{"id":291514,"date":"2025-10-10T08:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T08:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/291514\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T08:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T08:45:11","slug":"australian-space-command-considers-space-control-options-senior-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/291514\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Space Command considers ‘space control’ options: Senior officer"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 With the Australian Department of Defence working on an update to its 2024 National Defence Strategy,<\/a> the country\u2019s Space Command is considering its options for gaining \u201cspace control<\/a>\u201d capabilities, according to a senior military official.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith space control, [we\u2019re] looking at \u2026 how do we as Australia best contribute not only to the defense of Australia and our immediate region, but then also [to] a credible capability, cooperatively within a partnership?\u201d Army Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner, space and cyber attach\u00e9 at the Australian Embassy here in Washington, said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]hinking from my perspective, anyway, you might have terrestrial-based effectors. You\u2019ll have sensors and other pieces that enable the contribution through that space mission area,\u201d he told the US Air and Space Force Association in an online interview.<\/p>\n

Space control is one of four key focus areas<\/a> for Australian Space Command, Gardiner explained, along with space domain awareness,<\/a> satellite communications (SATCOM),<\/a> and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR)<\/a>. The Defence Department last November<\/a> made a commitment to invest $9 to $12 billion Australian ($5.9 to $7.9 billion) over the next decade to military space programs, he noted. <\/p>\n

Further, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) last year put together Concept SELENE, a framework for space operations, Gardiner said.<\/p>\n

\u201cConcept SELENE is our space concept that sits within a broader concept framework. So, each domain has a concept that describes \u2026 how we\u2019re trying to get after it: Use the domain, build resiliency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201c[W]ithin that, it actually recognizes that we don\u2019t have enough resources to build that resilient architecture in a sovereign sense, we need to partner and we need to cooperate to generate the resiliency effect,\u201d Gardiner elaborated. <\/p>\n

Thus, he said, Australian Space Command is taking a page from the US Space Force\u2019s approach to acquisition by first focusing on what commercial activities it can leverage, then looking to partners for capabilities it can share, and only lastly building its own space systems. <\/p>\n

While Concept SELENE is not publicly available on the Defence Department website, the Royal Australian Army\u2019s online journal for professional development, The Cove, has written a number of articles about its roles for the Royal Australian Corps of Signals. <\/p>\n

A July 8 <\/a>article, \u201cCert Cito Ex Astris: Workforce,\u201d quoted the Concept SELENE\u2019s core tenant as follows: <\/p>\n

\u201cThe ADF will seek space advantage to enable freedom of action by temporally assuring access and disrupting or denying an adversary use of the space domain, as required.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Sept. 7<\/a> article, \u201cSignalling the Future: Royal Australian Corps of Signals and the Next Century of Australian Space Power,\u201d elaborated: <\/p>\n

\u201cSpace control operations are becoming increasingly important to protect Australia\u2019s freedom of action in space. This includes both defensive and offensive counterspace measures such as jamming, spoofing, or cyber disruption of adversary space assets (Swope et al., 2024, pp. 3-5). Signals personnel should therefore contribute to space order of battle development, signal propagation analysis, and cross-domain targeting effects planning. These roles are envisioned in the ADF\u2019s Concept SELENE (Australian Defence Force, 2024) as necessary contributions to theatre operations and allied interoperability.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the effort to further flesh out ADF\u2019s space control mission is a work in progress, Gardiner cited tangible progress on the other three space focus areas. <\/p>\n

\u201cWithin space domain awareness, the achievement of the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability<\/a> is excellent. When we start looking at how do we do ISR, there are other programs that are achieving exactly the need that that is required,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

While Gardiner didn\u2019t elaborate, back in 2022 <\/a>Australia\u2019s then-Defence Minister Peter Dutton said that the Defence Department had \u201ccommitted to a broad range of cooperative satellite activities\u201d with the National Reconnaissance Office, which owns and operates US ISR satellites.<\/p>\n

Further, Gardiner said that with regard to SATCOM, \u201cthere\u2019s a program that is invested with money.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Australian government took heat from its domestic space and defense industrial base in November 2024<\/a> when it canceled the ADF\u2019s biggest ever space program, called JP 9102 \u2014 a $5.3 billion effort to build an encrypted military SATCOM constellation of three to five birds under a contract with Lockheed Martin. The constellation was to provide communications over the Indo-Pacific region.<\/p>\n

However, in July, the ADF published a request for information (RFI) from industry regarding what appears, according to multiple press reports, to be a downsized replacement program, called SPA9102. <\/p>\n

According to a July 8<\/a> article in Asian Military Review, the RFI states: \u201cDefence has a need for a UHF-band payload in a GEO orbital slot within the field-of-view of Australia.\u201d It also opens the door to solutions beyond a bespoke-built SATCOM network, asking industry about capabilities such as \u201chosted payload on a multipurpose platform, a network of small\/nano satellites, or leveraging allied constellations with sovereign enhancements,\u201d the article adds.<\/p>\n

Gardiner said that the work on fleshing out future space capabilities is being done in tandem with the larger ongoing review of the April 2024 National Defence Strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now we\u2019re in the middle of a National Defence Strategy review. So, in \u201924 we had the current release, and we\u2019ll receive our next in \u201926,\u201d he said. [I]t\u2019s a robust process, so it goes through all of the implications and then, aligned with the Integrated Investment Program<\/a>, tells us how we\u2019re getting after that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 With the Australian Department of Defence working on an update to its 2024 National Defence Strategy,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":291515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[3774,4740,149416,149417,149418,149419,149420,68682,159,783,149421,11268,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-291514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-australian-defence-force-adf","11":"tag-australian-national-defence-strategy","12":"tag-australian-space-command","13":"tag-indo-pacific","14":"tag-intelligence-surveillance-and-reconnaissance","15":"tag-satellite-communications","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-space","18":"tag-space-control","19":"tag-space-force","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115348997587348778","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}