel at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space, Cyber conference.
One example is the trilateral Deep-Space Advanced Radar Capability, or DARC, which tracks activity including space debris and adversarial behavior, shared between the U.S., Australia, and the United Kingdom.
Reliance on space for everything from tracking illegal fishing, to GPS, and coordinating weapons has increased even as threats proliferate, underscoring the need to forge new relationships globally—particularly in Africa, where China is already laying groundwork.
“Technology is great. But the biggest capability you have is teaming with our partners and allies. And especially in Africa and in different areas. I think that is the foundational challenge that we’re facing,” Brig. Gen. Jacob Middleton, commanding general for U.S. Space Forces in Europe and Africa, told reporters Tuesday. “What I hope to do, specific to EUCOM and AFRICOM, is create a situation during peace time that through partnerships and allies and working together, that teamwork provides a deterrence.”
Middleton said the U.S. wants to partner with anyone who is willing.
“Some folks are surprised that there are some African spacefaring nations—which there are. I’d say the most important competition we’re in is for hearts and minds,” Middleton said during a panel. “At the end of the day, what we’re really competing for is a certain international border, and that really means partnership, allies and people on our team…who’s gonna be our side versus who’s gonna be on our competitors’ side.”
So far, Middleton has visited the Egypt-based African Space Agency and Morocco, and hopes to kindle talks with Nigeria, Angola, and Kenya.
“This is a competition, so just because China has visited doesn’t mean I won’t,” he told reporters.
And building strong alliances—which can be fraught due to conflicting policies and roles—can go a long way.
“Focus on the alliance, and if that is strong regionally, you’re going to be strong, and then you don’t have to worry about your national sovereignty. And so that is a discussion that we need to have, that I continue to have,” Middleton said. “But that starts with understanding [a country’s] national security objectives, giving them reasonable advice on how to get after those objectives. Then training them, educating them on what’s in the inventory and what’s in the realm of the possible. Then, once you pull that plan together, exercising it so we work as one team. And so there’s a capability increase that we’re working on to get after that, that we’re pulling in our partners and allies on.”
In an interview at the AMOS conference in Maui last week, Canadian Brig. Gen. Ryan Deming, the deputy commander for operations, plans, training and force development for Space Operations Command, compared the need for partners to a hockey game.
“So when you’ve watched a hockey game, for the opposing teams, they’re actually made up of different players. … You can’t have a hockey team that’s just one person. They could be the best player in the world; they can’t do it all themselves because of the dynamic, fast pace of the game, right? So look at U.S. Space Forces in that same sort of analogy. You need those international partners and that collaboration, that strategy and that engagement, and that, you know, sharing of how the plays are going to work,” he said.
“Because it’s so fast-paced, you don’t take a timeout, right? You only get one timeout in hockey—we don’t have that in space, to be able to take a timeout. So the more that we understand how each other operates, what I can bring to the table, what another ally can bring to the table, I think it actually allows us to figure out, how do we best employ this to ensure that we can try and maintain that space superiority, and that we can make sure that we’re outpacing our adversary.”
Read the full article here