NATO aims to publish its own commercial space strategy next year

NATO is devising a commercial space strategy as allied militaries realize just how much they might need industry’s satellites in wartime. 

It will resemble the Pentagon’s six-month-old commercial space strategy, said Maj. Gen. Devin Pepper, deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and policy at NATO’s Allied Command Transformation. 

The U.S. strategy aimed to define what needs industry could fill, and opened the door for military protection of industry assets, but was criticized for breaking little ground, and lacking a specific roadmap. 

NATO officials said in an Oct. 2 release that their nascent strategy will reflect a growing commercial market, and the need for a “new relationship” between the military and industry. 

“As we see from Maxar supporting the Ukraine, or Starlink, there's a lot of commercial capability out there that we can leverage to increase our own resiliency at NATO. So we want to be able to capture that, and because right now we have contracts with several commercial companies today [but] we want to be able to expand that and make sure that we can rely on that in a conflict if we need it,” Pepper said Thursday at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

The planned NATO strategy, which was first publicly mentioned at the alliance’s summit in July, may differ from the U.S. document in its requirements for commercial space systems, Pepper said, but will likely aim to fill similar needs: communications, space domain awareness, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.  

“We need to be able to have that data and that information available in a fight, whether it comes from the military or not. But if that gets shut down, we have got to be able to ensure that we can still prosecute a fight, leveraging commercial capability,” he said. 

Officials have started polling NATO nations to figure out what space systems they have and what commercial companies in their country might be of use, Pepper said, since not every allied country is a “space-faring nation.” 

Currently, the U.S. supplies most of NATO’s space capabilities. The alliance established space as the fifth operational domain in 2019, and officials have been talking more frequently about the importance of space in military operations. 

But it’s unlikely that other NATO countries will set up their own “space force” anytime soon. The U.S. Space Force could be a model for other countries to adapt, but most nations can’t, given the small size of their militaries, Pepper said.

“A lot of nations can't do that, but certainly, what I appreciate about NATO is the level of importance that NATO has placed on the space domain by declaring it an operational domain in 2019, certainly taking steps to integrate space capabilities into our operations, making sure that we have resiliency in our systems, making sure that we can partner with each other to develop capability,” he said.