U.S. Space Force Honing Processes For International Collaboration

COLORADO SPRINGS—The U.S. Space Force is readying the release of a new international partner strategy amid a concerted push to better integrate its processes and operations with its allies.

The service is facing a range of threats in its domain under austere federal budget conditions, and cannot secure the environment alone, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said during an April 9 keynote speech at the Space Foundation’s annual Space Symposium here.

As such, the Space Force wants to better integrate its allies and their capabilities into its planning processes, exercises and operations. This follows a key decision last year to bring a member of the Royal Air Force, Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, into the service as the first assistant chief of space operations for future concepts and partnerships.

Now, the service is preparing to imminently release its first international partnership strategy, which will provide “a starting point for collaboration, a roadmap for integrating like-minded nations and entities that believe in a safe, secure and sustainable space domain and a mechanism for building a strong space coalition, one that can unify our efforts in pursuit of a common vision for the future,” Saltzman said in the keynote address.

He told reporters here he expects to sign off on the document within the next week.

After the strategy text is released, the service will spend the next 6-9 months making sure its directives are actually integrated, Godfrey added during the media roundtable.

Under the strategy, the USSF will look to harness a burst of increased defense spending among allies and partners, particularly in Europe, to coordinate capability spending and avoid redundancy where possible, according to Saltzman.

“The idea is, what are their strengths? What are their capabilities? What do they want to invest in? And then how do we account for that in the overarching force design?” he said.

Another area of focus in the strategy will be on increasing coalition activities. The Space Force wants to set up an unclassified space wargame to increase partner participation, Saltzman said. “If we’re not tightly coupled in our training, if we’re not reconciling our operational concepts, if we’re not integrating our capabilities, we will have a very steep learning curve when called upon in crisis or conflict,” he explained.

He lauded the recent bilateral rendezvous and proximity operation between the U.S. and France, as announced by U.S. Space Command‘s commander, Gen. Stephen Whiting, in his April 8 keynote here.

“These were tangible, real activities, not a war game, not a tabletop exercise,” Saltzman said. Other partner-nations are expressing interest in performing similar joint operations in space, he added.

Godfrey noted the importance of France’s participation in that exercise as a non “Five Eyes” partner, referring to the intelligence-sharing alliance comprising the Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the U.S.

“We’re starting to see that allies out there are really stepping up in terms of capability,” he said.

Saltzman advocated for reduced classification levels so the service can more closely share intelligence and integrate with its partners.

Many of the classification decisions are made early in a program’s development process, and it requires a “very deliberate process” to then declassify information at a later date, he noted.