U.S. Invites France, Germany, New Zealand To Join Space Alliance

COLORADO SPRINGS—U.S. Space Command has extended invitations to France, Germany and New Zealand to join a high-level collaborative group on military space operations.

If accepted, the three nations would join Australia, Canada and the UK in the U.S.-led Operation Olympic Defender. The operation, first formed in 2020, focuses on sharing intelligence, planning of military operations and other efforts focused on safe operations in space.

Gen. Stephen Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command, announced the invitations during a keynote speech here in Colorado Springs at the 2024 Space Symposium.

Whiting, speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the conference, says the three new nations are already working closely together. This includes in the Space Operations Center at Vandenberg SFB, California, and operations centers in France and Germany.

France and Germany in particular have “a lot of their own space capability for national defense purposes, and we have very positive relationships with them," Whiting says. "We’ve done some exercises together—we’ve done wargames.”

New Zealand is also a part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, Whiting says.

“They have been very interested in increasing their space capability. They have dedicated some of their personnel to support our joint commercial office where they help produce space domain awareness information that we then all use to tip and cue our military operations and our exquisite sensors that we use for military purposes,” he says.

Also on April 9, Whiting announced Spacecom has signed a new space situational awareness agreement with Uruguay. The command has more than 185 information sharing agreements with other nations, along with companies, academia and other intergovernmental organizations.