New Zealand’s military partners in space in Europe are talking more openly about war in space.<\/p>\n
This country joined the peak US-led space body, Operation Olympic Defender, last year at the same time as Germany and France.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>.<\/p>\n “The rule-based international order in space is nearly over,” said Brigadier General J\u00fcrgen Schr\u00f6dl.<\/p>\n “We have to accept that space is a tested domain, is a war-fighting domain, is becoming a war-fighting domain.”<\/p>\n French Space Command told the summit the talk was about war fighting in space.<\/p>\n While hostile action in space was not new, “things are accelerating very fast”, it said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Military-related government space spending had overtaken civil space spending in the past two years, according to consultancy Novaspace.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n NZDF has a liaison officer in the US for Olympic Defender.<\/p>\n It also runs a monitoring hub of non-classified space movements of commercial satellites and the like, as part of a global US network.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> (SDA) data and analysis into day-to-day military operations.<\/p>\n One aim was for “warfighters” to be able to use commercial SDA, said US Space Force.<\/p>\n It has warned the US’s ability to track threats in space was dangerously outdated and too slow. <\/p>\n