A Falcon 9 Spacex rocket with Starlink satellites when leaving Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, Sunday, September 28.
France and the US plan a second common mission of maneuvers coordinated with orbit satellites, part of an increasing effort to improve allied espionage capacities, as China expands its own military presence in space, an American general for Reuters said.
The operation would be the third known mission that the Pentagon does in space with an ally, after its first common maneuver with two spacecraft on the end of last year, which involved all France. This month, the US space command carried out a common mission with the United Kingdom.
The space has become an increasingly disputed military field, because an increasing number of crucial satellites for communications systems, military warning and information for the battlefield is facing threats from the main spatial powers.
The handling of space vessels with greater precision and the organization of international alliances have become key fronts in what officials consider to be a global space, in which the US and its allies are facing an intense rivalry from China and Russia.
“We are planning an effort with France right now,” the Lieutenant General Douglas Schiess, the commander of a US space component who works with the Space Command to carry out secret military operations, told Reuters.
France is the government in Europe that spends the most for space.
The American general said he could follow operations with other nations, adding: “I see us doing more.”
Western military officials in the space, including from Europe, USA and Canada, have launched warnings on the multiplication of threats for a diverse range of satellites, from military installations and to constellations of commercial satellites such as Starlink.
The French space command refused to comment on the plans. In the case of the first operation, he said he trains with the US to strengthen cooperation, to properly learn actions and to “demonstrate our strategic solidarity.”
The French space command “must prepare for military space operations in a real scenario,” the unit said.
What did the first two US missions assume with allies
In the initial exercise, an American and French military satellite approached each other in the proximity of a spacecraft of a “strategic competitor”, the commander of the US Space Command, Stephen Whiting, revealed in April.
The second operation took place between September 4 and 12. Within it, a satellite operated by the US space command was moved to verify that a British military communications called Skynet 5a operated on orbit as provided, according to the British party. Both satellites were in geostationary blindness – at an altitude of almost 36,000 kilometers above the Earth – and traveled at speeds of about three kilometers per second, the British side said.
