The US Space Force wants partners to engage in missions and wargaming. Photo: Staff Sgt James Richardson Jr, Public domain
New Zealand's military partners in space in Europe are talking more openly about war in space.
This country joined the peak US-led space body, Operation Olympic Defender, last year at the same time as Germany and France.
German Space Command told a NATO Space Defense and Security Summit last week that Germany had "finally realised" that space is a war-fighting domain.
"The rule-based international order in space is nearly over," said Brigadier General Jürgen Schrödl.
"We have to accept that space is a tested domain, is a war-fighting domain, is becoming a war-fighting domain."
French Space Command told the summit the talk was about war fighting in space.
While hostile action in space was not new, "things are accelerating very fast", it said.
Canada is also part of Olympic Defender. A commander of it's space division said more than 200 anti-satellite weapons now circled the Earth.
Olympic Defender "globally integrates military spacepower, enables Joint and Combined Forces, deters aggression, and if necessary, defeats adversaries in order to retain military advantage", its website said.
Military-related government space spending had overtaken civil space spending in the past two years, according to consultancy Novaspace.
NATO leaders committed in June to spending five percent of GDP a year on defence by 2035. New Zealand is aiming for two percent by 2032/33.
NZDF has a liaison officer in the US for Olympic Defender.
It also runs a monitoring hub of non-classified space movements of commercial satellites and the like, as part of a global US network.
RNZ has asked if the Auckland hub will be affected by reports of a plan to change the hubs to feed more space domain awareness (SDA) data and analysis into day-to-day military operations.
One aim was for "warfighters" to be able to use commercial SDA, said US Space Force.
It has warned the US's ability to track threats in space was dangerously outdated and too slow.
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