International Partnerships in Space
February 24, 2026
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Heidi Grant:
But I can tell you it’s an honor to be back with Air and Space family and friends and most importantly our international partners Make sure you take some time after this to get to meet some of our international partners But this is a topic that has been really important talked about in many venues and you’re really gonna I think be pleased with the panel today. It represents The depth and breadth of the whole space enterprise from the operational realities of space as a warfighting domain to the policy frameworks that you’ll hear about and then how we govern and Work with our allies and partners And then you’re also going to get a unique NATO perspective here today on the panel. So, these are Practitioners I can tell you that I’ve worked in the business a long time. They’ve built led they’ve sustained international partnerships that Underpin our competitive advantage So in the next 40 minutes we’re going to cover deterrence burden sharing the lessons of Ukraine and what it takes to move from information sharing to combined readiness So let me briefly introduce this distinguished group of panelists here first We have Air Marshal Paul “Godders” Godfrey from the United Kingdom Royal Air Force He’s now serving though as assistant chief of space operations for future concepts and partnerships at the Pentagon And he was the first ever head of the UK Space Command and he served alongside US forces across the Middle East and as an exchange pilot at Shaw Air Force Base and now sits in the center of How Space Force integrates allies and capabilities development? Next I want to introduce you to General Chris Gardiner Australia’s inaugural space and cyber attaché He’s the first that I hear that actually to be Certified as in as a space and cyber attaché here in Washington DC He also serves as Australia’s first commander of Space Forces group and the Joint Forces Space Component Commander It makes him one of the architects of the Australian space power He’s a combat veteran with deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and he brings again both the operational credibility and the coalition perspective That the coalition requires their conversation requires today Next we have miss Deanna Ryals senior executive service Director of Space International Affairs at the Office of Deputy Undersecretary the Air Force for International Affairs. She is the principal advisor on Space International Affairs to the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Space Operations and You know, I know her from years ago She championed the largest space international partnership in the Air Force history with the wideband global SATCOM agreement And she led collaboration placing the first space domain awareness payload of Japan’s positioning navigation targeting satellites and What she’s going to bring to the conversation today as she owns the policy and process that makes partner integration happen and Then finally we have Mr. Tom Goffus, who recently completed his tenure at NATO’s assistant secretary-general for operations and special coordinator for counterterrorism he’s a former F-15 pilot and US Air Force Academy graduate and Tom has he shaped NATO policy in many different Administrations as deputy assistant secretary defense for European and NATO policy director of the Senate Armed Services Committee and NSC director for strategic and Eastern Europe affairs so if anyone can give us a perspective of NATO and partners and allies and Space as a warfighting domain, I can tell you it’s Tom. So, I want to get right into it and actually start with Tom Goff is His current You know in his operations NATO operations, especially Ukraine. Ukraine has shown us that That the opening move in modern conflict is a space and electronic warfare and a cyber cocktail Before any single aircraft takes off or shots fired to the ground So what should NATO and its allies be taken away from that? And can you tell us, you know, how does it change how we think about space as a warfighting domain?
Thomas Goffus:
Thanks, Heidi. And it’s great to be here with a panel of true space professionals And I really appreciate how you teed up that question. The next war might not be exactly what we see in Ukraine right now. But we’d be foolish to ignore certain aspects of it like space It highlights what US space professionals already know space is not just a service provider. It is a bonafide warfighting domain Space not only supports the fight supports the battlefield. It is in the middle of fight. It is the battlefield Internationally, I got to tell you many Of our partners are now just catching on to this reframing It means for NATO to be relevant to the modern battlefield NATO must be a strategic space actor and I didn’t make that up that comes from our senior most NATO officials NATO declared space an operational domain back in 2019 and in 2019 It’ll simultaneously set its space policy and space ambition when at the time there were only a few large allies with any significant space capability Seven years ago for smaller allies space was too expensive It was too classified and it was too exquisite That is simply no longer true the fundamental assumptions have changed since 2019 the proliferation of technology and Especially the expansion of commercial space has spawned a true space Revolution and that means all 32 allies can contribute meaningfully to the space domain fight for example Bulgaria has multiple nano sats doing Black Sea overwatch with multiple sensors and Ukraine teaches that any major international conflict will involve a significant fight in the space domain and NATO in space as a global domain means that NATO’s your Atlantic role will be key to any Indo-pacific conflict additionally more partners with more capabilities in space increases resilience and decreases first mover advantage That means international partners represent a stabilizing force in the space domain We ignore this sea change in space dynamics at our own peril The challenge is to harness partner participation in space and that’s a key NATO role one determining what the burden share in the space domain could and should be for each of the 32 allies and To helping bring those capabilities together in the most synergistic way in space as in other warfighting domains It’s important to recognize that America first does not mean America alone. In fact, it means the exact opposite
Heidi Grant:
Thanks, sir. So, Air Marshal Godfrey. I know you know, it’s inherently global. Please jump in This is gonna be a conversation here, absolutely…
Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:
Exactly. This should be a big bar. We should all have drinks and this is just a conversation on top of the bar.
Heidi Grant:
As long as there’s dancing involved too.
Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:
Yeah, thank you Hey Tom, so that It’s fascinating what you say And it’s a real privilege to be on the panel with these guys work with Chris for the longest time when we start UK Space Command he was part of Australian Space Command Deanna for the longest time with SSC and then we work together and pulling together the international partner strategy and one of our Lines of effort is with NATO And it’s pretty complex Tom and I was just I Guess there’s a couple of things that we can turn into a conversation one Who has the lead for the space side of things in NATO? I’ve got a view having worked closely with NATO in this particular job and from the CSO mentioned yesterday the objective force where 15 years ahead. We’re looking at what is the US Space Force need in the future environment? And I think that provides us a golden thread to go and talk to you allies about the sorts of capability That would be complementary to US Space Force capability and NATO is complex You’ve got 32 nations bringing a whole bunch of different things Who is that leadership focal point? I think they’ve kind of decided there isn’t You know someone leading the space domain because there isn’t someone leading the air domain the maritime domain and so on in terms of policy and second in that NATO do certain things and by capability like the e3 for example airborne early warning Do you see him doing that in terms of constellations in terms of ISR or something along those sorts of lines?
Thomas Goffus:
Had some really good points there, and I do think that one of the hardest parts about NATO is how opaque it is Not only for the military and for people in government But also for industry to figure out where to attach to what are the challenges that need to be solved? and the first piece of it and it is spread out as you implied is Defense planning and policy on the international the NATO international staff in Brussels Nick Katsaris is the assistant secretary general that leads that they establish Working with SACE or and SAC T What the capability targets should be and right now NATO has capability targets for things like? Battleships and fighter jets and tanks, but not for space, so that’s going to be a key location for Making that happen. They’re also responsible for space policy on the other hand commercial space Commercial space strategy and implementation is a different division within NATO headquarters called d2ia defense investment innovation and armaments And that’s led by a Finn, Tarja Jaakola, and that’s where you engage on the commercial space side And as everybody knows You don’t write many checks at NATO headquarters you set policy And set direction, but it’s the 32 nations that actually do the buying Yeah, I think that you’re bringing up the e3 is a very complex and very political question at NATO headquarters That’s still being sorted through and the dust has not yet settled as far as I can tell.
Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner:
Yeah, I think it’s valid because I think the strength of the NATO is that collective You know strength together, and then as we start to consider it from the space domain lens Which is the premise of you know the question being you know? What did we learn from the Ukraine aspect and then? The question comes back onto all of us in that collective nature being well would we conduct anything if we did not have? You know the access to space and the access to our space systems and on the flip of that would we conduct it in the? same way if any Adversary potential adversary had access to theirs and if the answer to any of that is we need hours And we want to reduce theirs then what’s the role of that domain and think of it in a collective sense? which is the link to NATO here of Deterrence and then what are we prepared to do from you know that deterrence framework through the domain and link it to deception because if one of us goes out on a limb and does a Reveal of a capability of some kind that we’re trying to put out with a deterrent effect But it isn’t coordinated collectively then potentially we miss the opportunity of the strength that we bring like NATO.
Heidi Grant:
So I think several important things have just been brought up here one is the need for the NATO targets so I know we have the international partnership strategy that’s been put together and Looking then you know I hear from international partners in space around the world that look we want to be a valued partner But you know what is it? How what is it the one or five things that we can do to be a valued partner? So, I think these discussions the targets the implementation plan all of this is going to be helpful to leverage the 32 NATO allies and beyond But if I can like now go to another topic I want to bring Ms. Ryals into the discussion here. It’s kind of like the implementation. You know everybody’s been talking There’s frequent discussions around the building about you know Let’s build in let’s cook in allies and partners for you know from the very beginning We’ve been talking about this for years and other domains, too But you know I’d love to hear from you on kind of what you’re doing as far as you know reforms and SAF IA security cooperation reshaping foreign military policy so over to you.
Deanna L. Ryals:
Sounds great. Thanks Heidi, and I’m gonna just kind of start this with the ending to the conversation You guys were just having one of the fundamental areas that we’ve got to figure out is data and information sharing with allies and partners With everybody buying their own capabilities and their own systems, which is great the cost of space has come down the cost of launches come down It’s a lot easier for independent nations and NATO and outside NATO to have their own national sovereign capabilities How do we bake in to the very beginning the concept an idea that we’re gonna share information? We’re gonna share data. We want to compile data together in common places So everybody has access to it and use it you know from an SSC perspective in my previous job We used UDL the unified data library and acts as a way to do that But one of the things I think about is how do we get that how do we get that to be baselined into? Thinking how do we tell NATO that that’s something that is available to them? How do we bake in that thinking from the very beginning when you’re doing? Defense planning and progress and how do we look at those capabilities and make sure that that those are identified as ways that we can? Get to this so that’s just one thought as we finish that
Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:
Yeah, so I was just gonna say what just on that front, I think standardization is a key area and so Deanna and I have talked about this a number of times because we both Complete agreement in terms of that data sharing aspect. You know that’s it’s something I mentioned LOEs. So, the first LOE in our small office that we’ve got is Strengthening partnerships, which is about the international partner strategy. I might talk about that in a bit the second one is harness C Spode. Third one is engage NATO. So the harness CSpO side of things CSpO the combined space operations initiative five hours plus France Germany Italy Norway and Japan and I think that is a small group where we’ve tried one of the milestones that we’ve got is data and information sharing and Once we crack that and we’re on the path to cracking that then I think you can you know push this broader because it’s such a big generic problem that you need some specifics to try and solve it with. So, hopefully one of the things we’re gonna do as part of CSpO this year is a CSpO exercise You know and all of this leads ultimately into Olympic defender Which has got seven of the ten nations in as well But I think we need to get down to specifics to just get to that really difficult point, Deanna, of what is it specifically that we that we need to share and I think there were two engagements that we’ve had recently At the Munich Security Conference actually one with the European Space Agency From a US Space Force perspective to understand. Okay, where are you going with? standards in the space domain so that we don’t get a European industry having one for those old enough in the audience that sort of VHS and Betamax VCR side of thing that’s probably no one I probably alienated the entire audience now But you know, we get to the point with that I had in there in the 90s We all had fighter data links, but none of it could speak to each other because there were different protocols So that first step is brilliant. And then I think if you can turn those discussions into Stan X standardization agreements through NATO where you’ve been picked up 32 nations and partnered nations with NATO such as Australia Japan and New Zealand Then we’re starting to build a consensus of that. But the really difficult question is what data do you need to standardize?
Thomas Goffus:
And I wanted to say thank you for bringing that up. Last six months of my tenure at NATO My number one thing was the biggest fight in NATO for the next five years is data sharing It doesn’t mean we have five years to solve it. We got to start today But the biggest fight is there to your point one of the vital things that we need to do is go open architecture And I know the problem is I don’t have a substitute for proprietary kit because that’s how Industry makes a lot of money on rewriting things and putting that forward So we need a different profit model But we need to fix the open architecture first and the specifics that are working on it. General Heinz from air comm, General Donahue in land comm, through the eastern flank deterrence line and through the Enhanced vigilance activity of Eastern Sentry are working on that exact same problem Trying to get NATO towards the cloud and open architecture, which I got to tell you if you learn nothing else from Ukraine They do open architecture and data sharing better than anything that we can even touch right now And if Europe’s going to be relevant to Golden Dome in the future, we need to get into that data sharing game I think your point is spot on. Thanks.
Deanna L. Ryals:
Yeah, and I would definitely say look at what was done from a Ukraine perspective UDL acts Acoustic sounding some of those, you know innovative new things that nobody had seen before and that was open architecture new ideas innovation So that’s also a big part of where we’re headed with this.
Heidi Grant:
So, as you can see this audience, to the audience, They all know each other really well and during the prep session when you know I was telling how this was all gonna play out. They said I don’t worry. We don’t really need you We can just have a discussion up here. So, I mean eventually we need to move on and get to… Can I make one more point?
Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:
I tell you we all need drinks. Just roll up everyone can contribute. but the My worry about all of that and this is the thing we’re trying to solve with specifics is and I’d agree the Ukrainian You know within essentially minutes Four years ago today, you know, they’re rolling up the whole of government into a cloud is it required an existential crisis to do this and you know whilst it is a Difficult and dangerous world at the moment. I don’t think nations are feeling the existential crisis which is what we are trying to bring specifics into in terms of exercising and operations to Find those areas that where we work out exactly where we need to data share and then how we do this Sorry, madam.
Heidi Grant:
No problem. So, Ms. Ryals. Can you talk a little bit about a mess and how we’re gonna be able to bring in these partners?
Deanna L. Ryals:
Thanks for that. Sorry a little off track there a little excited Yeah, so one of the things that we’ve been doing in SAF IA is Working very very closely with the acquisition community. We have established a solid foundation and in cooperation with SQ and the service acquisition executive for space to say hey, let’s be much more proactive about baking in Exportability into each of the programs that we’re gonna procure. Let’s just assume that everything is going to be exportable Let’s write that in let’s work the policy elements of that Let’s look at AC reform and FMS reform and leverage those Opportunities to just say look spaces here now. I know five years ago ten years ago We wouldn’t even talk about exporting space capabilities or we wouldn’t talk about sharing information and data, but that’s all changed So commercial has made the big change in that Dual use of capabilities where it all used to be built purpose-built for military to be militarily used now We’re using commercial capabilities like Tom was mentioning and so we’ve got to make sure that the policy catches up with Technology and capability we’ve got to accept the fact that our allies and partners Can afford to do space from a sovereign perspective and we need to be ready to help them do that So we’re working through that. The other big thing is we’ve got a fantastic space baseline in Safa a now It’s the DAF coordinated position where we have gone mission area by mission area working with all of our industry partners Industry helped us write this baseline to make sure that we got it, right to say These are the technologies and capabilities that we want to get out of the hands of these particular partners Let’s get that pre-approved. So, when the partner comes and asks, we’re ready to do it.
Heidi Grant:
Yeah, that’s great news I mean the baselines I think will really expedite the process when a partner comes in looking for a capability. Did anyone want to add anything on to that?
Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner:
No I’m just saying that we see the benefit as well because all of a sudden it’s The premise is that as we start to move forward in this capability journey that it’s going to be integrated or it’s allied by design From the get-go the next part of it is of course is the design function Which is where and what capability we need and why and then to comes the asks So what do you need from and name the countries and why we might deliberately decide to duplicate? Essential capabilities because we need more of them
Heidi Grant:
Yeah
Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner:
And at the same note Certain countries will be progressing sovereign solutions to problems they’re experiencing want to get after and be able to contribute that into the bigger holistic Contribution that we make within the domain. It might be Differentiated but deliberately so that differentiation and what we bring in that area is also the contribution But the whole premise and the only reason that’s giving us that choice and the options to be able to talk about Duplication and differentiation is because the capability at the outset is able to be shared to meet what the operational requirements Without the baseline. We’re just having conversations.
Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:
I’ll just make a point about the international partner strategy. So we design the international partner strategy around essentially bilateral Country plans. So, Deanna’s team and the Space Force s5p team Have bilateral conversations with nations such as Australia and work out exactly the sorts of things that Chris is talking about. So what does Australia want to do? You know, where are you going with your own space industrial base? What does the Space Force think in terms of where? Australia can contribute and you have this conversation and Deanna and the team with that baseline then understand, right now We’ve got an opportunity here through FMS or DCS direct commercial sale, whatever it happens to be So ultimately that we are bringing people up, you know because a lot of us only since NATO declared space and operational domain in 2019 have Put up space commands, you know space forces, whatever it is So I was it was a bad analogy, but I was trying to think of the sort of The equivalent in the air domain. I’ve tried to use it a couple of times I need to get on to chance UBT and finalize it somehow but you know where the US are at 2026 in the space domain maybe China at 2020 but rapidly increasing A lot of us are around about the sort of 1913 type area Because you haven’t used this operationally, you know, you’re still developing your capability So, how do you go from I told you it didn’t work But how do you go from 1913 to 2026 or even hyper scale hyper jump up to 2030? that’s where this discussion comes in and Just a shout out to Deanna and her team, you know Deanna was pretty much the lead writer on the international partner strategy and now sits leading the space division in SAF IA with that baseline that enable everything that we want to do Now it is about putting these processes in place noting that the US Space Force is only six years old I won’t do the six-seven thing that CSO did yesterday We talked about that afterwards I said it was probably for a lot of the young Guardians in the audience not watching your dad doing a dad joke But you know, we are still Instituting those processes inside of the Space Force to make this happen, you know So we’re iterative on this and it’s going to take Certainly months years as we get really good at it so that we can bring everyone up to the level that we need
Heidi Grant:
Yeah
Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner:
That’s on the key points that was mentioned yesterday was we might be in the seventh year of Space Force a lot less for Some of the space commands and other military entities globally, but Reflecting on it if we just turn around a little bit there’s been a hell of a lot that’s been achieved within that Timeframe and it reeks of opportunity moving forward as well because there’s no legacy processes that we’re dealing with so the journey that you’ve spoken about that the strategies bringing in place the Collaborative exercising that’s going to move forward and what we’re trying to achieve writ large That’s all Opportunity that you’re not bound by any other Legacy history of and as we move forward we said allied by design, you know We’ll move into what I refer to as integrated later. But you know, I actually think it’s worth just a rearview glance sometimes as well.
Heidi Grant:
So General Gardiner. I’m gonna stick with you for a minute So you stood up the Space Force in in Australia? So, from scratch, so if you can just talk about like what does effective partner cooperation? You know based on that experience standing up and what are what’s still out there potentially is, you know that you think We fall short a little bit and effective partnerships
Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner:
Yeah so, I think the important bit I was almost touching on just then is to celebrate the successes early and just keep that in without losing Focus on what you’re trying to achieve as a vision. So, the drive moving forward and don’t get me wrong There was a team and I know that there’s probably some people in the audience from Australia here that were a part of the team That stood that up at the time. So there’s definitely no credit here it’s all out there but the I’m raising is we started with people as the capability when we’re trying to stand it because For many of the countries of space capabilities already But it’s how we start to move past the capabilities in understanding the domain space domain awareness and then how we provide Enabling functions for other domains into the mindset where I kind of hinted at the very beginning of what are we doing for deterrence? What are we doing for deception? How are we getting after it and then invoking can we change a potential adversary’s? Mindset and actions through the space domain that keeps us out of crisis. And I think that that mindset is why we have a Space Force in its seventh year Why we’ve got space commands in different countries is to make sure that we’re bringing those domain relevant Conversations into our integrated and focused forces. We combine them as a combined force So that’s where I was touching on looking forward and I don’t think it’s a shortfall I just think it’s something we’re continually moving forward on would be allied by design is the principle that we talked about The next step might be integrated by design and the integrate by design evidently would need a little bit of definition but in my view is integrated defined as combined which is Multinational I’ll say joint but I mean all domains multi domains and Partnered and when I refer to partner I’m talking about bringing in civil commercial and academia and with all of that Combined joint and partnered mindset. We’re now integrated if we through the agility of being Relatively young relatively small in size and scale can bring an integrated mindset in that might be the next division So not necessarily a shortfall because I want to celebrate what we’ve done. I think the direction is absolutely on point But then how do you continue not to lose sight of we could be doing something maybe just that a little bit more
Thomas Goffus:
I would just…
Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:
Tom, please. Deanna. I don’t want to hold this but There’s something really interesting that Chris has said there about the we’ve not burdened by the legacy, you know, maybe a thousand years of naval TTPs or whatever it happens to be. But I think I’d highlight something JCO the joint commercial operation Chris is talking about commercial integration and is relevant to NATO as well where Bob Golf, I think a force of nature in pulling this together and Rapidly contracting for data not only space to main us awareness data, but what we’re calling tack SRT So earth observation data and a couple of other things as well but the Key for this was rapid contracting of data and the tools to be able to manipulate data And that was something I remember getting briefing probably five years ago from Bob I was like I don’t quite understand it But I’m in and it was a coalition of the willing that then expanded and it is so powerful now to the point Where Bob is working closely with NCIA in NATO to develop a NATO version of JCO That I know will be the sort of accelerator I think in NATO because a lot of the time we talk about exquisite capabilities But you know, this is mainly a data problem and it’s 80% You could probably get from commercial data and there’s multiple sources So, you know the just the JCO side itself. I think how do you mention at the beginning? We’ll talk about Deterrence, but just the fact that we are all working so closely together I talked about CISO, but I think there’s 23 countries or even more in JCO That’s the deterrent, you know, because your potential adversaries looking at all of these allies working together Absolutely increases their risk calculus when it comes to Making the first move.
Heidi Grant:
Can you share a little more about combined training exercises for the… that are planned that have already happened?
Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:
Yeah, so that’s definitely I mentioned in so Within CSPO we have a campaign plan. You can google it that there is CSPO. There’s a vision 2031 Clearly that’s you talk about the rearview mirror that’s accelerating pretty quickly So we’ve got an interim step that we’re trying to achieve by the end of this year as well And that’s the simple stuff that you would expect from data sharing policy and legal working group is in there as well. And that’s where we’ve come on significantly. I think as well the policy the individual nations have In terms of what you might do in the space domain and I think most people although, you know They might not call it a warfighting domain yet I definitely that’s what we assume that this domain is it’s a warfighting domain even if nations haven’t said that out loud But the Exercising thing I think is incredibly important now it is there are a ton of space exercises out there. So, trying to squeeze a CSPO exercise in there is difficult But I think is it important because you now get to the specifics of where you fell down in a policy link, you know And uh, what is London? What is the UK MOD or the UK government going to do given a potential? DASAP launch somewhere. How long does that take? Those are the sorts of things you can test and then that information sharing once we debrief that now We’ve got things that we know we need to fix We’ll have fixed some of them But now we’ve got the specifics and the thing with CSPO is that we work incredibly closely with Olympic defender Which is conducting operations as opposed to training. So, we’re the kind of organized train and equip and So we’re therefore fixing the things that they require in order to conduct space operations. So hopefully we’ll have one in CSPO this year and there’s a bunch of other things going on as well as war games and I think the team from Delta 10 Shannon and the team are in the audience But I’ve got to give a shout out to Schriever War Game as well as one of those areas that you test those future Capabilities you test where you need to go as individuals you test how you war game together, which I think is brilliant.
Heidi Grant:
Well, we’re only we’re down to about seven minutes It’s going by so fast and the thing I want to you know Most mostly leave this audience with is kind of the way forward, you know I like to leave people with a call to action, right? So, I’m gonna start with you Tom like for NATO, you know, what would be your message as you’re leaving NATO? Like this is this is what I think you need to do to move forward for partnerships in space.
Thomas Goffus:
Yeah, I’m gonna start with what Deanna brought up because I think it’s vital this this To be effective in space It’s a lot about data sharing and we got to get that right the biggest fight for NATO in the next five years And it starts today is Data sharing we’re gonna have 650 European f-35s in Europe by 2030 if you can’t move process or share 80% 90% of that data that’s 80 or 90 percent of your investment on the cutting room floor and it’s gonna apply doubly to space The first thing we need that NATO needs to do it or space capability targets That is gonna take time though But I’m not worried about it because commercial space is moving so much faster than what most governments are keeping up with now The US Australia the UK Germany are at the leading edge of that countries like Norway France have that capability But other allies are just dipping their toe in the water. So those capability targets are getting important I’m not that worried because nations had tanks before we had tank capability targets so that can evolve in parallel And the second thing that we need to do is at NATO, when nations have capability, we need to bring that together for synergistic effects. How do you do that collectively? That is NATO’s responsibility and that’s within the NATO command structure Our current plan for a couple dozen people is not even close to what we need we need a new implementation plan for the space domain and then the third thing that I would emphasize is Getting space into our operational plans NATO people were smart enough to put placeholders in we have a space domain plan Mostly it’s a placeholder in the regional plans. How do you bring space effects to bear and then how do you? Use other domains to help space Lancom launches a precision Munition to take out a Russian ground link site that is land supporting space. So, we need to get that right So those are the three areas capabilities a NATO command structure capability to do synergy and then the third piece that I would put in there is operationalizing space at NATO.
Heidi Grant:
Ms. Ryals, do you want to add anything about burden sharing or sure?
Deanna L. Ryals:
Absolutely, and I think Tom, you hit it spot-on with us something that we’ve been battling with consistently is how do we normalize space within? The security cooperation enterprise everybody’s like well, it comes up through the combatant command. So the combatant commands need to be articulating for space. Well, they don’t know enough yet We’ve just got our C field comms within Space Force stood up right there They’re not fully built up to be able to engage everywhere all the time So the message of space and the importance of space needs to be, you know promulgated even further out And so we’re looking at ways to do that One of the other things that we’re looking at is as we’re looking at export ability of capabilities We’re trying to match that with the work that the Space Force is doing on identifying which partners and which capabilities is starting to build menus out that we could send out to the STOs and the DATs and the SCOs that are out in country and theater and say This is the list of capabilities that are available to your partners rather than having them try to build it from the bottom up Let’s drive that from the top down and get that out to everybody and then I think we’ll start to see more Understanding it through exercises as everything else to operate operationalized space and really get that out there So that’s something that we’re working on and you know near and dear to our hearts in South by a to get that done
Heidi Grant:
I can’t I have to ask the question like coming soon? Are you able to give us kind of like, okay? Next month?
Deanna L. Ryals:
It won’t be next month, but it will be sooner than next year.
Heidi Grant:
All right, okay. All right.
Thomas Goffus:
I think I just wanted to say I think that is absolutely spot-on Europe has money with the commitment to 5% and They know that it takes years and years to get some of the hardware out there. Commercial space is ready right now a tomorrow. No waiting line delivered in weeks months at most and So I think having a menu Because the other side of the coin is you know You give your youngster $100 bill and send them into the candy shop. Everything looks good They need some guidance some help, and I think the menu is the right way to go I think that’s absolutely spot-on.
Brig. Gen. Christopher Gardiner:
And also that network of cooperation Of our allies and partners and new partners needs to move faster than the threat So as we start to do that and that realization of you know Space is that team sport and whilst simplistic terms are only simple to those that truly don’t understand What I refer to there is of course, you know If it is a team sport you can have you marquee players But the marquee players can only do their things if everyone else on the team knows what they’re doing So there’s a whole underlying sort of tone towards that as well and then realistically I would place at the end of that in an integrated Way, so then integrated by design.
Heidi Grant:
Do you have a takeaway for this audience?
Air Marshal Paul Godfrey:
Only that you’ll see the operationalization of the international partner strategy this year We’ve got a big meeting in March coming up where we’ve got all the OPRs the leads across all of the field comms and the component field commands and Whilst we’ll have priorities in the headquarters Its mission command from there on it’s up to those guys who are daily with the component field commands and in the PECOM in Europe Africa, you know all of the major combatant commands the space components there and the field commands They’re the ones dealing with the partners and allies for us It’s about operationalizing that information flow now so that we get the feedback and can act on that feedback and change the priorities So that you are getting the best capability into the hands of the Allies as quickly as we can
Heidi Grant:
Thank you for that. I mean, so I just want to say thanks to AFA and this entire audience this this is an important topic If you walk away that you need to be integrated by design We need to leverage 32 allies plus as far as the capabilities that this warfighting domain is more important than ever And international partners in this domain are more important than ever So if everybody could give a huge applause to this distinguished panel for sharing the way forward