The Pentagon directs the US-led Olympic Defender space project. Photo: AFP/ Brendan Smialowski
New Zealand has accepted a US invitation to join a top-level group that aims to deter hostile actors in space and reduce space debris.
The US military made the invite in April to join Operation Olympic Defender, and extended it to France and Germany, too.
Minister of Defence Judith Collins said New Zealand would gain experience from sending a liaison officer to US Space Command for two years.
This "shows New Zealand's willingness to uphold the norms of responsible behaviour in space", she said in a statement on Thursday.
The move will bring New Zealand in line with the Five Eyes intelligence grouping as Australia, the UK and Canada are already members of Olympic Defender.
Germany and France rejected a similar invite in 2021.
This time around, France has made clear that it insists on maintaining sovereign control of its space forces.
RNZ asked Collins if New Zealand had sought a similar assurance from the Pentagon, which directs Olympic Defender.
"This role [the liaison officer] remains under the command and control of the NZDF," Collins said.
In reports on Olympic Defender, since Space Command took it over in 2020, most of the project's focus is on its military potential.
Olympic Defender is a key part of a big recent US push to integrate allies into its space strategy, which aims to make it safe for civilian operations, if need be using the military space force. The group is widely seen as the "highest level [of] the formal, overarching international effort to deter hostile actions in space".
Leading consultant to the Pentagon, the Rand Corporation, said this was about allied integration against current and future threats in space.
In a 2021 speech about ensuring "continued space superiority" over China and Russia, a US commander said: "We [countries] must unite around a compelling narrative focused predominantly on the concept that we work actively to retain and strengthen our space superiority. "
The invite to New Zealand to join the project was extended in April at a defence-dominated Space Symposium in Colorado, which Collins spoke at.
Members of Olympic Defender send exchange officers to the US to work as part of the Pentagon chain of command. New Zealand's liaison officer who is going, appears to be at a lower level than that.
At the time US Space Command took over Olympic Defender, it said that "working with Allies and Partners, [it] plans, executes, and integrates military spacepower into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression, defend national interests, and when necessary, defeat threats".
Collins said on Thursday that space-based technologies were essential to New Zealand's security and well-being, such as using satellite imagery to help track illegal fishing, or GPS to support our maritime supply chains.
"Using space assets enables better communication, faster and better-informed decision making and helps New Zealand to maintain an effective, efficient, combat capable Defence Force."