How far can NZ boldly go with the US Space Force?

Analysis - New Zealand is increasingly active in the US military's Space Force, but how bold can it be when America's moves to ramp up space capabilities are encased in anti-China rhetoric?

The US military loves badges. Every unit seems to have one, usually with dramatic graphics and often with some Latin.

Among the badges at the $47 billion Space Force is one for "Space Troopers - Masters of Orbital Warfare", featuring the Latin phrase "Audentes fortuna juvat" - "Fortune favours the bold".

New Zealand is increasingly active in the Space Force: setting up a satellite-monitoring hub in Auckland; sending New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) analysts to look at missions in Los Angeles and to play in highly classified space wargames led out of Alabama; and signalling that the clear southern skies here would be good for rapid launches in a conflict or crisis.

But how bold can it afford to be, when America's triple-pronged moves to ramp up space capabilities are encased in anti-China rhetoric?

New Zealand is debating whether to join a framework for sharing advanced military technology - Aukus Pillar Two - while quietly advancing for several years into another framework already in play, to expand the allies' hold on dual-use military-civilian space technology.

New Zealanders need to look to the United States to know what is going on, as public documentation of these moves is harder to find in this country.

Ramping up

The US put out its "clearest and most comprehensive unclassified articulation" of the approach to "protecting national security interests in space" in September.

This lifted some of the "veil of secrecy" for not just Americans, but "allies and adversaries alike", space industry media reported.

It is all very far from the failed 'Star Wars' plans of US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

The Pentagon began ramping up talk of a changing and worsening threat landscape in space in its fiscal pleas to lawmakers for financial year 2022. It was spurred along by watching how satellites had been having a huge influence on the Ukraine war.

It adopted slogans such as: "Across United States Government, Allies, & Commercial Partner Projecting Combat power in, from, and to space."

It made badges.

"The threat is the why; it is why we stood up the Space Force in 2019, it is why you all are here today," Space Force vice chief of space operations General Michael Guetlein told lawmakers in March.

"We are on a journey to forge a purpose-built Space Force to deter and if needed, defeat any rival to maintain control of the space domain."

What sort of threat, and what sort of rival? The September paper placed them in New Zealand's front yard.

"China is developing and rapidly growing its ability to leverage space to enhance its own combat power to fight and win a modern military conflict," it said.

"Increasingly sophisticated and proliferated space-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) networks and improved command and control systems increase the precision and accuracy of missile systems the PRC would employ to deter and counter US forward presence and operations, especially in the Western Pacific."

The lesser threat got an airing in March, where the possibility that "Russia is developing a nuclear, space-based anti-satellite weapon" came up at a roundtable of US and New Zealand government officials about Indo-Pacific security, an OIA showed.

Using the United States' space shield might make sense in this environment, with successive governments saying it is a far tenser Indo-Pacific region than before, and when New Zealand can not afford its own shield.

There are also the potential commercial spinoffs which the NZ government has told the US it is keen on.

Defence and Space Minister Judith Collins has previously stressed New Zealand must not come empty-handed to the party - and it does not: it is the fourth-equal busiest rocket launcher in the world; it is looking to add Kaitorete Spit for blasting off alongside Rocket Lab's private Māhia launchpad; and it has regulations that fit very well with the US, where many of the regulations were imported from.

Space Force is born

The sea-change has come in the US and its allies' willingness to play ball since 2019, then super-charged since 2022.

Allies were put off coming on board prior to 2019, because space was the domain of US nuclear war planning section (STRATCOM), according to US military media.

So SPACECOM and Space Force were born.

Around this time, New Zealand got active sending Defence Force analysts to one of the newly-established Space Force's key arms for executing operations, the Combined Space Operations Centre (CSpOC), documents show.

"Additional nations collaborating on space operations with the CSpOC include Germany, France and New Zealand," said Space Force PR in 2019, noting they had engaged for the first time in true "Five Eyes" integration around planning and tasking.

New Zealand is part of the Five Eyes intelligence group, alongside the US, Australia, the UK and Canada.

The CSpOC reports to the Combined Force Space Component Command, which is subordinate to USSPACECOM.

Collins did not respond when asked by RNZ if the government has made it clear enough to the public that this was the nature of New Zealand's involvement.

US wants more

The United States wants more, and has more to give.

New Zealand met with five allies and the US in April, about joining a space surveillance network called Operation Olympic Defender, with France and Germany again invited along.

The US announced: "USSPACECOM, working with Allies and Partners, plans, executes, and integrates military spacepower into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression, defend national interests, and when necessary, defeat threats."

New Zealand has also been a member for nine years of the CSpO - Combined Space Operations - with nine allies, where the language and strategy are less aggressive.

Collins said CSpO was "focused principally on the promotion and encouragement of the development of responsible behaviours in space and the peaceful use of space".

"It is not an operational body, nor is it subordinate to the structures of any one member," she said in a statement to RNZ.

The NZDF prefers to talk about "reducing space threats" through international rules and treaties, than through offensive means, in its most comprehensive public document about space, which is five pages long.

It states that it is "providing capability effects through space-based systems to enable and enhance military capabilities on earth and our combat effectiveness". But it goes into few details, except about what is already widely known, with a bit about the CSpO, the US WGS military satellite web that New Zealand has put $113m into, and about NZDF's small part in the Schriever space wargame, held in Alabama last year.

There is little or nothing from the Defence Force about future moves - such as what was being talked about at Space Force's International Affairs Office in Los Angeles when it hosted 14 countries last year - including the Five Eyes - to discuss advancing collaboration in "development and acquisition" programmes.

New Zealand is one of 15 countries whose flag flies at that office.

Eyes in the sky

An OIA response and documents from the US give more clues about another front of cooperation - The satellite-monitoring hub set up in Auckland last year, at the invitation of the US and with its funding.

The NZ-JCO - or Joint Commercial Operations - it coordinates the Pacific part of a global network of eight JCOs.

These provide non-classified "indicators and warnings" about civilian and military space activity to 500 recipients in 11 countries - including industry and academia - such as an unexpected separation of objects from a Russian satellite in October.

"They provide Space Domain Awareness information to the Joint Force, Allies, and Partner nations' warfighters," Space Force said.

"Perpetual and prolific space domain awareness is a foundational requirement for continued, sustainable use of space.

"The need is all the more urgent in today's contested and congested space domain where satellites are proliferating, adversaries are demonstrating aggressive behaviours, and additional threats are emerging. These new threats necessitate dominant and resilient combat power that can gain and maintain space superiority."

JCOs sometimes run exercises to supply data to the unified combatant command in the US.

New Zealand JCO officers have been part of US-led exercises that simulated how the JCO responds to threats including "from ground assets or space assets".

New Zealand documents put more stress on the non-military help given by Joint Commercial Operations.

A longer-established part of space surveillance comes from GEOINT New Zealand - a NZDF unit that is part of the Allied System for Geospatial Intelligence (ASG), alongside America's National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Another body - the US National Space Council - said last month the NGA "is going to have to rise to the ever-evolving GEOINT in warfighting environments".

Space domain awareness (SDA) is one of three core functions among Space Force's 13 missions, and comes under the Space Domain Awareness and Combat Power wing at US Space Systems Command, responsible for developing, acquiring and fielding "lethal and resilient space capabilities for warfighters".

The wing said it had "over 30 operational systems that are all over the world".

"We are now orchestrating the collection on about 1000 priority targets in space - right, 1000 out of 9500 satellites in space, those are the priorities," a commander said recently.

JCOs buy commercial SDA data, with about $180m to spend on this between 2023 and 2027.

The NZ-JCO, and others, are outfitted by commercial software companies contracted by the US government.

The JCO is costing New Zealand just $250,000 for a two-year trial - a "tangible contribution", "without the need to invest in sovereign space capabilities", in an area of vital need for all countries, said a proactively-released Cabinet committee paper backing the establishment in August 2023.

The US set out to expand its JCOs in 2020. It has also been looking to gear them up with new technology, some of which sounds benign, while others tech seems less so.

A US JCO leader got a recent award for a Data Exploitation and Enhanced Processing radio frequency (DEEP RF) innovation that would enable "JCO to rapidly expand into Electromagnetic Spectrum Operations (EMSO) with our commercial, military, and international partners," and that aligned with "Electromagnetic Warfare" goals.

"The JCO continues to seek diverse participants to support established and emerging missions including Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Tracking (SRT); Non-Earth Imaging (NEI); Cooperative Jamming and Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI); Data Exploitation and Enhanced Processing (DEEP); Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT); and Space-based Radio Frequency (RF)," said a 2022 overview.

The overview showed JCOs are a testbed - for instance, of a 'Warp Core' tech stack from Palantir Technologies, the surveillance firm controlled by controversial tech billionaire and New Zealand citizen Peter Thiel.

The 2023 Cabinet paper said the Auckland hub "may continue to evolve in terms of purpose and the technology employed".

But Collins and the NZDF were having none of it.

"We are not involved in any testing of Palantir Warp Core," said NZDF.

"We are not involved with any of these emerging missions."

It added: "New Zealand does not procure any commercial space surveillance sensor data services for the JCO, it is entirely funded by the US.

"Governance of our participation in the JCO ultimately lies with the Chief of Defence Force, and participation is at the agreement of government. NZDF's participation remains within the mandate the government agreed to. Any expansion requires the appropriate permissions.

"The point of the JCO is awareness of what is happening in space, just as maritime domain awareness is about what is happening at sea."

Collins reiterated to RNZ that the emerging missions described "are not part of the current JCO construct and were not discussed at my meetings with US defence leaders in April".

In those Colorado meetings, she talked with two Space Force commanders and also top officials who have used very hawkish language about China.

"The US Space Force's Strategy is its own to implement. This was not discussed in my meetings with US defence leaders in April," Collins told RNZ in a statement.

RNZ is seeking more information about what was discussed.

What is very clear is the US intent - and the Pentagon's message on space - which is a world away from what NASA talks about:

"Partnerships should … act as critical force multipliers and expand our competitive advantage," Space Force said.

"Competitors have weaponised space in a way that holds US and allied capabilities at risk. In doing so, they have created the most competitive and dangerous space environment in history, turning a once peaceful sanctuary into a warfighting domain," said Tom James, the deputy commander for United States Space Command, at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado.