The U.S. Space Force will roll out its International Partnership Strategy in the coming months, laying out a plan to integrate its capabilities more tightly with its closest allies, a senior adviser to Gen B. Chance Saltzman, the service’s Chief of Space Operations, said Tuesday.
The Space Force’s partnership strategy is “focused on incorporating allies and partners at every stage. We’re not just building the United States Space Force, we are shaping a coalition force that must work together seamlessly in space to be successful,” said Royal Air Force Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, who serves as the Space Force’s assistant chief of space operations for future concepts and partnerships. Godfrey spoke at the National Security Space Association’s Defense and Intelligence Space Conference in Reston, Va., on Feb. 11.
Unlike some other military strategy documents, the International Partnership Strategy doesn’t define a goal but is rather about developing an effective process for allies to work together more closely, Godfrey said.
“Given the rapidly changing threat environment within the space domain and the speed technological change, the strategy won’t have a static end state,” he said. Instead, the goal is to put in place a “repeatable process,” so that U.S. partner nations know who they should speak to, in order to develop a common understanding of their capability and where they want to go, and, crucially “how the U.S. Space Force might be able to use that partner’s capabilities in the force of the future,” he said.
Three enduring goals guide the strategy, Godfrey continued:
- Securing the collective national interest in, from, and to space.
- Enhancing interoperability of space assets and maximizing information sharing with allies across classification levels.
- Integrating allies and partners across every aspect of force design, force development, and force employment.
Force design is concerned with the future five to 15 years out, as Space Force leaders shape the service’s future. Force development, two to seven years out, is centered on integrating cutting edge capabilities into that future force. And force employment, which is how the service operates today and for the next couple of years.
To achieve these three goals, over those three stages Godfrey said, “The strategy sets the conditions for allies and partners to be integrated into Space Force planning and capability development; helps develop international standards; improves information sharing; and maximizes opportunities for allies and partners to train and conduct operations together.”
Godfrey stressed that the work would not stop with the release of the strategy. Rather the strategy is “just the start,” he said.
“Ultimately, this is about having partnership as a primary thread that runs from the national defense strategy through the daily actions that our field commands and component field commands take on a daily basis,” he said.
International partnerships are nothing new for the Space Force, he added. The
Combined Space Operations Initiative (CSPO) started in 2014 with the Five Eyes Alliance of the U.S. Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, America’s closest intelligence partners. Two rounds of expansions since, the latest in 2023, have added France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Japan.
But, Godfrey pointed out, in recent years, that cooperation has become closer and closer.
Last year, the U.S. military, for the first time ever, hosted an operational payload on a multi-national satellite. The Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission, consists of two satellites hosting multiple payloads, including military communications over the Arctic for the U.S. and Norwegian armed forces, as well as a commercial payload for Viasat [VSAT], and a radiation monitor for the European Commission. And earlier this month, a U.S. Space Force payload launched as part of Japan’s Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, a navigation constellation that augments the U.S.’s Global Positioning System. The Space Force payload will monitor activity in orbit from the satellite’s Geosynchronous Orbit over the Indo-Pacific region.
As well as deepening, Space Force’s international cooperation could easily broaden as well, Godfrey said, because other nations are lining up to get involved. “There’s a number of nations knocking on the door to CSPO from Spain to Sweden to Poland, probably Korea, … South American countries. There are so many people out there,” he said.