US Space Force General Stephen N. Whiting, U.S. Space Command commander and Multinational Force-Operation Olympic Defender commander, greets German Ministry of Defence Director-General for Military Strategy and Operations Lieutenant General Gunter Schneider during a formal accessions ceremony in Berlin, Germany, in October 2024. Photo: Supplied
Analysis - Germany and France have joined New Zealand in a network to save space from the likes of exploding satellites.
But the Europeans are being more upfront than this country about the overtly military nature of what has been dubbed 'Operation Olympic Defender' by United States commanders.
Joining it marked a "new stage" in coalition military space operations, France said.
The two EU powers signed up to Olympic Defender at ceremonies with the US Space Commander in Paris and Berlin in October.
US military media had earlier called the operation the highest level "of a military coalition of spacefaring nations to rival that of Operation Enduring Freedom or the Western Bloc".
New Zealand, by contrast, put out a low-key media release on 5 September.
It mentioned the network's value for jointly combating hostile actors and space debris, but put much more stress on the boost to safeguarding civilian use of space. Defence Minister Judith Collins avoided using the word "military".
However, newly released Cabinet papers stated the main aim was to serve member militaries in space.
Olympic Defender helps allies track satellites, missiles and debris. This could include both naturally occurring debris or, for example, the pieces left after an attack blows up a satellite.
That can turn it into near-earth space debris travelling 10 times faster than the average bullet speed", as the head of US Combined Force Space Component Command Major General John Shaw has put it.
The threat of collision is only growing, as perhaps 17,000 new civilian and military satellites are predicted to be sent up by 2030.
Olympic Defender is more than that, though. The thrust of it was agreed at a meeting of then-members in 2023 - the need for allied commanders to be able to collectively see what was happening in space at the same time (sometimes called space domain awareness, or SDA).
The New Zealand Defence Force's new partners (including the 'old' ones already in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance) in the seven-nation Operation Olympic Defender have struck a stronger chord about joining up.
The Phantom Echoes badge showing the names of the Five Eyes countries, including New Zealand. Photo: Supplied / Northrup Grunman Space Logistics
"It marks a new stage in the conduct of military space operations in coalition," France's Space Commander Major General Phillipe Adam declared at the signing ceremony in Paris in October.
It sent a clear message of strategic solidarity with allies "to defend together freedom in space against growing threats", he said.
German General Gunter Schneider stressed the deterrence value.
Olympic Defender would "dissuade possible adversaries from dangerous and escalatory behaviour in space as they will have to take into account that we can closely observe and evaluate each of their actions", Schneider said at the Berlin ceremony.
US Space Force Commander Stephen Whiting was at both ceremonies.
He has been very clear.
Photo: Supplied / Northrup Grunman Space Logistics
"We have a moral responsibility to ensure delivery of space capabilities to the Joint Force, the Nation, and our Allies and to achieve space superiority in order to protect and defend our assets," Whiting said in February on launching a new strategic vision.
Just last week, he described Olympic Defender as a key to Space Force's second-highest priority - boosting "battle space awareness".
"We welcomed France and Germany two months ago, and New Zealand has got a few final pieces of paperwork to submit, and now is a seven-nation coalition," Whiting said in the same speech.
"We're planning a common campaign plan, and just within the last few weeks, we approved our first seven-nation CONOPS [concept of operations] for space domain awareness."
Leveraging space domain awareness was vital to close "kill chains", he said.
Kill chains are where high-tech targeting is deployed linking, say, a fighter jet to a satellite to a kamikaze drone, within seconds to attack a target.
Whiting told a symposium in April that China had a web of kill chains over the Pacific; Judith Collins spoke at the same symposium the next day.
Whiting's speech last week is a particularly clear exposition of America's quest for superiority in space by 2027.
His and other speeches repeatedly stressed the need for superiority if the safety, security and sustainability in space that other nations (including New Zealand) say is top priority are to be secured.
Another commander, Shaw, has said the big picture was of space operations that "already naturally serve as global integration activities" leading to "a single combatant command" across a supra-global area that included deep orbits in space.
A major US contractor, Kratos, had anticipated that Olympic Defender meant the US Department of Defence "would be sharing its space war plans with allied nations for the first time".
And the United States Studies Center has called Olympic Defender "the standing United States Space Command operation for projecting space power".
The badge of the Combined Space Operations Center. Photo: Supplied / Northrup Grunman Space Logistics
Whiting last week also lauded a Deep Space Advanced Radar (DARC) that Australia and the United Kingdom are helping to build under Olympic Defender.
Australia joined in an exercise with the US and Canada last month that built a "fused battlespace picture", with an Australian commander stating: "It's essential that the [Olympic Defender] allies and partners have a shared understanding of the battlespace."
Olympic Defender from 2019 began multiple weekly headquarters-level operations and intelligence briefings to synchronise coalition space strategy and activity, papers say.
The network fits under the Combined Space Operations Centre, which, like many US units, has a badge. It shows a growling tiger, claws out, grasping the world.
Collins told a Cabinet committee in August that Olympic Defender's key objectives were to secure space assets, provide space-based services to member militaries, and keep space assets operational by preventing attack and interference.
Joining up for New Zealand was a low-cost option - under $200,000 a year for the New Zealand Defence Force to put a liaison officer at US Space Force - for "relatively large benefit", she told ministers.
They opted to go ahead.
The risks of joining were redacted in the Cabinet paper, along with a lot else.
New Zealand now connects to a group that connects to a big tap, the $50 billion budget of US Space Force.
RNZ has asked the Defence Force why there was no signing-up ceremony here to mark this.
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