COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Space Force leaders aim to increase their collaboration with allies, saying military-to-military relationships remain strong—despite White House policies that have deeply strained relations with U.S. security partners.
The service plans to unveil the “International Space Strategy” in the coming weeks, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman announced Wednesday at Space Symposium, touting the document as a crucial step to build a multi-national space coalition.
During the conference, U.S. and European space leaders stressed the need to work together in space—even as relations between the U.S. and its allies have been strained by President Donald Trump’s threats to NATO, warmth toward Russia, punitive tariffs, and a brief pause on sending arms and intelligence to Ukraine.
Saltzman downplayed concerns about a potential rift between the U.S. and NATO—saying allies still want to be included in U.S. space efforts.
“We continue to support NATO by providing information with our service components through European Command, and so the military-to-military, I see business as usual,” Saltzman told reporters on Wednesday.
While European nations have been rallying to bolster their own military capabilities to protect themselves from Russia and reduce reliance on the U.S., officials warned that developing their own space capabilities without U.S. assistance would be a significant challenge.
“If we just cut ties, let Europe get on with it, then they’re going to have to spend significant amounts of money, potentially go down dead ends, developing the sort of capabilities that the U.S. has put together over decades,” Air Marshal Paul Godfrey, a U.K. officer currently serving as the assistant chief of space operations for future concepts and partnerships for the U.S Space Force, told reporters.
The U.S. has experience building national security space programs—“so we need to work together,” Godfrey said.
The new strategy will also help ensure that countries don’t duplicate efforts, Saltzman said.
“Once the checkbooks are there, it’s our job to make sure that we can responsibly spend them in a way that puts capability together, that actually produces the mission effects we want. You don’t want to buy two of things when you only have to buy one of them. You don’t want to buy things that don’t work together, because that creates a seam, and so this is the strategy work. This is force design work,” Saltzman said.
Saltzman outlined three goals of the not-yet-released strategy: empower partners as force multipliers, enhance interoperability and information sharing, and deliver full spectrum integration to create a “more seamless multinational space coalition.”
“Our international partnership strategy is built on one key concept: Coalition operations will be far more successful if we work together well before those contingency operations become necessary. If we’re not tightly coupled in our training, if we’re not reconciling our operational concepts, if we’re not integrating our capabilities, we will have a very steep learning curve when called upon in crisis or conflict,” he said.
Ongoing space operations with allies
Also Tuesday, officials disclosed that the U.S. and France recently demonstrated a “bilateral rendezvous and proximity operation” in space for the first time. The operation demonstrated “combined capabilities in space in the vicinity of a strategic competitor spacecraft,” said Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command
Whiting’s command has spent the last year working to “operationalize our relationships in space with our most capable allies,” he said, highlighting Operation Olympic Defender, a multinational task force to strengthen deterrence against adversaries and synchronize U.S. and allied efforts.
Olympic Defender now has six nations involved, in addition to the United States: Australia, the U.K., Canada, France, Germany, and New Zealand.
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