US wants to launch more satellites from NZ

The US military is holding talks with New Zealand about launching more satellites from this country.

The US Space Force is moving to deploy hundreds more satellites that will - among other things - support America's nuclear command-control-and-communications (NC3) system.

It is not known what types of satellite it might wish to launch from here, but the Pentagon has signalled for several years its interest in diversifying launches into clear southern hemisphere skies, and elsewhere outside the US.

Congress ordered a report two years ago on the benefits of using partner countries' spaceports for rapid launch in a war or other crisis. RNZ's efforts to get the report through the US embassy have failed.

There are now new talks, with US Space Force General Brigadier Kristin Panzenhagen at the forefront.

"We are looking at international partnerships as potential ways to get our satellites to orbit," she said in an interview with the Mitchell Institute thinktank.

Talks were in their very early stages.

"So we've been talking to some of our allies and partners about their launch capability, whether it's existing capability - so for example, you know, Japan has existing capability, Rocket Lab is launching out of New Zealand, Ariane Space out of French Guyana."

The US wanted to "see what we may be able to do for enhancing each other's resiliency".

She said Sweden and Britain were also in the talks. The UK has no working spaceports, but is trying to build six of them.

The Pentagon has repeatedly told lawmakers - in pleas for more space funding - that it was in a race against China to achieve space superiority by 2027.

The US could end up helping design new spaceports offshore, so its launches would not face technical barriers, Panzenhagen added.

The 2023 report to Congress aimed to assess launch capability and "the shared costs and technology between the United States and allies, including if investments from the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the European Deterrence Initiative could be considered for allied spaceports".

As the US pivots away from Europe and more towards the Indo-Pacific, it is pouring billions more into the Pacific Deterrence Initiative for the likes of missiles in Guam, drone experiments, and "military construction", documents showed.

Launches out of Mahia for the Pentagon and US space spy agency NRO have been mostly for experimental missions so far.

But the US relies on its two spaceports at home - at Cape Canaveral in Florida, and at Vandenberg base in California - for actual missions, including 'cannot fail' operations.

Retired Space Force colonel Charles Galbreath, now a senior fellow at the Mitchell institute, interviewed the general on Youtube last week, and spelled out why accelerating launches mattered so much.

"Launch, and the assured access to space that it represents, is foundational to space superiority and leveraging the unique benefits of the space domain.

"If you can't get to space, you can't control it," Galbreath said.

Diversification and speed

Space Force is not only diversifying, but speeding up. In its latest exercise, a launch that once took two years was down to just 10 weeks, Galbreath heard.

International diversification is being paired with bringing more companies on board, often smaller ones, rather than the usual massive 'primes' like Lockheed.

For instance, Rocket Lab US has just been elevated into a fast-lane of its National Security Space Launch (NSSL) programme.

New Zealand is also linked in through its space research within the Five Eyes intelligence group, including a role in current tests of satellite comms to ships.

This comes under the umbrella of what US media calls the "Pentagon's global meta-network" - or CJADC2 - or combined joint all-domain command and control - essentially, a satellite-linked network for faster shooting.

The New Zealand Defence Force has recently been going to more US-led CJADC2 exercises or taking a bigger role, including in ones that build "kill chains" and "kill webs".

The head of US nuclear forces Admiral Charles Richard underlined the link between JADC2 (now called CJADC2) when he spoke to Congress in 2022.

"A subset of what JADC2 is doing is for nuclear command and control," Richard said.

"The two systems have to be overlapped to a great extent so that we can have integration."

Both CJADC2 and nuclear command-control-and-comms expect to benefit from the launch of hundreds of satellites into low-orbit, to get away from reliance on a handful of large, hugely expensive and vulnerable large satellites in higher orbit, according to official US documents.

A big CJADC2-linked exercise in Australia in August - Talisman Sabre - aims to advance how 19 countries including New Zealand share communications through a single system, which occurred for the first time last year.

Defence and Space Minister Judith Collins talked up the commercial opportunities for New Zealand firms to help out the Pentagon last year.

But last week's survey of the space industry that Collins released - which covered its potential to double by 2030 to be worth $5 billion a year - barely mentioned defence.

Collins told RNZ: "I have not engaged directly with the Space Force on launching from New Zealand."

Company leaders in the defence industry praised her appearance at an industry event last Friday. "Judith Collins is a rock star," said one online. "Capable of doing the work publicly and behind closed doors," said another.

RNZ asked if it could attend the event to hear her speak, but was declined.

Launches are checked and approved by national security officials and National Security and Intelligence Minister Christopher Luxon.

But Luxon diverted RNZ's questions about NC3 to the Defence Ministry.

The US Embassy said it had "nothing further to provide".

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