WASHINGTON — The procurement arm of the U.S. Space Force is making a serious push to work more closely with allies abroad and is pressing the Pentagon to regulate classification policies to permit for more open sharing of data with trusted international partners.
“We now have partnerships with 28 different countries, nearly all of which just happened throughout the last 18 months,” Lt. Gen. Michael Guetlein, commander of the Space Systems Command, said Oct. 18 on the AFCEA Space Industry Days conference in Los Angeles.
The command’s office of international affairs is busier than ever, Guetlein said.
“We have now SSC personnel now sitting in Australia, Belgium, Germany and Japan, and more to follow,” he said. “We have now international allies sitting with us here in Los Angeles from the U.K., Germany, and shortly from Australia.”
The Space Force is taking unprecedented steps to work with international partners due to the shared nature of the space domain and a surge in global investments in space technology. Challenges from space debris to cyberattacks and anti-satellite weapons are shared threats, and the Space Force argues they might be higher met by linking arms with allies.
“We’ve been talking to our international allies about common interface standards,” Guetlein said, “in order that whatever they construct or whatever we construct can easily be networked together in the longer term.”
He expects military sales of space hardware to allies — estimated at about $570.5 million for the past 12 months — will skyrocket, said Guetlein. “My prediction is that in the subsequent 12 to 24 months, it’s going to rise to greater than $4 billion.”
For the primary time, the U.S. will sell a satellite jammer referred to as Counter-Communications System to Australia, said Guetlein.
There are still obstacles, nonetheless, equivalent to export controls that restrict sharing certain sensitive U.S. technologies, and classification policies that curtails access to programs by non-U.S. residents.
“We still have some policy struggles,however the door is open greater than it has ever been before,” Guetlein said. Notably, some allies have been invited to take part in the design of the U.S. Space Force’s future satellite architecture, he said. “We’ve even established what we call ‘allied by design,’ where the Space Warfare Evaluation Center (SWAC) is now inviting allies into the discussions.”
Relooking at classification
“We’re leveraging tools like foreign military sales, co-development of revolutionary capabilities and dealing across the board with our global space industrial base,” Brig. Gen. Jason Cothern, deputy commander of Space Systems Command, said Oct. 19 on the 2023 MilSat Symposium in Mountain View, California.
He said the Pentagon’s space policy office is attempting to help “increase our ability to share information with our international partners,” said Cothern. “And we’re working with the Department of Defense on relooking at how we classify information.”
Although there are still barriers, he added, “I’ve definitely seen more progress recently than I’ve seen over the past 30 years.”
Forging strong international space partnerships would require a culture shift throughout the U.S. military establishment that has traditionally prioritized secrecy and autonomy, said Deanna Ryals, director of the Space Systems Command’s International Affairs Office in Los Angeles.
“We’re attempting to bring partners and their industrial base and their capabilities into the space architecture,” Ryals said on the MilSat Symposium.
A key challenge today is the problem of sharing information on space programs that is usually classified. “After which the second thing is culture,” she said. “We have now not yet fully embraced, on the federal government side I don’t think, opening as much as partnerships with industrial and industry.”
“We’re getting there,” Ryals added. “We’re really working on that, we’ve got leadership support and direction to make that occur.”
Today, she said, “we’re doing a extremely good job offering up capabilities that our international partners and allies should buy.” Going forward, “where I’d wish to see us go in the subsequent five to 10 years is buying into our allies’ systems and bringing those technologies and capabilities which can be complementary to ours into the architecture. That’s what we’re pushing for.”
Many U.S. allies have built national space strategies to defend their satellites, Ryals said. They’re investing in space domain awareness sensors, Earth remark and communications satellites. “Every one in every of those areas are ripe for either exploiting what our allies and partners have, or allowing them to purchase those capabilities and contribute them back to the architecture.”
Officials from Space Systems Command and representatives from the UK, Canada, Australia, Latest Zealand, France, Germany, and Japan will explore opportunities at an upcoming conference in Chantilly, Virginia. For the primary time, Ryals said, countries will discuss ways they will work together to shore up the worldwide space industry supply chain.
Launching satellites outside the U.S.
The Space Force began a “responsive space” program geared toward expediting satellite launches. Having allies involved can be a serious boost, said Ryals. “We’d like to open up responsive space across the globe. We’d like launch capabilities within the Southern Hemisphere, we want more launch capabilities outside of the US.”
Again, technology sharing agreements could be a problem if the U.S. desired to launch a payload from foreign soil, Ryals said. “We’ve got to proceed to work with our government and our regulators to take a look at that, and we want industry to push that message to our regulators.”
Allowing allies into the Space Force’s satellite architecture designs led by the SWAC has been a serious step forward, she said. “We’re bringing them in on the very earliest parts of acquisition to search out out what are they pondering, what are they doing? What are they constructing?” she added. “I feel that’s going to be game changing for us going forward.”